'Wicked' Is Very 'Popper-ular' for One Filmgoer

Back in the 1980s, an old school opera aficionado claims that at performances of Richard Strauss's "Salome" at the Metropolitan Opera, gay men in the standing room section would pass a bottle of poppers amongst themselves during the climatic scene.

That anecdote came to mind when seeing this post on X (formerly Twitter) from user @CommeDesHazons, who shared a screenshot of a post from the Reddit "Wicked" community that detailed someone attending a recent screening of the hit film where they witness some distracting behavior from another viewer.

The Reddit user writes: "I went to see Wicked today in theaters. A few minutes into the movie, I noticed the man in front of me moving his head around a LOT. It was like what someone would do if their neck hurt or they were warming up. He did for a few minutes and it was so distracting. About 10 minutes later he starts doing it again. At this point I was thinking he might have a tick, which is unavoidable and totally fine. While I'm thinking that I start smelling poppers of all things. This Man. Was. Doing. Poppers. I finally put it all together and realized he was sniffing poppers at the start of every musical number and then bobbing his head around while he felt the rush."

This led Reddit user Sad_Firefighter_4396 to comment:

"At the of (sic) Defying Gravity that was his butthole actually singing "AHHHAHAHAHAAAAA" part of the song."

Amonst the comments on Reddit were, "This would never happen at 'Gladiator 2" and "Lol that's so déclassé--save the poppers for the Sweat Tour and just eat a weed gummy before the movie LIKE AN ADULT!"