There are two kinds of viewer in the world: right and wrong. Which are you?

In his regular Guardian blog, cultural critic Charlie Brooker gives his distinctly personal views upon the modern cinema going experience. Read an edited version below:

Imagine, if you will, that instead of reading this garbage, you're enjoying an exciting night out at the theatre. You take your seat and, after a few minutes, the curtain rises – but something's wrong. The actors look decidedly squat. Stretched out horizontally. Their faces smeared to almost double their usual width.

Come to think of it, the set also looks wrong – as if it's reflected in a funhouse mirror. The whole thing makes you feel nauseous and slightly drunk. You look at your hand, which appears normal, then back at the stage – which still looks strange. You glance around the auditorium in distress, only to discover your fellow audience members – also normal – don't even appear to have noticed. They're all happily following the on-stage action, apparently oblivious to the bizarre optical illusion taking place before their very eyes.

Confused, you stumble out into the lobby where, as luck would have it, you bump into an usher. You explain what's wrong and beg him to help. But he merely shrugs and asks: "Does it matter?"

Obviously, that's a mad scenario. But that's the sort of thing that happens in cinemas these days, when there's only one projectionist looking after umpteen screens. The encounter with the usher actually happened to someone I know. And to answer the usher's question: yes, it does matter. Because if your cinema can't be bothered to show films properly, we might as well stay home and watch dogs blowing off on YouTube. The image might be blocky, but there's less chance of catching listeria from a hotdog while watching it. And, with any luck, it'll have been uploaded in the correct aspect ratio.

"Still, if you choose to punish your own eyeballs in your own home with your own incorrectly-adjusted television, at least you're only hurting yourself ............If you ask me, every screen should have its own projectionist, as well as an usherette, an organist, a conductor, and a sniper trained to blow the heads off anyone who dares open their mouth after the titles start.

That was about six years ago. Today if you go to the cinema, you're slightly less likely to be subjected to that kind of error if they're using a digital projector, in which case there's probably no projectionist at all, just some kind of iPad app flickering in the darkness. Fortunately, there's a chance the film will still be ruined by your fellow audience members, who will loudly field phone calls throughout, because they're selfish dunces with no concentration span, reared in a modern world with no respect for the correct way of approaching any piece of filmed work, even if it's Transformers 3, which is this: either watch it properly, in the correct aspect ratio and in absolute silence, or get out of the room and go home, where a galaxy of smudgy, 28-second YouTube videos awaits you with cold, open arms.