Has the moviegoing audience lost their sense of seriousness?

So, I went to cinema the other day to see The Drama. And a key moment in that movie is Emma (Zendaya's character) revealing a very nasty secret of hers, which ruins the wedding plans.

Rachel (Alana Haim's character) then properly scolds her; not just the first time, but also at the actual wedding, where she words her speech in a way that everybody else is just supposed to be like "Wow, nice speech", but Emma understands it and finds it specifically uncomfortable.

Now, I personally understand that that scene, and a few others of the same sort, were supposed to be ones of quite some tension. So I was able to take those scenes seriously.

The chick a few seats next to me, on the other hand? Her reaction to those same scenes was - you guessed it - laughter.

And I thought to myself "What the hell could possibly make you find this funny of all things?!".

A similar thing happened two years ago too, when I went to see Poor Things. And as you know, there's a scene in that movie in which Bella and Duncan get in a heated argument well after she'd abandoned him - and there's, like, 10 seconds of silence, where they just keep staring at each other with poker faces... and each goes their own way.

And again, this was clearly meant to be a scene where the prolonged silence slowly deescalates the tension.

And yet, how did a few people in the audience react to that tense silence? Again, with laughter.

Granted, a sample size of 2 is too few to make any wild conclusions...

Or is it?

Because this sort of thing happening even just once... is once too many.

These movies not only try themselves to be tense - but actually succeed at it. (At least to me, who understands the tension within them.)

And if you keep saying "Oh, that was just a few times", you will be tolerating it.

You'll be tolerating the total tone-deafness that some moviegoers have about genuinely intense moments in movies.

And if you (or, uhhh, we?) do nothing about it... only more people will become that way. And making genuinely serious and intense movies will become pointless.