It takes a truly unusual event for Dangerous Minds to take notice of a movie like Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction, but a certain Chinese businessman named Wang has supplied a worthy pretext. 

It seems that seven years ago, this Wang guy was dumped by his girlfriend, and ever since, he’s been consumed by the desire to make her understand, in no uncertain terms, that she made a mistake. At the time they were both living in Nanjing, and he was so broke he couldn’t afford to take her to the movies. In the meantime he has become a successful businessman in Beijing (news reports don’t indicate in what capacity), and thought of the idea of buying out all the tickets at several IMAX cinemas for June 23, the first day Transformers: Age of Extinction was available to be seen in the city. Since his former girlfriend had moved to Beijing after their breakup, Wang was fairly certain she was in the city even though they were not in touch.
 

One of several receipts Wang posted on Weibo
 
Wang took to the Chinese version of Twitter, known as Weibo, to offer a free ticket to a screening to users as long as they shared his post about it, which was directed at his ex. In the post, Wang wrote, “I just want to say that you may have been wrong to make that decision.”

Soon Wang’s post had been shared 110,000 times and had garnered more than 35,000 comments. And approximately 1,590 people had scored a free ticket to see Bay’s stupid mega-blockbuster. The escapade cost Wang the equivalent of $40,000 (he supplied receipts on Weibo to prove that he had actually bought up all the tickets), which represents about half of his monthly income.

Understandably, Wang’s resentment-fueled project has sparked tons of commentary. RocketNews24 explains, “Understandably, plenty of people were angered that the businessmen had snatched up so many tickets for himself, and commented that thanks to his antics they were unable to see the film as they have planned. But equally many others have commended him on the move and are sure that his ex girlfriend is now kicking herself.”

I think most of us can relate to those feelings of wanting to show a former ex what a blunder breaking up turned out to be. I feel like any decent therapist would be likely to advise Wang that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, the only way you can make contact is by signaling that you are still obsessed with her; Weibo isn’t some loophole you can use to get around that.

Personally, I think she made the right call.

Here’s some random footage of the stars of the movie (Mark Wahlberg et al.) visiting Beijing in case that shit interests you: