The chief executive of AMC Entertainment, which is about to become the biggest movie theater chain[1] in the country, floated the idea of letting people text in theaters.

Let's check in on what people think of this.

The strategy is part of a plan to attract more younger movie fans to the theater, said Adam Aron[2], who was hired to the top post at AMC just months before the company's March announcement that it would purchase Carmike Cinemas[3].

"When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don't ruin the movie, they hear, 'Please cut off your left arm above the elbow,' " Mr. Aron said in an interview with Variety[4].

It's not the first time, of course, that the idea has been floated — and subsequently ridiculed. The chief executive of Regal Entertainment, Amy Miles, raised it[5] at a conference in 2012.

A year later, a blog post[6] by the venture capitalist Hunter Walk generated what he called "unexpected interest & negativity to my proposal."

"Over the past 48 hours, movie enthusiasts stormed my front door with pitchforks, demanding my head," Mr. Walk wrote in a follow-up[7].

Mr. Aron later emphasized that text-free theaters would still exist.

Perhaps more experiments with scent machines and undulating seats[12] are in order.