But kids listen to your Beastcast and they might try fishing popcorn buckets out of the trash for free refills. That's not a lesson to teach the kids.

https://twitter.com/ALumpOfCole/status/888910544090021888

I still can't believe he actually does/did this. I know he's a bit eccentric, sure, but eating out of the trash? What the hell

More dumpstercorn for him, suckers!

It just occurred to me that Dan is on his way to becoming Frank Reynolds.

@shagge: Dan should totally change his gimmick from tech guy to TRASH MAN !

He's a regular George Castanza.

@shagge: Hm. You're on to something here.

Dan never said he ate the original contents of the popcorn and drink containers he fished out of the refuse bin. he just used them to get free fresh popcorn and drink after cleaning them out. He is cheap but not quite that cheap.

He prob heard of/saw someone else doing this before and decided to include it in his heel characters backstory.

That's hygienically better but morally much worse. It's stealing.

Is there any way to see it as anything other than stealing? Or scamming, I guess, which is a form of stealing?

@corwag said:

I love that being a heel can seemingly make everyone question whether something actually happened or not that I'm gonna start using it in my life.

Exactly, picking up other people's discarded container to get new products for yourself without paying, that is 100% theft.

It was super weird hearing how no one called him out on this on the podcast. Everyone was focusing on the hygiene aspect ,which is barely a thing. He said he rinsed them before use.

But him bragging about stealing soda and popcorn a bunch of times, which is a much bigger issue was just completely ignored.

That was absolutely not okay.

But guys, he washes the containers out in the bathroom sink

that's Dan in a nutshell.

so clean

Have you guys ever actually bought popcorn and soda from a theater? The prices are fucking astronomical. I would just think of it as trying to get my money's worth for all the money I actually did spend there. Fairly sure the theater isn't suffering from giving away 15 cents worth of popcorn, either.

It starts with the popcorn, then you're taking books from Barnes and Noble because hey "who buys books any more?". A short time later you pocket a few Blu-Rays from Best Buy. Physical media, amirite? After everyone you love has left you, you move on armed robbery at your local grocery store and yell "Amazon Fresh, you idiots!" Finally you die.

@corwag: people already come to Barnes and Noble, plop down on the carpet and just read the books then and there like it's a library and not a store. I've literally found books I've wanted to buy with bookmarks in them.

I would hope that the people working at the counter might remember never seeing him get first paid for fill and deny him satisfaction.

Yeah, there's a convenience store near me where the prices are higher, so every fifth visit I'll shoplift. Just to even the prices out to a level I deem acceptable.

Come on dude, you can't seriously think that's valid excuse.

I think people really need to do research on how horrible profit margins at a cinema are and how hard the studios screw them.

@onekillwonder_: Concessions are overpriced at the MOVIE theater? Someone better tell comedians and sitcom writers so they can make this same observation over and over for the last 20 years.

Everybody knows movie theater popcorn and drinks are overpriced. That's literally the way movie theaters make money. They get very little of the box office so they make their cash selling you 35 cents worth of popcorn for six bucks. That's how they keep the lights on and pay the ushers to sweep up the popcorn you spill when you watch the movie. That's the business.

Now you may not like that. Okay. You want to buy some candy at the corner store and smuggle it in? That's your deal. You're breaking the rules but I ain't mad at'cha. It's just rules.

Where I do get upset is when people are literally scamming the movie theater because they think it's overpriced. If you believe a business is overpriced you have two simple options. Suck it up, or don't buy anything. You can see a movie without popcorn. Scam free stuff from them is not a legitimate option here. This is not someone stealing bread for their starving family, this is a relatively affluent dude stealing popcorn because he doesn't want to pay the posted price or sneak his own in.

It's not okay. There's no justification for "This costs too much so I'm going to steal it instead." And guess what. Your stealing is forcing all the other customers to pay more so the movie theater can stay in business. Everyone else has to bear the brunt of your selfishness, not to mention the theater that is being stolen from.

I don't want to cast aspersions on Dan. We've all done crappy stuff in our lives. He seems like a generally good person. But this behavior is not okay, and I hope he has stopped it and only did it at the time because he didn't fully think through the implications of what he was doing. Which is a very Dan thing to do. This is the guy who fried a bunch of egg shells after all, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of malicious intent.

Except if one is already morally compromised.

...or someone who isn't aware of the moral compromise, because that someone hasn't thought things through.

You said my piece better than I could have.

Side note:

I'm one of those people who simply does NOT snack or drink at a movie. I plop down on the chair and concentrate on the movie, too busy picking it apart (which is a different problem).

Learned my lesson after the long-ass Watchmen adaptation toNEVER drink before or during a movie, as I had to go, BAD, with 20 minutes left of the movie. It was a crowded theater. I wasn't about to get up and squeeze my way through people's views and miss being so close to the conclusion for (what was then) an expensive IMAX ticket.

Longest 20 minutes of my life.

It's because nobody actually cares.

@bigsocrates: Yes, I'm well aware of how theaters do business.

Not that I would ever do what Dan does ( at least not anymore...10 or 12 years ago, it might've be a different story), but I don't think it's really that big of a deal. A little morally corrupt? Sure. But I think Dan is smart and decent enough not to let that behavior cross over into other areas of life, areas that would actually have a significant negative impact as a result. Not to mention that it would take a LOT of people doing it regularly to even begin have any sort of of widespread effect on a theater's business. A bucket of popcorn is nothing to them. The main reason I don't condone the behavior is because, hey, it's pretty goddamn gross. It is a mildly shitty thing to do, but I would rank it below actual shoplifting. For the record, if I'm going to eat at theater, 9 times out of 10 I will bring my own food, because yeah, I don't want to pay all that money, nor do I personally want to steal in any capacity. At the same time, if I saw someone going through the effort of taking a used bucket out of the garbage and cleaning it out to get a free refill, I wouldn't necessarily blame them either.

I mean, that's just the circle of life. Beautiful, isn't it?

Honestly though, movie theater popcorn is usually so gross. Better to make your own and sneak it in with you via backpack.

I chuckled at the art, hope I run into it sometime. This thread, though. Oof. Hope you guys maintain a status quo and are as openly judgemental of people in real life.

Have you seen the price of Lamborghini's? What difference does it make to the company if one car goes missing?

Surely they're not selling those cars at cost.

EDIT: In other words, you wouldn't download a car.

You ever accepted someone giving you time from their ticket in a car park? Surely it is the exact same thing. Buying a popcorn entitles you to a refill. He is just using someone else's payment for himself.

Why is this even in Splatoon 2 forum? Guess one could tweet at him or something to make his or her opinion known about his popcorn poachin' ways.

I enjoy that 3 different people in this thread (sarcastically) took Dan's popcorn antics, and slippery-slope escalated them into Robin Hood-esque vigilantism.