There is a legal requirement on the Captain to ensure that all of the passengers are suitably briefed, however there is no compulsion on the passenger to listen. All passengers are carried in accordance with the standard conditions of carriage which would almost certainly allow the Captain to offload or refuse carriage to any individual or group that he felt were refusing to comply with the legal requirements.
The first line of this quote is,
Airline stewardess demonstrates life jacket while plane revs engines at start of take off
, which probably sums up the overall accuracy of the rest of the article, so I would be inclined to take the article with a hefty pinch of salt.
The problem with safety briefings is that there is a balance between achieving the required level of information transfer without terrifying the individual, and as we all know the product is often fairly bland as a result. However in a real emergency it is often the case that the sudden onset of frightening and extremely high stress reality causes the human brain to, in effect, shut down a large part of the reasoning centres to concentrate on the necessary "fight or flight response". This has the effect of shutting out responses that are not already part of the short term memory process or that are naturally instinctive. This is why we as pilots brief before every take off and landing even though the items we brief on are already something we should know. In other words we are briefing the fact that there is a real possibility that in the next few minutes this scenario could happen for real.
Passengers often mock the fact that they really don't need to be told how to operate a seatbelt, however investigation has shown that in some emergency situations evacuation has been delayed by people wasting time trying to unfasten the seatbelt. That is the one they are instinctively used to.........in their car, where the buckle is down the side of the seat and not in their lap. Those who listened carefully to the briefing should have the advantage of having this information in the short term memory.
As a pilot it is quite astonishing that you do not listen to the briefing. You of all people should understand the importance of the short term memory refresher. Even though you fly freight, you should have the common courtesy to pay attention to the crew member demonstrating this information (where appropriate), and even if you still consider the information superfluous to yourself, it sets a very poor example to other passengers around you if you give the impression of not paying attention.
For what it may be worth, I know the briefing format as well (as do most crewmembers) but in an emergency I am particularly qualified to not only lend valuable assistance, but also to ensure I do not become an additional part of the problem. That is best achieved by listening carefully to the briefing and hopefully encouraging others to as well.