Kids cheering ‘chicken jockey!’ at A Minecraft Movie isn’t antisocial – it creates a chance for us to connect

Social media is ablaze with reports of kids going wild at screenings of A Minecraft Movie.

Some cinemas are cracking down. There are reports of cinemas calling in police to deal with rowdy theatregoers and making special announcements before the film, warning of consequences for “anti-social behaviour” including “clapping and shouting”.

But these kids are engaging in a kind of communal experience. Rather than being antisocial behaviour – couldn’t we label it as prosocial?

The global fandom of Minecraft

Minecraft was first released in 2011 and has sold over 350 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time.

Minecraft is an unstructured game that provides mineable resources and leaves players to create whatever they want with them. Creations can be as basic as stacking blocks of wood to make a wall, or as complex as a working computer.

It has become the nexus of a vast online community of people with an interest in the game.

Players connect to one-another digitally and share certain social norms and knowledge, including a memeified vernacular. Minecraft-playing Youtubers have also become popular, and are the source of many memes.

The community is dominated by children and young adults and the incomprehensibility of their vernacular for other generations is possibly part of its appeal.

Within child and youth fan communities the usual hierarchies of communication are reversed. Instead of kids having to learn to speak according to adults’ rules, in this community the kids maintain a knowledge system that excludes a lot of adults.

Enter A Minecraft Movie

A Minecraft Movie opened last weekend to enormous box office success, bringing in US$313.2 million globally. The film follows four humans who stumble through a portal into the Overworld (Minecraft). Their only way home involves teaming up with fellow human Steve (Jack Black) to save the Overworld from the creativity-hating Piglins.

Almost immediately, social media conversations sprang up about the behaviour of audiences. One bemused parent described the atmosphere of the cinema as “like [when] The Beatles came to America”.

Many of the videos shared of audiences during screenings show joyful scenes of communal pleasure, similar to other responses to highly anticipated films such as Avengers: Endgame.

But while the response to Avengers: Endgame was celebrated, the behaviour of children and teens at A Minecraft Movie has been framed by news outlets in negative terms.

Journalist Keith Stuart suggests the different responses are a result of parents feeling excluded by A Minecraft Movie’s frequent references to memes.

Negative news reports link audience behaviour to existing moral panics about social media challenges and are particularly focused on popcorn being thrown.

The use of the same two or three videos of popcorn throwing to illustrate multiple news articles highlights how relatively few reports of popcorn throwing there currently are.

Instead, most of the debate on social media has been about the etiquette of noisiness during screenings, including cheering and clapping.

Finding community

A Minecraft Movie speaks the memeified vernacular of its online community.

The film incorporates references to longstanding memes, popular Minecraft YouTubers (and some cameos) and, of course, to the game itself.

The film is speaking directly to Minecraft fans, and audiences are responding by displaying their mastery of this vernacular and strengthening their sense of belonging.

By clapping and cheering when they recognise a meme, or saying lines of dialogue in sync with the actors, kids are identifying themselves as members of a community.

When a whole cinema full of young people does this simultaneously, they are identifying themselves to and with one another.

This is prosocial, strategic communication – not the antisocial pandemonium and chaos some reports would have us believe. Instead, fans are reporting the cheering and clapping happens at specific moments: they are enjoying both the film, and reacting to it.

During the brief (but meaningful for knowledgeable audience members) tribute to beloved YouTuber Technoblade, who died of cancer in 2022, there have been reports of whole theatres falling silent as a mark of respect.

An online community of kids and teens has suddenly become hyper visible to adults because it has intersected with the traditional media space of the cinema.

Online games such as Minecraft are a crucial part of kids’ social lives and play.

Perhaps adults can seize this moment as an opportunity to learn more about something that clearly matters deeply to a lot of kids.