On 3 Jan, Malaysian influencer Eriyca Baiduri shared a TikTok video of herself casually eating popcorn in an empty cinema.
In the caption, she claimed to have bought tickets to every seat in the hall.
Her reason for doing so? She’s introverted and presumably wanted to avoid a crowd.
The video garnered both support from fellow introverts and criticism from others who saw her as a show-off.
However, the story turned out to have a plot twist as she admitted that she was only joking — the cinema hall just happened to be empty at the time.
The 23-second clip starts by showing a cinema hall devoid of moviegoers — just rows upon rows of empty red seats.
A pan to the right shows Ms Eriyca munching on a box of popcorn without anyone else around her except for her husband, who was behind the camera.
Source: @madammmmu on TikTok
Calling herself “a kind of introvert” in the caption, she wrote that she and her companion bought every seat in the theatre.
It seemed like she deliberately did this to avoid having to deal with other patrons.
Source: @madammmmu on TikTok
Other introverts found this to be quite the mood.
One joked that they have to rent out a mall for privacy every time they go to the cinema.
Source: TikTok
Not everyone was quite so impressed, though.
A few netizens said Ms Eriyca was using her introversion as an excuse to flaunt her wealth.
After all, buying every seat in a cinema hall must take a chunk out of anyone’s budget.
Various news sites, including The Straits Times (ST), reported on the businesswoman’s baller move.
However, this turned out to be a lesson not to believe everything you see on the Internet.
A commenter suggested that perhaps the movie was just unpopular. Thus, the hall was empty except for Ms Eriyca and her husband.
She confirmed this, saying she and her husband were initially confused as they thought they had walked into the wrong hall.
Source: TikTok
Since the post had already gotten some attention, Ms Eriyca decided to just “entertain them”.
Speaking to mStar, Ms Eriyca clarified that she and her husband entered a cinema hall without anyone else inside.
They assumed at first that they had opened the wrong door, but it turned out that they were the only moviegoers in the theatre that day.
Source: @madammmu on Instagram
As a joke, they decided to make up that little story about buying out the hall.
Although they received all kinds of comments, including negative ones, Ms Eriyca said she was not offended by any of them.
She even admitted to enjoying the keyboard wars that sprang up between netizens in the comments.
While it was a novel experience, Ms Eriyca admitted that watching a movie without anyone else present was too boring for her and her husband.
“The whole time we were watching the film, we just felt like going home,” she said. “It was so quiet that I got goosebumps.”
In more cinema-related news, a rowdy couple in Malaysia argued with moviegoers and even poured drinks on them.
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Featured image adapted from @madammmmu on TikTok.
Such poor sportsmanship.
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