However it does not take into account that the kind of social interactions where people wear earbuds (i.e. loud and busy environments with many strangers, often physically closer than comfortable) is unnatural to begin with.
For me, isolating myself acoustically is a way to normalize such environments back to a more "natural" setting.
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Noise cancelling is a treasure.
And what I really like about them is the ease of use.
The moment I start talking to someone, automagically the NC is paused as well as any audio you were listening to.
It sounds so easy but is really running smoothly. Over time Apple really perfected the workings.
This blend is what makes them so valuable for me. I don’t have to manually do anything, simply speak and interact without having to touch them.
This is what bothered me really well, especially at work. Headset on, headset off - not anymore.
And people now don’t feel neglected when you keep the Pods in your ear.
Social reconditioning was part of the problem so to say. This tool is now accepted.
Well deserved. I am buying another pair of the AirPods Pro. I want a bit of safety after I temporarily lost one ear pod - I felt so disturbed, suddenly not being able to enjoy freedom acoustically anymore. Just to make sure and switch between them.
I disagree with this. Pods in ears are essentially a "do not disturb" sign for most people. Being around people who regularly have the "do not disturb" sign feels neglecting. People who might initiate conversation don't know if they will even be heard if they try to talk, so why bother. I would rather be alone than in a room of people who are actively ignoring each other.
I dislike the NC pause because it often awkwardly unpauses when someone is replying to you. I just pop the earbuds out when I start talking. To me, speaking with earbuds in is rude, and I want to show the courtesy to the person I'm talking to that they have my attention.
I always take one AirPod out if I have to say literally anything to anyone, and both come out if it's going to be more than one sentence. Just feels rude. We've someone created a technical marvel: the world becomes silent all around you, and then the world comes back immediately when you start speaking, and then it slowly evaporates around you when you stop speaking for a few moments.
And yet it still feels ridiculous! And rude!
So before calling someone rude for talking to you with their AirPods on, make sure they don't need them on to hear you in the first place.
I myself always put at least one down when talking to someone, but I've learned to make the distinction between someone that is actually involved in the discussion, and someone that's still listening to what's coming from their connected device.
I suspect the numbers will grow given how much cheaper they are compared to the standard medical devices.
My point was: I understand where you're coming from, I used to feel the same, but a shift is in the making, and you could consider someone's attitude rude when they are actually impaired.
So starting from: "this person is wearing AirPods as hearing aids" to realize that they're just being rude, is probably better than starting from "they're being rude for wearing AirPods" only to realize you've made a mistake.
This is one of those features I thought would be great and unfortunately had to disable in minutes. If you ever listen to music and sing along, even for a few seconds, the volume cuts because it thinks you're talking to someone. It's a shame. There's so many really great AirPods features and I feel like I've had to disable almost all of them for one reason or another.
>> And people now don’t feel neglected when you keep the Pods in your ear. Social reconditioning was part of the problem so to say. This tool is now accepted.
I think it'll get there eventually but it's still far from accepted in my opinion. Maybe if you're ordering at a Starbucks or something but if someone was trying to have a conversation with my with AirPods in I'd consider it rude. And even if it's becomes widely accepted I think it'll still have some mild stigma (equivalent to wearing sunglasses when having a conversation unless the sun is in your eyes).
This became such a huge problem when watching Jeopardy with my AirPods. I keep mumbling answers every 30-ish seconds, and when I do that, the show pauses and the world suddenly becomes audible and I have to remember to disable that feature.
When I'm listening to music, the music helps form my sense of time. It is deeply jarring to have the music pause for a few minutes and then start as though in 'music-land' no time had passed.
I'd be happier if the music volume went to zero but the song/track kept progressing.
Yup, and I also have this problem when I laugh out loud listening to comedy podcasts.
Chuffed to find a kindred spirit here!
They’re especially flaky if you’re using them with apples watch.
I spent a few bucks on the pros, and the phone, and the watch, and the mini, and the tv, and the laptops. I shouldn’t be leaving that ecosystems ear buds in the drawer because the borderline disposable ones off amazon are the pair that “just work”.
I have never had earbuds that are consistent in the way they connect in any circumstances. I have had Bose, high end Sony, Anker, and there are often times when you need it to connect in a rush and it forces you to shut down the device, the bluetooth on the phone, and waste 30 seconds that feel like 5 minutes.
I used to be a huge Audio Technica fan but I can’t go back anymore.
It still feels (to me) that in many cases Bluetooth earbuds are solving an issue that doesn't exist.
I have plenty of complaints about Apple, but the Airpods experience is one the stickiest user experiences they have and would be one of the harder things to give up if I moved back to Android.
I'm not in any way an anxious person, but for some reason, the constant suggestion that I'm in a place where violence is a risk makes me feel upset so much that I don't visit my local store without my noise-cancelling AirPods.
Unfortunately that avoidance doesn’t work too well for TSA or my local hospital.
Please retract your comment and don't encourage such stupidity.
EDIT: Since this is being misinterpreted... Earplugs that deaden sound are fine and encouraged on a motorbike, playing music in your ears is what masks other sound and is both stupid and illegal.
Maybe it is your own misinterpretation as the parent never said they were playing music on them. You might not realize just how loud the wind noise is on a bike, you are not exactly hearing your surroundings music or not. Most if not all of your awareness on a motorcycle is coming from your eyes not ears, so hard to really say its stupid.
In any case, it's irrelevant - as far as I know, wearing headphones or earphones while driving a motorcycle is illegal whether or not you happen to be playing music in them, because how would anyone else know? If you get in an accident and get charged with distracted driving, that's on you. If you want earplugs, just wear them. They're much cheaper and more effective than sound cancelling headphones if you genuinely just want to block noise.
One risk is your focus going from what's on the road to what's coming into your ears.
This may have some useful mental aspects if you're doing a long-distance drudgery ride down Route 66 with nothing much happening in between pitstops, but it's another thing on I-5 or I-95 with all sorts of chaotic lane changes going on.
Even speaking with passengers has been shown to increase traffic incidents:
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13698...
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3141/1899-15
* https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
It's a debate spectrum / sliding scale on how society wants to go, but at the very least one should be aware of the risk factors and be mindful of where your attention is.
I am a bit stunned reading this.. Is this a common perspective of motorcyclists?
Like all things it does depend on where you ride and the general driving culture. In America that’s how I ride but in Vietnam it’s very different. Road rules are not as often followed and honking is common to make yourself known, usually while there I wear lower db reduction ear protection.
I am also not saying that there is zero opportunity to hear a horn but already on a motorcycle you have to have so much more awareness that I don’t find that sounds are all that helpful. It absolutely applies to driving a car too, after driving a motorcycle for a while I am as shocked as you just how unaware drivers are of their surroundings.
Keep in mind at around 35mph you can easily hit 85-90db from the wind. I do think ear protection actually helps identifying sounds but I still argue the hearing part is not that helpful.
I am not trying to say you have to follow my methods but folks calling for criminal punishment and shaming are a bit too far as the safety benefit from hearing is quite minimal depending on the driving culture.
No.
For example, every beginner-advice thread in /r/motorcycle has a highly-upvoted comment(s) recommending ear protection, including many folks stating they wish they had started using it earlier.
And even if it is conceded that sound may not save you from other vehicles, ear pro(tection) reduces the health risk of hearing loss that would effect other aspects of your life.
When you learn to ride a motorcycle you learn to look - look behind you when changing lanes, look in your mirrors, basically stay aware of whatever is happening at all times by looking. Because you're sure as hell not hearing a lot.
Cars are quieter, and hearing other vehicles is more likely. If anyone shouldn't listen to music, it's car drivers, not motorcyclists.
Not every deaf person is born that way, mate.
My eyes are my ears and you cannot rely on sound to know who or what might be coming up from behind you. Mirrors and head on a swivel are way more important.
I hoped electric cars would make for quieter cities, but instead they seem to make them worse, imo. All due to this noise making requirement. Then, at higher speeds, tire noise overtakes engine noise at a certain point, so the drivetrain becomes a moot point.
If I have the noise cancelling turned on, it would be downright unsafe.
While it is likely illegal in many places, it isn't everywhere and the safety risk depends on what sort of equipment you have.
Absolutely your choice not to wear hearing protection though. Eventually you will get naturally immune to it.
This is an incredibly dumb and dangerous attitude to hold and you need to rethink things if you've become so overconfident in your driving because you've raced or done "iron butts", whatever those are. Driving on real roads isn't like racing and you need to separate your attitudes and driving styles in each situation before your arrogance causes an accident. Remember that it's not just your life on the line but the other innocent people around you too.
As I said elsewhere, it depends on driving culture and where you are located in the world. It’s not a hard and fast rule. In America sound serves little safety though I can still hear car horns generally speaking with earpro on. In Vietnam because of the culture, organized chaos and usage of horns I will usually opt for low db ear protection. Semis will absolutely honk and run you over there. Since you consider a 500cc a beast I can generally pinpoint your location and understandable why you think like you do.
In both situations though, most of your safety is still from strong visual awareness.
Further, sound deadened cars with the stereo on an appreciable level also aren’t conducive to perceiving what’s around you.
Speaking as someone who commuted on 600 twins and 300 singles for years, if you’re wearing hearing protection and listening to some tunes and navigation hints you’re fine. Just ride defensively like you should, and make sure you’re not over doing it on the volume.
Let's be realistic - noise cancelling isn't a perfect technology. I rode with my AirPods for a short period of time and could still hear everything I needed to. The only reason I switched is because they're uncomfortable in a helmet.
When riding a motorcycle, you’ll encounter people that don’t see you almost every trip. The same is not true in a car.
Riding a bike is just a 100% engagement thing with higher risks and lower margins for error, for all kinds of reasons. And it’s not just traffic, minor pavement imperfections become relevant, the necessary skill floor is also higher. It just demands more attention, straight up.
In a car, you shouldn’t, and it’s not without risk, but you CAN occasionally get away with minor distractions: adjusting the radio, seat, etc. That just doesn’t work on a bike as well. I’m failing to properly articulate the why, but it really is fundamentally different in some ways. I’ve spent many years doing both, and the bike just demands more of your attention resources, independent of your vulnerability in the event of an accident.
This is to say - I am aware of the dangers:) My state doesn’t even have a helmet law for motorcyclists.
A motorcycle demands your attention because the risk is mostly on the rider. Drivers are pacified by how externalized their very existent risk is.
As I mentioned in another comment, on an airplane, my airpods in ANC mode make it easier for me to hear announcements.
All the assertions I'm seeing in this thread are bizarre to me. One can easily hear a siren over noise cancellation and over wind noise, and it's even easier to hear if you have noise cancellation for that wind noise.
As a related example, when I'm on an airplane and I have noise-cancelling headphones on, the pilot announcements are easier to hear than without them.
I use the bike, and I know for a fact that almost any crash with a car means me in a coffin. I need all my senses at 100%, can't afford the luxury of listening to music or wear shorts for example.
In practice this means that police won’t do anything about people wearing headphones. Wearing them is totally fine. However, if you get into an accident you might get a larger part of the blame if it’s determined that you not hearing so well contributed to the accident. (The rules of the road do have a general clause that you need to pay sufficient attention – so anything distracting might get you to shoulder more of a blame in case of an accident, even if it isn’t explicitly banned. Use common sense …)
As I said, cars are inherently quite isolating, so car-centric maniacs better try not to legislate my right to wear headphones while riding the bike aways while they sit in their sound dampened boxes, casually overtaking me with too little distance.
(I strongly suggest to never turn on noise isolation while riding the human powered kind of bike and I also recommend either turning on the pass-through mode or just putting in the earphone on the side away from the road.)
I’m also somewhat shocked the fine is that minor. Not hearing a honk or bicycle bell can be quite dangerous.
No it's not.
> protective gloves with hardened knuckles is of course mandatory
No it's not.
A big-honking stereo system isn't illegal to have at home or in a car in any jurisdiction I'm aware of, but there can be limits on how loudly it is used.
A stereo is a lot like a hammer in this way: Anyone can have a hammer. There's plenty of legal things a person can use a hammer for, and also plenty of illegal things as well. But the hammer itself, of any size, is A-OK.
There can even be time limits on when hammering is allowed[1].
[1]: I was involved in fire remediation after a friend's house burned. There was a lot of work to do, and we were working very late. The police showed up and politely told us that we'd need to keep it quiet until morning and suggested that they would find some way to make us quiet down if we didn't. We stopped hammering and tossing things into the dumpster at 11PM after that incident.
The overall picture is that a helmet’s thick material blocks high frequencies. But it exacerbates and amplifies low frequency sound and white noise. As well, a helmet confuses the ear’s capabilities for identifying direction of sound that’s incoming
If a helmet is helpful is a question of how fast the motorcycle is moving and what kinds of sounds the rider needs to hear.
It’s complicated, but wearing no helmet might be safer at low speeds because the driver is more aware. No helmet, is undoubtedly not safer at high speed because brains are fragile
Edit: a simple experiment for anyone is to put on a full size motorcycle helmet anywhere, and then you can understand how much your hearing is dampened by it. But I guess it’s probably no worse than the experience of someone driving a car, which is soundproof by design
There are certainly helmets that try to optimize for noise but there is no single one fix beyond ear plugs.
Riders need to use ear protection within the helmet unless they want to become deaf in the future, because of the wind noise.
What kind of NRR rating, active or passive, do they have?
I wear disposable foam plugs when riding, and haven't ever considered using the AirPods I have. I find the sound of the machine part of the experience of riding and wouldn't really want to get rid of it; I treat the moto sound as a kind of white noise that's different that everything else in my life (though this is with a short-ish commute, and not long-distance drudgery).
If I wanted music or comms I would probably lean more towards ear plugs plus a Cardo/Sena unit. Or perhaps something with an official ANSI/CSA NRR rating, like Isotunes.
But I also ride with foamies most of the time (laser lites) and airpods occasionally, and I'd guess that the bike and wind are maybe 10-15% louder with airpods. The foamies win out for actually staying in my ears when I put my helmet on, but if I can get it on then the airpods stay in place fine.
Surprisingly, when I was looking for a rough equivalent to NRR for Airpods, I discovered that Apple does advertise their ANC as hearing protection[1], which I'll assume the FDA has now permitted, because Apple didn't used to make that claim because the FDA wouldn't permit it. They don't offer an NRR and they do warn against impulse sounds, but that KB article suggests a 20dB drop, which is nothing compared to foamies but is in the same range as musicians' earplugs or hardhat earmuffs, and probably better than Loops.
() Bicycles and other light vehicles excluded
Unless you drive slowly, I find that driving at 60 kph max is still comfortable on the ears.
They look a little silly but cat-ears work surprisingly well.
On a motorcycle you need hearing protection due to wind noise, but good plugs will filter out the louder noises, not so much important ones.
If anyone hasn’t tried a bike radar, they are a massive help. Eg Garmin Varia. Take care with the new model, the light is insane, on 5% you have the eye of Sauron blinding the rider behind you.
Do you have a source for this info? It contradicts what I've read about the subject.
Safe cycling is all about vision. If you can't see it's safe, it's not. It isn't simply seeing imminent threats but predicting them e.g. identifying drivers that aren't paying attention and where a car could suddenly emerge like blind turnings, car doors, pedestrians and such, and countering with appropriate caution / road position.
If you find noise useful, IMHO it means you aren't sufficiently aware of your environment.
That's very natural when it comes to life in an urban setting. Love it or hate it, we wouldn't have been here now (I'm talking from a civilizational pov) without us humans moving into the cities.
That was my point, yes.
Our ancient ancestors probably did all of the following within eyesight and earshot of around 40 people:
- Eating
- Drinking
- Defecating
- Fornicating
- Bathing
- Exercising
Edit: I’m also deeply fascinated by the ability of historical sociolinguistics to give us insight into cultural attitudes towards different topics. Consider the evolution of and the attitude towards the expletives “fuck” and “Jesus Christ!”
That's fundamentally different from an anonymous mass of people in a city. I've seen and heard much more than 40 people (many of them different every day) before I even reach the office in the morning.
This part is definitely not true. By all I read about the history, the abusive or hostile "I cant escape" situation was simple fact of life. They get less prevalent when you can leave easily, more prevalent when you are dependent.
> But those 40 people were likely more or less consistent
Not necessarily, people started to organize into larger groups basically whenever they could.
Either you have to trick your mind that the people who are going about the same rituals with you shoulder-to-shoulder are part of the same tribe as you: using the same bus, coffee shop, elevator.
Or you have to trick your mind that being completely alone and going hours, sometimes days, without opening your mouth to communicate with someone or exercise the part of your brain that reads facial cues or even smell the hormones of another human (good or bad) is also somehow okay.
Having done both (2 major metros, as well as suburban and WFH life), I’ve found the former to be easier for me, personally. I also find suburban and rural people to be generally more misanthropic than urban people, which of course has some selection bias. Exurban people seem to be the most misanthropic, by far (shout out Dallas-Fort Worth).
But the point is, being surrounded by people day-in and day-out doesn’t seem to me to make people misanthropic on aggregate - otherwise cities would be an even worse place to exist. It’s the humans that make it bearable.
What do you have in mind specifically?
Edit: I'm aware that statistically, there's more inventions in metropolitan areas. However I'm not sure how much of that we can really attribute to causal effects that are unique to cities, especially today. Obviously, many universities are in metropolitan areas, but on the other hand, we have many tools for remote collaboration that we didn't have 200 years ago. So I'm not sure if cities are not an outdated concept.
As far as trade goes, we have birds of paradise in New Mexico, 320k year old obsidian tools and color pigments found in Kenya that came from hundreds of miles away. We know trading across thousands of miles has been happening for hundreds of thousands of years.
As for large celebrations, ceremonies, or just parties—well it seems silly for me to even spend time citing specific evidence. Of course this has been happening for hundreds of thousands of years as well
Might have been contactless drop off.
I live out in the countryside. If I run into someone in the road, I will nod my head, maybe introduce myself, and maybe chat, if the other person is interested. (To be fair, I know about 80% of the people I see in the road.) This is normal behavior. Sometimes, two cars will pass each other and stop to talk.
I have also lived in the city. If a stranger wants to talk to me in the city, either they're looking for directions (happy to help!), or they are deeply confused about appropriate social behavior in crowded spaces. In the latter case, I'm lucky if the stranger-with-no-boundaries merely wants to warn me about the dangers of the lizard people. So I've learned to ignore strangers.
A neat summary of the article.
Talk to the old fogies in said city and they will saddle you with complaints of how people used to say good morning, how are you doing, etc. It didn’t used to be this way. Alas, we probably won’t be talking to the old fogies either.
Unfortunately we threw the baby out with the bathwater, and decided that all actions are equally socially acceptable and there should be no social repercussions for living "differently."
This is why I prefer smaller, culturally homogenous communities. We all understand the rules and we generally abide.
I feel like this has almost never been true in big cities: it's impossible to know everyone and unless they made the news for what they did word wouldn't travel very far.
Besides that, I also haven't observed what you're describing in both the smaller communities and the cities I've lived in. People absolutely do still get socially ostracized all the time in real life.
Thinking so is immature and unwise behavior.
Some people are comfortable with that, some people (say they) are used to it, but a lot of people find that blocking it out works better for them.
I don’t think you can say this categorically without taking context and a myriad of facets of one’s socio-emotional situation into consideration.
What is unnatural about this? We have plenty of anthropological evidence that humans have been doing massive festivals for at least many thousands of years i.e. people voluntarily gathering together with strangers in loud and busy environments with all sorts of sounds and smells.
Furthermore, the "voluntarily" bit plays a big role as well. If I were to go to a big festival (as you can guess, I wouldn't), then I guess I would be fine with the people. But that's not the same as commuting IMHO, where I'm together with lots of people involuntarily.
* it's an interesting topic actually, so if you have any sources, I'd like to read them.
It's not that don't want to talk to unknown people, it's that it's more important for me to avoid the unpleasantness of it all. It's all relative of course, I'd take a fast, crowded train any day rather than having to do the good old accelerate-and-stop of a traffic jam/city intersections.
I live in a country with somewhat solid social net so I'd actually be in favor or preventing people to ask for money (loudly and in a pathos-optimized voice) in the train. It's generally people who are 1. having other income 2. drug addicts 3. mental issues or a combination of all that. I don't blame them but I wish there was a cruelty-free way of preventing them to do that because I don't think the amount of money they make is worth the amount of inconvenience they cause. Of course they are other ways of making the service better (more trains, closer to each other) but I believe the subway company is already hard at work on that.
My point I guess is that it doesn't take much for something to become an unpleasant experience (as anyone who's ever had a significant dose of LSD will tell you) and that's it's easy to blame people (individualistic, selfish blablabla) but system-thinking is how you solve that kind of issue (and it's not easy)
You're making a choice to insulate yourself from your surroundings. That choice has effects on both you and your environment. You see it as a simple salve, but the poor souls you're choosing to ignore see it as a just another bourgeoisie wall.
I used to live in a prison. Headphones were a huge fighting issue. People who couldn't afford them would borrow, rent, or steal them. I never saw the point. Humans are a part of nature. I can sleep, eat, shower, and meditate just as well in the middle of a deadly riot (I was once asked by an officer to leave the dining area as they'd maced several people and everyone else had fled while I sat there calmly eating my institutional cheesy cardboard because I was more hungry than bothered by the mace) as I can in a forest or a dead silent bed room.
Embracing or shunning the society you live in is a choice. Choosing either has consequences. My choice means that I am often driven to action to contribute to systemic solutions to the pain I see in life. It isn't easy, but I don't think I could live with sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending it isn't happening.
Adding to this, you never know in advance when your interlocutor's stop will come up. So subconsciously you know it's a bad idea to strike up a conversation. Plus it's a captive audience so the majority of people sense that it's wrong to "force" someone to talk.
And the trains are noisy. It's difficult and unnatural to talk above the ambient noise.
You should realize that there are people who can't do that.
To suggest that it is impossible for a given individual is different from suggesting that it is difficult which is different still from suggesting that it is suggested.
I have personally benefitted massively from deconstructing the walls that my parents and peers suggested I build as a child. It was work to do, and is work yet to be done, but I value it.
I am no longer angry in traffic when "the jackass can't see I'm late" or whatever other silliness. I no longer dread the stench and noise of public transportation. Both are natural. Just the way humans are. Being perturbed by it is a choice that I've decided I could do without.
Minus some socio-behavioral-mental deviation from the norm, and even then considering advances that can be made with therapy...I just don't see it. Why should I be bothered by people on the train when I know that it is possible to just...not?
At some point of my life, I realized I can’t assume or rely on the idea that other people will enjoy living their lives like I do. So, what I find admirable and something to thrive might not be the thing they’re looking for.
> Embracing or shunning the society you live in is a choice.
When the reality is that it's more complicated. You're able to make this "choice" because you've spent years cultivating a quasi-religious attitude of equanimity toward things that are, from the perspective of most, annoying, troubling, or frightening. So what you're asking of most people is more than a choice (taking their AirPods out), it's more a matter of converting to a different way of life entirely.
Just because something is simple, does not mean it is easy.
This has been part of ancient philosophies: “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” — Epictetus
But also more recent writings:
* “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor E. Frankl (someone who survived the Holocaust)
* “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
* “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
> So what you're asking of most people is more than a choice (taking their AirPods out), it's more a matter of converting to a different way of life entirely.
Before making the effort to "convert" you first need to choose whether you want to continue to be vexed and frustrated by external events, or if you want to try to reduce your mental anguish by things you cannot control.
Do you want to continue to get pissed off by other drivers, or not? Do you want to get annoyed by other people on the train/bus, or not? Do you want more of an internal calm/peace, or not?
It's clearly a difficult thing or else there would not be many many many individuals and groups dedicating their time to such an effort...
Yes, as I said: simple ≠ easy.
I was in a depressive suicidal hole, and had been for well over a decade. The first time I tried to kill my self, I was seven years old.
It began with the realization, while I was trying to drink myself to the courage to finally pull the trigger, that the common refrain "it's all my fault" meant just a bit more than I'd given it credit for.
I realized, huddle on the floor behind my recliner because it was the smallest place I could find and fit in to, that if the desperate quality of my life were truly entirely my own fault, then it could be possible that I could stop being the source of my own malcontent. That was enough to save me from that particular suicidal flare. That I could stop harming myself.
It's been many years from then, and it was many years from there to when I realized that I could even be a source of happiness for myself instead of merely not harming myself.
But it was a choice that I was making, to view myself as inept, beyond salvation, capable of and likely to ruin everything, hater of my fellow mankind, etc. I have found in the years since the last time I tried to kill my self that almost every single unhappiness in my life was a matter of perspective rather than a genuine immutable fact.
Consider the article. People are noisy. Do I have to be upset about that? I certainly used to be bothered by all sorts of rude and noisy people. On the train, at the library, in the grocery, etc. That anger contributed to my general dismay of humanity such that I used to feel that it was all hopeless, and that if everything were hopeless, I shouldn't persist in trying.
That posture was a choice. Choosing to make the effort to no longer adopt that posture was a choice. That I have continued to attempt to make the choice to be compassionate and equanimous towards others is a choice that I have struggled with, and have ultimately both struggled with and succeeded in pursuing.
It's a choice that I have ultimately benefitted from. I cannot possibly see going back to the world in which I elevate my own concerns so highly above others that I simply and outright refuse to observe their own suffering. The world's a bummer, for sure, but for me personally, I am happier observing the problems and contributing to their diminution than I ever was ignoring or pretending the problems didn't exist.
I'm sorry that you think I'm asking anything of anyone, and that you think I've got anything at all adjacent to a religious attitude. Neither could be further from the truth. I am merely sharing my own experience as a contrasting example to the phenomenon described. I know that many people associate certain words with religious activity, but I can assure you that I definitely do not practious any such thing, and would never advise anyone else to do any such thing.
I used to be a person who shut everyone and everything out. I used to do so because I believed that anyone and everything were the source of my suicidal ideation. When I chose to change my beliefs, to believe that perhaps I was the source of my own discontent, was the first moment that I had a glimpse of a future in which I was no longer suicidal.
I just figured this was an opportunity to be like "hey, listening to and talking to people is actually possibly a good thing because it was for me even though I used to think otherwise"
Unfortunately, you can't lead most people to this place you've found; they have to find it on their own in order for it to work for them.
I know I'm no leader, that's why I've not condescended to offer any kind of a map. I took a messy, far longer than necessary route to achieve anything that could at all be described as succesful.
I just thought, hey, why not share a picture of the progress?
I'm not particularly bothered by those things either, but I'm a large man and people don't tend to mess with me much. I can afford to be casual about it (within reason). Not everyone has that luxury.
I certainly never said any such thing as it simply isn't true.
But it is, like so many of these things, a skill. You have to practice it.
I think that putting earbuds in and checking out of the world around you is a really awful thing to do as your default in life. As a "sometimes" thing it's fine, even healthy. There's a lot of talk of public transit in this thread. If people do it during riding transit, and not really at other times, I'm fine with that. But so many people have their earbuds in before they leave their front door, every day, every week, and they don't come back out.
And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
> And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe the rest of the world is unhealthy and this is a way to reclaim some personal healthiness.
Most of the dozens and dozens of people I see in daily life sealed away in their earbud pockets do not appear in any way to need to do that. I am certainly not seeing the full picture of every single person's life, but I do not think that every last one of them is incapable of meaningfully engaging with the world.
You're assuming all this is "really really unhealthy" but what is the justification for that opinion?
And when I go to the park and have a run, of the 100 people I might see there and on the way, we're closer to 50/100 than 5 or 99. So I think we have a problem.
The flaw in the whole argument is that somehow people are having less "meaningful" conversations because they headphones on. I'm sorry but you're not going to have a meaningful conversation (or any at all) with the 100 people who are also actively running at the park whether or not they had headphones on. I still don't see it as a problem if 100% of the people running had headphones on; they are there to run! It's like saying there's a problem because 50 out of 100 people at the park having running shoes on. If you've pre-decided that running shoes are a problem then that's a big concern otherwise it's just nothing.
For me, if I didn't have headphones on I wouldn't be going for a walk/run at all. That one thing has drastically changed how I approach exercise in general and I would do less without them. That said, I do occasionally enjoy a nice walk/run without any headphones but as the exception rather than the rule.
-- Evelyn Waugh
Paraplegics don't have the use of their limbs. Acting as if "sensory issues" are in the same category is grossly insensitive.
People with these conditions literally cannot learn to tune things out.
I suspect the parent commenter was intentionally vague to avoid derailing the thread into discussing their specifics (many of which are, unfortunately, currently politically charged).
Stating that using this kind of technology is "unhealthy" both for a person and society is a pretty bold claim that I think is pretty ridiculous.
You don't disagree with the need or the concept, just the means for irrelevant reasons.
Its like people attempting to shame for going on ozempic to lose weight.
In any case, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to want to be unbothered, especially in particularly bothersome circumstances. You don’t owe anyone your attention, and the assumption that you do can and is weaponized by everyone from Zuckerberg to the fentanyl addict aggressively demanding your money.
I also don't do any such thing as block the world out in my own head...not really sure where you could have gotten that except perhaps from a misunderstanding of meditation.
The meditation that I and many practice is about peaceful abiding or compassionate awareness. It's about changing our own judgement of reality as it is, not escaping from it.
OTOH, there are people who get sensory overstimulated more easily. Add to that a foreign place, lot of people and chaos around, and even a neurotypical individual can feel anxious.
Putting on headphones and playing Chopin is much more effective than breathing and telling yourself "everythings gonna be ok" in a loop. At least in my experience.
This is just the same argument that has been repeated since the dawn of the walkman.
50 years ago when people weren't looking at their iPhones on the bus, they were reading the newspaper or a book. Not a lot has changed.
If general public habits shift to the extent that the majority of people with headphones end up only using them for noise cancelling then my behavior would also shift accordingly.
Good for you. I can't. Some people need quiet conditions to focus or sleep and if they don't it feels like active torture.
I think the article pays lip service to this in a paragraph ("social crutch") but otherwise falls into the trap of "societal" pieces (Soft "Why can't we talk to each other anymore ? What is wrong with our cvilisation?")
In my opinion make it a safe enjoyable non-crowded ride and you'll get plenty of interactions.
> just another bourgeoisie wall.
You are not wrong in a way. The base of a lot of the kind of interaction the author of the piece is thinking about is a relatively equal social standing, otherwise there's too much at stake, on both sides. For example, I, a lower middle class man, would have little patience for someone telling me about how much fun they are having taking helicopter rides in the summer and I don't think they'd enjoy my rant about how landlords are evil. Of course I think there's a moral duty to lower yourself from your social standing to care for people who have it rougher than you but it's generally not exactly pleasant like a conversation with someone like-minded could be
Thanks for sharing.
Curious how you project certain assumptions, though. Makes one curious about your own activities.
:( hey I didn’t wanna be rude… I retract the question
Smart hacker news poster comfortable talking about their legal history… feel like I suggested they set out to gleefully hurt people or something
I'm not calling you out, IncandescentGas, you're right and you're doing a good thing. I'm just saying its ironic that you jump to the defense of somebody who has made it clear that they don't believe others deserve the same courtesy you are providing them.
It's too bad that they don't live more fulfilling lives that don't require them to feel the need to attempt to insult people.
Show trial?
And why exactly should I give a fuck about people who are trying to bother and inconvenience me?
Noise canceling headphones is the only reason I’m able to use the bus in SF. The author writes from Germany, which has reasonable social etiquette in place in most cities. That social contract just doesn’t exist in large parts of America. In Chicago, they have a real problem with people smoking on public transportation. They don’t make noise canceling headphones for your lungs yet.
The people wearing headphones all day aren’t the ones “losing touch with their neighbors”… no, it’s just that their neighbors are assholes, and they just want to get through the day.
Well, they literally do, they’re just absurd:
I also often have them in while walking around the city for this purpose as well. I usually have the noise canceling off, but if an ambulance or something is coming my way, I quickly click the AirPod to put them into noise canceling mode.
And for walking around - it's the traffic noise that bothers me, not people. Traffic noise can just be so loud along some roads (and at certain times of day) that it makes me not want to walk at all.
Some places aren’t loud but most U.S. cities are. I’m going to Paris this summer, and I probably won’t use AirPods while walking around.
I thought about it and I found that after so many years my mind can just fade the noise out and I doesn't bother me at all. It also helped me to hear selectively. On the other hand, when I wear noise cancelling headphones it feels weird, like detached from the reality I am present.
Only place I prefer to wear them is open plan office. Too many conversations and many grab attention needlessly.
Also, do not reply to me any further, your sarcasm is not welcome. It is incredibly rude.
And I'm not an introvert!
All of this long predates Airpods.
I think this is a cultural difference, not a technological shift.
Life's so interesting sometimes! I consider myself an introvert, and I don't remember any point in time where it ever felt abnormal to talk randomly to the humans ("strangers") around you, regardless if you know them or not. We're both humans, why not see who the other one right next to you are? :) Maybe I'm just "too curious".
It was kind of confusing growing up in Sweden, where most people don't share this idea, so of course it felt really isolating when almost zero strangers actually engage even a tiny bit. Luckily, I figured out I lived in the wrong country relatively quick, and now live in a country (Spain) much more aligned with my own mindset, and having the time of my life chatting with everyone and everything, and they even respond back!
I really hate that introversion gets conflated with social anxiety or misanthropy on the internet.
I'd agree "hate" is a strong word and maybe a bit exaggerated, I hope at least.
I learned, and am still learning, to start with very subtle conversations in contextual proximity to the person without shocking/surprising them. And then, I mostly try to listen more and try to guide them to talk more. You will be surprised at how many a lot are eager to talk to someone, if they are being listented to.
I don't mind small talk sometimes but there has to be some kind of common ground. For example with conservative family-first suit types I have nothing to talk about and it feels awkward to make conversation, but with the leather/mesh/blue hair alt/goth types I can talk for hors.
"hey man, how're the kids?" "Is your wife recovering from [illness] you mentioned last week?" "man, have heard the music on the radio lately?" "what kind of music do you like?" "can I ask you a personal question, what was the hardest part of getting the success you have?" "did you know you wanted to be a boss/manager when you were a kid? No? Oh, you wanted to be an astronaut? Oh man, no way, have you seen the crazy stuff spacex is doing with re-useable rockets? We're getting so close to (relevant sci-fi from when he was a kid)"
You've just got to have an open mind, which you'd think you'd have given your conversational partner preferences.
I am only partly paraphrasing actual conversation with my father in-law.
I cannot stress enough that what you think will work here doesn't: literally every topic will be pivoted towards a rant about which groups are destroying the future (all of them), or how it's all a conspiracy or how they are plotting against you.
You've invented a conversation you think works. I have lived a damn decade of the list of "safe" topics endlessly shrinking, and the punchline is same: 30 damn minutes of alternately being told some half remembered conspiracy theory from Facebook or asking for agreement that group are bad.
That scifi concept from when they were kid? Well they are lying about that for money of course.
It is exhausting to deal with over and over again.
But you're painting two different pictures as if they are the same. The suited family type and the conspiracy theorist are different people.
Were I to know that I were dealing with a conspiracy theorist, the pivot is "I wish I could pay as little tax as rich people do (knowing fully well that they often pay far more than I do" or "yeah, it's crazy how the rich always abuse the little guy" or "what would you do if you were in their position (the same? ah well, at least it's understandable. Different, there, you see, there are good people like you and I left to fight the fight!) Or, hell, just for funsies you can play Conspiracy Olympics in which you try to outgun and outthink their own wild ideas. "Oh yeah, well 'spacex is a fraud' is exactly what a russian sleeper agent would say!"
I'll admit that there have been a small number of people that I simply could not connect with on any level, but working in non-profits and with volunteers, you get used to people's quirks and figure out how to work with them on their level. And what's more, you'll often end up being considered one of their few friends or even just "one of the good ones in their book" because so many people are just completely dismissive of them because they don't like their ideas.
You're engaging in exactly the kind of behavior that many of them complain about, their "no one cares, everyone's out to get me" mentality is only enforced by your "it is not possible for me to talk to or associate with these people". You are in fact one of the they that is plotting to remove this demographic from your own reality. It is not a stretch for them to imagine that you would prefer that they did not exist.
Kindness is not complicated.
There are fringe kooks at all edges of the spectrum and they are all tiring and boring.
But most guys on the train wearing a suit are just normal people who have to dress like that because their work requires it.
And the thing is a lot of MAGA people do want these things. Otherwise they wouldn't happen.
But yes part of the blame lies with me too. It is as you say very tiring.
I understand that being either loud and proud or even just unabashedly your own self can be trying at times. I know, by first hand experience (as a cis-ish passing transwoman if you squint), that embodying your own reality in public can be a difficult and damaging experience...
But it's just...necessary. Even on a completely selfish front, no one's going to accept me myself for who I am if I can't tell people who I am. And then there's the larger front that those who have come before me did some of the work to make my life easier, and that by my own work I can make the lives of those who come after me easier.
It's just...sad, you know? Like I know it's hard for us to keep banging our heads against the wall. It's hard to go out in public and recieve insult after insult. It is hard to visit an unfamiliar locale not knowing how we will be accepted. But we have to! Literally the only path to acceptance lies through exposure.
That's the real reason that I am so sociable. I know that the only way past the insults is past the insults. If I only ever hide in the closet...well, the closet isn't all that big is it? I believe that if I show up as myself in any and every interaction I can only have a positive effect. At worst, I find people so bigotted that they are beyond help, avoid them, and pray for those few. In the middle everyone lets me slide. At best, I find bigots who I can expose to reality as it is and help them to get over their fears and prejudices.
I have found through experience, that this reality is closer to the best of possible worlds I just described and far from the worst of the worlds I just described. I have been rewarded time and time again in my encounters, finding countless people that I am able to relieve of their fears and knowing that I have saved countless unknown queers from the vitriol that those I have helped would otherwise have spewed.
The suit guy probably has more interesting stories than you'd expect if you gave him thirty seconds.
I'm more comfortable among other outliers.
Also they feel really good due to the materials being very smooth. Latex in particular is really like a second skin.
I would never feel good in a business suit because it's not who I am. Even if the fabric wouldn't feel horrible I would still be miserable. They're all the same too, like a uniform.
That they like getting compliments from the people they interact with? That it makes them feel good about themselves and feel like it matches who they are?
That the suit feels good too them due to the materials being quality and expensive?
That they would never feel good in leather because it's not who they are? That even if the leather wasn't sweaty and sticky, they'd still feel horrible?
Both of y'all are doing the same shit. You're wearing what you want to wear because it feels good to you and it feels good to you because you get compliments on it and getting compliments on it means that you've been accepted by the group you wish to be accepted by.
The suit and the leather gimp suit are the same thing. The vest and the kapris are the same thing. The turtle neck and the neck tie are the same thing. They are all status symbols. They all say "I want to talk to people dressed like this" and probably "I don't want to talk to anyone who dresses like that"
But if a business suit matches who they are then I'm not really interested in them. Which is what I said in the first place. I really hate business and the kind of people that spew PR bullshit on LinkedIn for example.
But really a job where I'd have to wear one means a job working with business people and I would be very bad at that anyway.
For weddings I just don't go if it's too formal, though most of my friends are very polyamorous. If they even marry it's not a huge deal.
could ya try?
Earbuds stop this practice dead in its tracks. You can't deny that.
Probably an unpopular point on HN, but this is very gendered. There's a lot of women who don't want to be chatted up who wear headphones, and therefore a lot of men who are annoyed at this visible signal that the woman doesn't want to listen to them.
We can leave room for "not wearing headphones is a signal that you're open to talk" without having to pressure people who aren't.
This is true, but so is the opposite! I think the most important thing is to be kind and receptive. It's fine to start a conversation with a women wearing headphones, just take it in stride and don't be weird about it if she isn't interested in talking. I do this (with men and women) a lot.
It is true that women are more likely to be approached by creeps, and due to the physical differences between the sexes women are at higher risk in such situations. That said, we shouldn't dismiss women as too delicate or whatever to chat with. They're people!
Not sure where you're from, but where I live, headphones are a well-understood signal that someone would rather not engage in conversation at the moment. Some have been conditioned to placate the kind of people who deliberately ignore these signals by engaging in brief small talk rather than risking a confrontation, but this shouldn't be misconstrued as an interest in talking.
I live in a big city in the US and for myself and probably most my friend group, this rarely true. Maybe it’s because we are a bit extroverted or do work that is social. For me it’s more that I like music or a book, and just want a distraction from my commute. You can start a convo just don’t be rude and realize I might be getting off my stop soon.
But a stranger gesturing for you to take off your headphones while you're walking briskly down the street or riding the subway just so they can make smalltalk does not seem socially acceptable whether it's packed at rush hour or mostly empty at 1:00 in the morning.
I mean I'm sure there's a guy somewhere who's annoyed by this, but "a lot of men who are annoyed" feels like making up a group of people to be angry at.
If you go to popular tourist spots in Europe there’s usually that one guy who’s trying to scam everyone who passes by. It only takes one to be a huge nuisance.
It is definitely something one can learn. I also like it very much. Most people are just very nice and love chatting a bit as well (just be respectful of their time and know when to bow out).
There are also other functions that purely having a good time. E.g. when you are in a train with reserved seats, striking op a conversation is also a good way of gauging whether it's ok to leave your bags when you leave your seat to grab a drink or some food. Also, people feel more responsible looking after your stuff once you have socialized a bit.
For me it's not super-difficult. I came from a small village where it is normal to greet people and maybe chat, even if you don't know them.
In my experience, this depends on the context. Everywhere I've lived the only time strangers try to talk to me is to either a) ask for directions (1%) or b) beg for money (99%).
I see people in these comments suggesting we should just say no thanks I don't want to chat -- I'd have to repeat that a dozen times a day. It's exhausting and I don't gain anything from it. I figure these folks must live in totally different locations.
> I came from a small village where it is normal to greet people and maybe chat, even if you don't know them.
Yeah, I could see that. If my village/city wasn't plagued by petition beggars or money beggars or merchant beggars I'd probably be more interested in engaging.
I joined my local fitness gym some months ago and use it to connect to people in the small town I moved to. Almost every time I'm there I manage to chat to someone briefly, and 50% of them have earpods in. Most of them now look up and greet me when we pass and multiple have up to me on other days to chat afterwards.
It's a skill and part of that skill is being able to give people an out of the chat if they don't feel for it, not interrupting at a bad time (mid set in a gym setting). My starter is usually a quick question with a "thank you so much, I'm new here" and if they reach for earpods to put back as they say you welcome, perfect you don't keep going. For the ones who want to chat keep them off and respond or ask something in return.
So headphones/earpods can be a barrier but for me it's a useful barrier and a clear signal, which helps both parties.
This is HN mate!
You need to design an app so people can practice it. (Alternately, rant something about "pick up artists").
Yes it's a signal. For you to go find someone else to talk to :)
That doesn't mean I'm antisocial, there's just places where I go to be open to talk to people. Like bars, meetups, stuff like that. And places where I'm just to get from A to B and I don't want to. Usually when I'm in public transport I'm going to/from the office and I'm stressed because I deeply hate working in the office since Corona (no more fixed desks etc). So I need my space.
But every time someone does randomly talk to me, I smile and laugh and I'm very cordial. Because people who approach strangers generally get quite angry when they're outright shot down. That doesn't at all mean I'm happy to talk. A smile is often just a defensive response.
If a stranger bothers me while I have my headphones on I may act friendly and polite, but I am actually very irritated.
"Sorry mate, I'm reading" is hardly difficult.
Also reading something would be a clear signal (also to me) that a person doesn't want to get disturbed.
When I have to tell you that I don't want to talk, you have already disturbed me. So, taking the cues here clearly is on you, not on me, at least in my opinion.
Edit: To clarify a bit, I'm talking about places with involuntary social contact, like for example a train or a grocery store. I go on a train because I have to get somewhere, not because I want to interact with people. It would be a different scenario say in a bar.
And yes, of course don't try to speak with people who obviously don't want to be spoken to. Quick way to find out, is to ask "Can I ask you a question?" and then you leave space both for the people who don't want to chat, and the ones that do :)
I used to judge that based on people's faces, but the faces lie a lot, and some people basically default to looking pissed off, while they can be very warm people, and also vice-versa, so in the end asking up front seems to be the nicest way for everyone to be OK with it.
I don’t.
(Said as someone who used to feel the same way, before I discovered the joys of talking to strangers.)
My question is, why do you think you’re entitled to consume strangers’ time?
So what, disabled people should just stay home? That’s your answer, just make society hostile to people like me?
I bet there’s a middle road that you’re not considering, but because it’s not important to you, the disabled person should just accept a lower quality of life for your convenience.
Even the older introverted people I know, who I would characterise as quiet, would find it really rude to get in a taxi and not chat to the driver for the duration of the journey.
With people doing their entire careers remotely now I can only see this shift happening faster and more intensely. Small talk is a skill like any other and I think it's a sad skill to lose on a societal level. And I say this as a serious introvert that doesn't love to make small talk. Nine times out of ten, when I do make the effort to e.g. talk to a taxi driver I come away happier.
In part it’s taking away the shared experience in public and making it “my” experience.
I'm more of a "talk when talk is needed" person but still social. i don't really interact with strangers in the street and I assume business social interactions (like restaurants) are just that, business, so I'm polite but i'm not going to crack a joke with someone i've never seen before and will likely never see again. My experience was the complete opposite, loved Portugal, would easily move there if salaries weren't shit, people were nice, i felt welcomed anywhere i went, might have been the only place outside of Brazil i have really felt at home.
I think its important to NOT BE RUDE with the random people you meet in the street but I also see no reason so strike a conversation with them. If I happen to see something that picks up my interest, like a band shirt, book i like or something like that, i might bring it up if we're going to stay in the same place for long, but starting a conversation out of nowhere just isn't a thing for me.
I feel like your conception that “ignoring people either consciously or through technology is rude” makes more sense in higher social trust situations. Like at a party or a bar, where bad actors are less dense and there is an expectation of socializing.
Yes, but I meant that the more people who block everyone out by default, passively and indiscriminately, contributes to social rust rather than trust. Ignoring or especially telling some people is not inherently rude or bad, but conducting yourself as though everyone is de-facto untrustworthy is a problem that doesn't seem likely to be solved by passively blocking the world out.
Like I added, I don't know why I'd pay to live somewhere where I'd prefer not to interact with anyone. If the place actually does suck, then I should do everything in my power to find somewhere that sucks less.
If you have social anxiety or ADHD, those are personal issues that need to be managed, but I still don't think it's generally a good idea to pick the easiest, least superficially confrontational method to signal that you don't want to talk to anyone.
I'll turn this around: when I see people wearing headphones on the train or the bus, I appreciate that they respect everyone around them. Silence is a commons, and the headphone people respect that not everyone wants to hear their TikToks, their phone calls, their hallucinations, or their small talk.
> conducting yourself as though everyone is de-facto untrustworthy is a problem that doesn't seem likely to be solved by passively blocking the world out
Actually it does. Dealing with touts and sales people by ignoring them is usually more effective at getting them to leave you alone. If you engage at all, they manipulate your sense of politeness to draw you into a longer conversation or get you to do what they want. This is also true of most types of grifters and assholes.
Every time I got drawn into a scam or harassment, I could have prevented it by simply not engaging in the first place.
> I don't know why I'd pay to live somewhere where I'd prefer not to interact with anyone. If the place actually does suck, then I should do everything in my power to find somewhere that sucks less.
I live in the SF Bay Area and frequently visit Boston and Japan. In this limited experience, I've had a great time meeting strangers in social situations like at bars. I have never had a positive result from giving a stranger the time of day in public places (outside of giving directions). Maybe these places suck and I should leave, idk, but don't judge me for taking a default deny stance after consistently having negative experiences.
And this is just my male perspective. My female friends have even stronger stances against engaging with random people in public.
Edit: I'm also very much an introvert, FWIW.
If I have earbuds in, I’m probably listening to classical music. It helps me self-regulate in busy environments. I’m not listening to podcasts (which everyone assumes now, I guess).
If you interrupt me, I’m going to be polite. You won’t know that you’re causing a problem because I don’t like to be a jerk to strangers. That could be happening every time you talk to a stranger for all you know.
People like to make talking to random strangers seem somehow romantic, but it’s actually just selfish. You’re not interrupting my focus for me, you’re doing it for you.
While it may be selfish and pointless, it's the default expectation that in public space people can be spoken to, but it costs something to remove that possibility without also physically isolating oneself in some way. Not all public space is necessarily social, you can be alone in a wooded glen which creates a proximity barrier, but trying to preserve your whole private sphere while being in an otherwise potentially social space removes something from that space.
When I deliberately don't want to chat with anyone, I just take a side street or something. Not always possible, but it's rarely worth it; usually work is the semi-public space I'd prefer unbroken focus.
I do think it's overblown to make some grand statement about this behavior if it's only an occasional thing, but if the default expectation shifts to people hesitating to talk to people only because they might have headphones in, I think we've lost something.
It is not the social norm that anyone can be spoken to in public at any time, you are oversimplifying things. E.g. it is largely considered socially inappropriate to strike up a conversation with a stranger on public transit when you’re squeezed in like sardines; we don’t talk to each other to give the illusion of privacy and space. It’s also not considered socially acceptable to have a conversation with a stranger standing at a urinal. There are significant social rules about which adults and children can speak to each other in social spaces. Etc etc
There are and always have been situations where it is more or less socially acceptable to speak to a stranger in public. Headphones is not a new one, I knew in the 90s that headphones meant “don’t talk to me”.
In one of my other comments in this thread, I explicitly called out that this desire has nothing to do with like or dislike of the people who I might have social pressure to interact with. Some people find social interaction a net expenditure of energy even with people they like, and having to do that repeatedly throughout the day because I want to go to the doctor or something and society has decided that it's "rude" if I don't engage with literally anyone who happens to want to talk to me when I'm in public is honestly just silly. It's not like I'm keeping the earbuds in and refusing to talk to anyone when checking in at the waiting room; I just don't care to have to have a chat with my Uber driver or strangers on the subway while I'm out, and it's ridiculous to imply that I should just never go in public if I don't feel the way you do.
See that's interesting, because I *am* an introvert, but I'm quite happy to sit and talk to strangers. I don't mind it at all.
One of the few cultural similarities that I feel like London has with Scotland (where I live) is that you can just talk to people. People will talk. If you go to Glasgow and you ask for directions, chances are that the person you ask will walk with you to where you're going and point out good places to eat and interesting things to see along the way. Boston people have just learned this in a big way.
My son is even more so, and at not-quite-six he already appears to know most of the people in the town of 14,000 people where we live, how their farms are doing, how are the cows, what weight of potatoes are they getting per hectare, what prices they're getting at market, how they're getting on with that gearbox problem with the van. It takes about an hour to walk the mile or so back from school because he's got to talk to all the old guys and ask how they're doing.
Social Networking at its finest. I suspect he won't be stuck for a job when he's older.
Northener Terrifies Londoners By Saying "Hello"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YxLiLFjYKc
I hadn't noticed it before, but they even specifically mention the use of headphones as a defense mechanism near the end.
As an aside, I used to work for the company in Glasgow that build The Daily Mash's website before they got all into the ad-heavy money-at-all-costs thing. It used to be much better and the guys behind are actually pretty decent.
I live in London, and I remember flying to Ireland at some point, and I was seated next to an Irish lady returning home from holiday who sparked up a conversation.
My initial reaction was "Why the fuck are you talking to me?" because I had lived in London so long I was thrown off by a random person sparking conversation. But turns out she was just a lovely Irish lady flying from from holiday
> It takes about an hour to walk the mile or so back from school because he's got to talk to all the old guys and ask how they're doing.
But he'll just kind of wander about in the park and chat to folk, talk for hours to people at the farmer's market, that kind of thing.
We're talking to strangers at the bus stop, at the grocery check out, or just wherever. It's just phatic conversation, nothing needs to come of it. Chicagoans aren't just friendly, they actually love the art of the conversation -- every conversation is a chance to put in the reps.
But the minute you step into the suburbs, this habit disappears.
No, this doesn't track my experience of Chicago at all.
This is exactly the feeling I get in the suburbs of most places, and I think the nature of car-centric suburbs serves as a decent analogy for the Airpodsification of otherwise more urban areas. Suburbanites want their palace that they can tightly control, and it rarely matters where it is as long as they can drive to anywhere they need to go, but they don't really like people and it feels like a deeply antisocial liminal space. There's rarely any specific reason anyone would want to be there, and even if they did, they'd have to drive, and if they chose not to, people there use their cars as tools for avoiding interactions with strangers. You wake up, get in your motorized comfort bubble / killing machine, and then drive from point A to B and then back to Point A. If you wanted to go hangout, oftentimes the act of driving that you've chosen sucks all that time away anyway. Drivers then get dogs so they have some sort of excuse to interact with other people who have dogs, or kids or whatever.
Then if they're lucky, they wake up one day and realize they don't see any real friends that aren't their immediate neighbors anymore, and they've lost the ability to understand how to meet people outside of work. Their old friends didn't come out for that bbq because it's dead boring and the bbq master is the only one that doesn't have a commute back. The bar in their basement sits empty because it turns out people actually want to go to the pub instead of sitting in the basement. The novelty was never the drinking itself, but the feeling of coming together in the same space and place as other people hanging out having a good time.
> Suburbanites want their palace that they can tightly control
Growing up in a small Swiss village I wasn’t born in, I had to learn that you basically greeted everybody you passed in the road, under the assumption that you knew them or were supposed to know them (more conversations were not needed).
Moving to a large Swiss village, I had to learn that saying hi to random strangers was considered weird at best.
First time I visited Southern California, I was very uncomfortable with strangers striking up random conversations. Later in the trip in San Franciso, I felt that the slightly toned down form of this habit was more comfortable for me.
Moving back to Switzerland after having lived in CA for a few years, I had to relearn old habits.
I still say hi to people when doing things like hiking a trail that’s off the beaten track: we’re sharing a similar experience and have that one thing in common. If it’s a popular trail or busy weekend, it’s more akin to being in a large town where you don’t say hello.
Another rural-urban division in Ireland is that in the countryside, car drivers greet oncoming drivers – whether they know each other or not – by subtly raising a finger or two while keeping their hands on the steering wheel. Since the 80/90s, this custom has been dying out in the counties near Dublin but I still see it in the West of Ireland. A few years ago, we were holidaying in West Cork and my wife was driving but hadn’t realised we were being greeted by the locals. As a Dubliner, she’d never even heard of this practice.
Edit: By the way, I just noticed your username. Seeing that you’re from Switzerland, I was wondering if it’s a reference to the Celtic Frost album?
Years later, when I’ve been driving and visiting the country, I found myself on the receiving end of this and it all clicked.
Thank you for this wonderful reminder.
Probably a rural everywhere thing?
> Probably a rural everywhere thing?
Consider that you may be!
You’re just surrounded by other people who are also introverted to the point you don’t stand out to yourself.
I’ve driven almost 4000 people home from the airport. It’s almost annoyingly ubiquitous for people to chat up the driver.
I'm sorry, the guidelines state that we should assume the strongest possible argument.
What part of the world could possibly reject the onslaught of an American advertising campaign? If you don't have TVs to see our ads on, well give them to ya!
Smoking is probably the best lubricant (ie: borrowing a lighter, asking about a brand/vape, etc.) and people when they smoke are usually more open to strike a conversation. That's not an endorsement of smoking (and I've quit very recently).
I’ll talk to strangers when it makes me feel good. But most of the time I try avoid inviting weirdos to complain about minorities or marginalized people from someone who has driven away anyone close to them.
I would suggest that it's your avoidance of talking to strangers that makes you think this is how a lot of them think. And it kind of proves the point that society can suffer because of it. If you went out tomorrow and talked to 100 random strangers for 10mins I'd be surprised if any of them complained about minorities.
Chances are at least 20 of them would.
IRL I've never met one real person that has a 'racist uncle'.
But my personal experience has also been that the sort of people who ignore social cues and try and chat someone up who is wearing headphones while riding public transit or working out are generally less good.
I hope you don't complain when people use social media or have LLM as their daddy to cope then :)
Teenagers today are probably more likely to share your disinclination towards social interaction because they grew up during a time when AirPods are so ubiquitous.
I also do agree with the comment that airpods do seem to get in the way of the most basic of social etiquette. Simple "please" and "thank you" are increasingly rare since you can't recognize the cues when your ears are full of something else.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl3061cdc6/...
I guess ultimately variety is what I like :)
Different people have different levels of ability to filter out background noise. Some people can focus and ignore the outside world so much that you have to wave a hand in front of their face if you need their attention. Other people can't help but parse background conversations and noises all around them.
Noise cancelling headphones level the playing field for people in the second category: It allows them to dial down the distractions and focus like the first group when their environment is fighting hard against it.
Even listening to background music has the same effect for many people. Music, especially familiar music, is not necessarily engaging enough to pull people out of their relaxed states and focus on the music.
However, looking back on it I miss those weeks and months on end of having 6+ hours a day to be outside, working my body, but doing tasks that let my mind wander all over. No doubt those years of daydreaming helped me become the person I am today, and everybody has to grow up at some point, but I do wish I could get more of that back into my daily life. In fact, I think a large part of my current path towards early retirement is just to have that sort of time back.
Part of the reason why I listen to music and scroll my phone is to get some peace from the default mode network.
I don't feel like I would do it as often if my mind didn't insist on being busy all the time.
> The DMN seems to fall into a similar area as meditation (remember when that was all the rage among tech leaders?); the lowered input noise gives the brain time to clear things out.
I am not skilled enough in that department to say anything with certainty. But formal meditation is about intentionally focusing the mind, and the talkative mind or whatever it is called in the buddhist traditions is probably this default mode network. Which is the first obstacle; being able to focus on the meditation object without having your attention hijacked because oh what's for dinner, did I send that email, but what about that other email, oh but I couldn't log in on my phone, oh by the way that phone is also annoying in terms of that related thing, but I should stop using my phone as much anyway what about getting one of those dual SIM cards that I read about on HN.
In my experience, it's probably healthier for the mind to have the DMN active more than someone who can distract themselves all the time do. But to me DMT looks to meditation like sunbathing looks to a day's hike (yeah you're outside for both of these activities but).
What you are describing is likely closest to certain forms of zazen, in which one tries to focus on just one thing or no-thing in order to quiet the mind.
However, just as common, is the various vipassana schools in which one attempts to gain specific insight through specific observation.
In the former, enlightenment comes from still states, in the latter from evolving states.
Then of course there are many visualization and trance traditions, though those are more common the further west you go from SEA.
All that is to say that not all meditation is simple sitting. There are walking meditations, dancing meditations, chanting meditations, visualizations, prayer, etc. And while they differ in technique, they all have the goal of achieving some specific state of mind.
To give you another perspective, I think I suffer from far too much DMN activity. It's very easy for "reflection" to slide into rumination. Increase DMN activity is highly correlated with depression. And I found daily mindfulness meditation to be incredibly helpful at counterbalancing that, spending less time in my head and more time in my embodied experience.
I'm curious about the relationship between mind wandering as exploration leading to insight and mind wandering as rumination. It seems like DMN is more associated with the latter. Its association with meditation likely comes from studies like the below.
Meditation leads to reduced default mode network activity beyond an active task
It's essentially the same unspoken etiquette rule as what you're socially expected to do if riding a crowded elevator.
Go commute by NYC subway 10 times a week, M-F especially during peak tourist season and you'll understand.
I intentionally behave completely different if I'm in a small town of 3000 people or walking down the street, shopping, riding transit in a large city.
You do have to ignore the people around yes but I don't find that a problem at all.
Assuming you live in a locale with a reasonably efficient system. I've heard some horror stories about north american public transport. Other countries tend to do much better with timetables and routes.
Too crowded, too hot, there’s a decent chance of arriving at your destination drenched in sweat. Not to mention how absolutely gross the people sitting next to you will often be.
I’ll happily take a few parking fines every day rather than getting in the tube.
Public transport here costs a fixed fee a month for which I couldn't even top up a quarter tank.
Unfortunately those implementations are far from the norm though, but of course all of these networks are seeing gradual upgrades.
The metro in Prague is indeed good, it’s just not a big city.
Zurich also has excellent public transport, but it’s really a village at best.
Madrid has Barcelona beat, but still occasionally suffers from a lack of air conditioning frequently leading to absurd temperatures.
Also 2-4 months at best out of the year is not a great argument for public transportation not being the better option compared to cars and parking that don’t scale.
Side note, Elizabeth, District, Circle, Hammersmith & city, and Metropolitan lines where many people work are air conditioned. So are the trains to paddington and St. Pancras from any “village” outside of the London zones. This summer especially it’s been good for me.
I love the trains, Gatwick express is downright brilliant.
> Also 2-4 months at best out of the year is not a great argument for public transportation not being the better option compared to cars and parking that don’t scale.
Temperatures in packed tube carriages are very high no matter the time of the year, the bodies of the passengers alone put out sufficient heat.
When the AC works, that’s fine. My experience is that it fails far more often than I’m willing to accept.
McDonald’s is also extremely popular, as are Coca Cola and Bud light.
Today I spent half my workday on a train going +200km/h to visit my parents. The alternative would have been an excruciating 6 hour car drive
You are describing an experience which couldn’t be further from the norm in Europe.
> On why he no longer went to Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
You should try expanding your horizons a bit.
There's no "trick" here. Its just a repackaged form of what literally every commuter knows that leaving early can beat traffic.
#moraloutrage
Like, there was some reading of newspapers and magazines, but not that much. They were large, you know. Most people stared silently out of the window. Multiple people reading newspapers on the bus would be rare occurrence. And it was NOT noisy unlike tiktok video.
> Americans are speaking less and less to one another. The number of spoken words uttered by the average person fell by 28% between 2005 and 2019.
Yeah buying airpods seems like better idea than being stabbed/beaten up
FWIW I live in Amsterdam (also western Europe) and anyone in the streets under 50 is wearing them, myself included.
> They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.
As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
My point being that their ubiquity doesn't have to mean people being rude or indifferent to eachother.
I think people have the right to choose comfort and focus, anywhere outside of a conversation with another person.
Interesting point. Airpods actually work great as hearing aids and I personally use that in loud environments, but I find myself cringing when I do because exactly of what you say. So maybe normalizing their use even when interacting is fine? Still, I can't shake off the idea that I'm not fully connected with you if I'm talking to you and I'm wearing something in my ears...
You’re conflating intent to chat with the possibility to converse if needed
In fact it's easier to hear them with those in anyway. I'm just very sensitive to sound and I have already damaged my hearing a bit when I was young.
Focus on what?
For me, on my own thoughts, rather than other peoples' conversations.
> As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
I don't take my headphones off while paying for things in a supermarket - because you aren't really expected to talk or listen in this scenario, and the cashier doesn't want to interact with you either. But for anything more involved, like ordering something in a coffeeshop - yeah, absolutely.
This is an assumption that I would interpret as rude if I were the cashier
If you don't want to talk to anyone, go to self-checkout or a vending machine, but cashiers are humans and not just robots scanning items.
Absolutely bizarre. The cashier is not some sort of robot.
Correlation for sure, I’m less sure about causation though. It seems equally likely to me that other factors are driving increased social anxiety/isolation which in turn drives people to wear headphones to avoid social interactions.
Even though I'm AuDHD (and more ADHD than Autism in that) I do appreciate the silence when I feel like it.
I use them more with just noise cancelling on than I do with music. And never ever podcasts, I have zero patience for those.
Yeah, I'm surprised this isn't highlighted more in these comments. "A small study" and "an article" and such seems to be the basis for this article, and yet there's seemingly no work done to identify if it's actually that people's attitudes have changed, and they're adopting headphones because of that.
It's not as if there's been major, literal earth-changing events that happened in incredibly recent memory that might have changed how people socialize or interact or anything, right? Let's just blame a specific brand of a piece of technology that has existed for decades, instead.
Social anxiety thrives on avoidance. It's a feedback loop. So likely it's correlation + causation. Your anxious so you wear the headphones to block out the world which only breeds more anxiety.
People go to extreme lengths to avoid talking to strangers on public transport even in developing countries. Earphones are just so effective.
Even watching someone else walk around a city with headphones/earbuds in is something that makes me uncomfortable by proxy. It's like someone deciding that walking around with beer goggles is a good idea
You don't have to share my experience, but the difference is that you deny mine can exist, whereas I am perfectly fine understanding e.g. the autistic person who also posted about how they wear earbuds to use ANC because noise disturbs them. You are not granting the same consideration about how other people experience things differently.
> 15-20k steps every day
You don't know what you doing know, after all.
I mean, noise cancelling works by producing more noise, not less; and there will be plenty of times when what's outside with destructively interfere with what you're listening to, or vice versa.
This may be hard to do in a city, but a good test is to go outside on a quiet night, wearing only on one ear, and then turn your head back and forth to alternate ears while trying to listen to specific distant sounds. It'll really highlight just how many things are still being filtered out.
Or it'll demonstrate how much more deaf you might be in one ear :P
What was weird was about 2 years later it completely flipped. I had written off my iPod in public while the entire world adopted them. I went from being the only one on a bus with white corded buds, usually recipient of people’s gazes, I was being antisocial and everyone’s eyes were telling about it. To suddenly, I was the only one engaged. Everyone else was being antisocial. This was well before the iPhone but people still just stared at their play list and stopped interacting. A quiet bus full of college students was a strange thing to witness but it took over as the social norm.
There were Walkmans and disc Walkmans before that, of course, but MP3 players were a step change in social isolation, from my perspective. Bluetooth earbuds + a wave of streaming audio content have been another.
What I find interesting is how there seems to be some people that also are just always on the phone talking in public. It’s either a headphone call or often complimented with the handheld FaceTime. The forced eavesdropping I am subjected to makes it sound like nothing important is being discussed. Reminds me of my land line calls as a pre/teen where we just spent hours on the phone with a friend and basically had nothing to say, maybe we watched TV together and commented about the show.
The phenomenon seems much more prevalent in certain demographic groups from my totally nonscientific observations and I find that interesting as well. From what I can tell, in jest, black women are not capable of grocery shopping without being on the phone with another person (and not talking about shopping list items).
Have you tried replacing them with foam tips?
I do think over the ear is so much better at anything else at noise canceling and blocking out the outside noises in general. On a flight it’s leaps and bounds better at blocking the dull humming of the plain. I have to really crank up the volume on AirPods to be able to hear a movie or podcast. It ends up feeling like I’ve actually done more harm than good to my ear health. Although the compact carry is a huge benefit
No, headphones don't make people antisocial. If someone is wearing headphones, respect their privacy and just leave them alone. Some people just don't like to chat to random people on the subway or at the supermarket. Some people just don't see the value of mundane conversations with strangers.
It depends on the culture and personality. Some people like it, some don't. In the US, people are more inclined to chat to strangers, and in Germany for example they aren't. These differences are actually what make us "human", so it's not a binary decision of: talking to strangers == good, and headphones == bad.
The fact is that in practice, it's either headphones in or out when in public. Meaning wearing them all the time effectively means IRL Do Not Disturb.
> I think we need regular doses of real human contact — not just with close friends, but with acquaintances, and even with strangers — to counterbalance all the negativity we encounter in the news and online, and to remind us that, on the whole, people are kind and well-meaning.
I think the author may have a point here, but he'll be hard pressed to convince anyone to give up the benefits of 'sonic isolation' through music and noise cancelation that people seem to have discovered.
Well how about cut all the negative bs so there’s nothing to counter-balance? Nobody forces you to read news if they affect you so much.
But a funny consequence is that because my modern, less visible, hearing aids are connected to my phone, I am often listening to podcasts or news and nobody can tell. So sometimes a stranger will say something and I have to pause the audio and ask them to repeat themselves.
I am wondering what social norms will be like once everyone has less visible electronics in their ears.
Demonstrating that such a capability is in fact a brief ring buffer to the average Joe or Josephina on the street might prove more challenging, and numerous similar technologies have rapidly acquired a highly pejorative taint, e.g., "glassholes".
I don’t think the default should be needing to have a soundtrack to your life. I’m a long distance runner and often run 15-20+ miles without music or headphones. It’s nice
I suspect in-ears have degraded my hearing, so I don't use them any more.
The reason you need to physically remove yourself is because of the insane lunatics that blast trash music and do a dance while aggressively panhandling or screaming at you for trying to commute quitely on the train to work. A hallmark of daily life when I worked in SF and in NYC.
A great way to fix the fake problem would be to aggressively enforce the existing laws, starting with tickets, and if that doesn't work, incarceration. Apparently it's not politically correct to do that though so I guess we are all second class citizens who need to live in a low trust society where people are increasingly isolated.
When I moved to NYC 30 years ago, one of the things that made me fall in love with the city was the way that living in such close proximity to so many others seemed to create so much more empathy. The same effect, I now see working in reverse, minimizing contact with others with by disappearing into technology has the effect of making people less empathetic. Instead of reaching into their pocket for a subway performance, or a homeless person, people might prefer to see them arrested for the crime of violating their all important personal barriers.
Maybe it’s the crushing disproportionate volume and nature of the poverty that each effective individual is confronted with that’s to blame - I still believe people are inherently good, but they do give up pretty easily if you make it socially acceptable to ignore.
I will no longer choose to live in places it’s socially acceptable to ignore.
I feel entitled to personal isolation from schizophrenics, who have a good chance of assaulting me if I look at them wrong. (And did you think screaming and playing loud music was disruptive just to quiet, and not to the aforementioned conversation too?)
You are the problem, not the person you're replying to. When you say 'you must exhibit infinite tolerance of antisocial disruption', the easy response is 'or I could always just leave'.
Spaces that are less chaotic - coffee shops, gyms, even elevators - are places that people used to be able to strike up random short conversations with each other. Sometimes these would become longer. Sometimes they even turned into friendships.
It still happens of course, but I, like the author, am saddened that casual socialization seems to be on the decline.
I like to say Hi to people in elevators. Some reciprocate. Some find it awkward. But I don't even bother saying Hi to those wearing AirPods since that would be rude, interrupting them. Could an interaction have brightened our mutual days? Could we have become friends? Who knows, AirPods preempted it from the start.
Those speakers by the way are an ADA requirement, and the only information that should be coming out of them are the stop announcements & any comms from the driver that may be necessary. Anything else in four different languages is not required, including the track telling you not to stand too close to the doors on the bus.
It is the weird identity politics is what gets in the way.
Although my parents weren't rich they still tried to teach right from wrong, respect for others and all the rest.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but there's plenty of examples of rich assholes who act as if money makes them immune from justice.
* Lottery winners do not commit less crime than those who do not win the lottery: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31962
* Studies of identical twins adopted and raised apart shows that crime is more correlated with genetics than environment: 45% nature vs 18-27% nurture https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25936380/
* "While individual study estimates vary, meta-analyses have suggested the level of heritability of antisocial behavior is approximately 40–60%. Shared environmental factors have been estimated to explain approximately 11–14% of the variance in antisocial/criminal behavior and non-shared environmental influences approximately 31–37%" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6640871/
* “Black men raised in the top 1 percent – by millionaires – were as likely to be incarcerated as white men raised in households earning about $36,000.” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-debate/I clicked and scrolled through several of those studies, and those snippets are incredibly misleading. I would recommend not using these in debates, unless you want to come across as a poor researcher acting in bad faith.
The very last one says nothing about genetics at all, that's saying the justice system is biased.
The second to last is part of a much more nuanced section talking about environmental impacts and the role that can play in biological expression. It literally says:
> Thus, just as biological mechanisms can influence environmental responses, environmental stressors can affect biological expressions.
I stopped reading at that point.
I don’t think this is a bad music problems
I've also just been in Japan, where nobody's commute has panhandling of any kind, and guess what, everyone there is tuning the world out with their headphones, too. Despite it being kind of verbotten to make noise on the subway, and the few conversations that were happening on it were very quiet.
I wasn't wearing mine during that trip. Because a relatively quiet space was actually pleasant for me to be in. American cities are so fucking noisy, and as a consequence, even people respectful of their surroundings tend to be loud.
Different neighborhoods, work from home, private transportation to work, or—admittedly to a lesser degree—AirPod insulation.
If we were really all this together quality of life in our cities would be taken far more seriously.
The Netherlands even has segregated busses for asylum seekers because there was too much violence. Dutch people have their own busses and asylum seekers are required to use a separate bus with extra security. Upside is that asylum seekers don’t have to pay for a ticket.
Ofc there's a non-zero number of crazies, violent people, sexual harassers, etc. That's a certainty in a system with 400 million trips a year! But then please don't leave your home, there can be an ax murderer lying in wait at any corner!
It's a tale as old as time.
Much more annoying to me these days are all the people that have decided it's acceptable to stare at their phone and zombie walk out of the train and up the stairs, completely oblivious to the world around them. They're not even making noise, just walking straight into other humans in a busy station while scrolling tiktok.
Harassing people and living on the street is already crime. Camping in public, public nuisance, loitering, obstructing sidewalk, etc.
Maybe this is a sign of deeper structural issues and we shouldn't regress as a civilization but rather fix what the actual problems are.
I've lived (and commuted on public transit) for years in many metros including SF, NYC, Boston and DC and can't recall even a single such interaction.
I'm sure it happens, I'm also sure it happens far less often than your competing anecdote suggests.
Tenderloin these days is relatively peaceful (plenty of people on the streets but they're just getting high with their friends).
Mission is chaotic, extra poop on the sidewalk, sometimes masses of people 50+ deep. But also the people on the street seem to mostly know and take care of each other. Higher density of people selling stolen goods. If I take Muni bus 14 home at 3AM it's a bunch of people shuttling to shelters but being polite (although not always lucid), exchanging cans of soda, etc. However I've heard quite a few stories from 38 with people being threatening or worse.
Sure, let’s “solve” a minor problem in the grand scheme of things with a much larger evil.
Incarceration is more humane for everyone than letting sick people live on the street.
Oh no, better throw you in jail so I don't have to think about you. Don't mind the moldy bugs in your food, that's just extra protein.
AirPods for sure do not make you more lonely. It's about your personality. Either you are an introvert or not.
> “No one talks on the bus. No one greets the barista. Even in class, students are choosing to listen to music instead of their professors,”
Why? Bother them for no good reason? I am incredibly annoyed when people come to me to make small talk. Same with classes... if the topic is interesting or the professor is good at its job people will listen. If the professor has a very non-interesting class or is a boring person, why bother listing to it? You read the notes, get a the lowest passing grade possible and go on with your life. Before tablets people would read their newspapers and be very annoyed if you bothered them. Now they have AirPods instead of tablets or newspapers. Same thing: no everybody wants to talk to everybody.
> Why? Bother them for no good reason?
Those 2 examples for the article are not the same situation at all... in many cultures:
"No one talks on the bus" --> very good, people are here to commute and want quiet.
"No one greets the barista" --> Wow, you're a POS human being. It's basic human dignity to greet the people you interact with.
Try the latter in a country like France for instance, skipping the "Bonjour", which is the expected cultural greeting (You're not expected to do small talk, just "Bonjour"), keep your airpods on and just place your order ... and see how the person on the other side reacts :)
No. While it might be nice, it is not mandatory. And no, no one is a POS just because it doesn’t say hi first. You have to be very entitled to think it is required or that you deserve it.
This hit me. I often use headphones during chores, including going grocery shopping. I love human interaction, but not while pickings things into my shopping basket. For years I'd also leave them in when paying (audio paused, of course). It took a cashier tell me I was being rude before I realized. She was absolutely right, of course. I do make an effort to visibly remove my headphones when expecting human interaction now. A big thanks to that cashier, and my apologies!
However after several years of heavy traveling and hundreds of people talked to, you realize how similar everyone is. It is always the same issues, wife/husband, the kids, the parents…
And it all starts to become a bit superficial. Sure, you can talk, but to what avail? You realize how shallow the situation is because the common ingredient in all stories is that everyone only ever care about their closed ones, which you and them will never be.
And you reassess the book option whose insight or knowledge may very well impact your life much more than yet another seconds to hours long chitchat.
Signed: a disillusioned extrovert.
The people you encounter daily may well also represent selection biases, but they're probably going to be at the very least along a different axis, and you might be surprised at what comes up. I like to have a balance of intentional and serendipitous feeds in my life, whether technically-mediated or organic. Keeps things interested.
Having the book or a podcast on tap as needed isn't a bad backup. But talking, even briefly, to strangers may prove provocative.
> And it all starts to become a bit superficial.
Signed: an introvert.
That being said, fortunately it’s easy to see people who like to talk.
But to get back to the topic: that's why I'm wearing AirPods in public now; signaling that I'm not interested.
I swear my tinnitus is a result of use of AirPods.
I never wore any type of earphones ever. Then started using AirPods for calls, during workouts or on a plane. A year later I developed tinnitus and the only thing that changed in my life was wearing AirPods.
I’m no doctor, and who knows what caused my tinnitus. But it’s irreversible. I constantly hear a humming ring now and it’s super distracting, especially trying to go to bed.
I’m no doctor. But heads up for those who haven’t used inner ear headphones.
Source: got bad tinnitus from motorcycling, became depressed with suicidal ideation and then got over it.
I still notice it every night at bed. Or anytime it’s quiet.
I try not to think about it, because I feel like it gets amplified when I do.
But it’s daily for the last 4-years :(
Hope you’re ok now. Please see someone if you’re not.
It's still there, but I routinely go weeks without noticing it now.
Also near the beginning of 2020: I was sick AF for over a month with respiratory problems and fever and intense feelings of being unwell in ways I didn't know a person could experience. (Covid? Maybe. No way to tell, as far as I know. All I know is that I was in bad shape for a long time, that it came on very quickly, and that I tested negative for flu.)
Anyway, which b complex vitamin pills might you suggest? I'm game to try just about any low-impact way to turn down the noise.
https://www.gosupps.com/natural-elements-vitamin-b-complex-2...
It may have been caught be ear infections when I was a kid. I also had eardrum tubes as a kid, twice.
I don't notice it during the day or at night, though I can tune into it (like, when typing this I hear it). It's only more noticeable when I'm very tired or have a fever.
I think the brain learns to ignore/block the signal, similar to how you can be aware of breathing or hearing your heart beat, but you don't hear it all day because your brain will just not attend to it.
I don’t notice it at all now. It’s possible it’s still there, but I never think about it.
It’ll probably happen to you too at some point. It can’t be forced though, unfortunately.
This comes up every now and then, similarly people say it is caused by noise cancellation. I have looked into this once out of interest, but there doesn't seem to be much scientific evidence for this. Unless you put them at a far too loud volume of course (or presumably block your ear canal all the time and it causes infections).
A high percentage of the western population switched to noise cancelling headphones and earbuds the last ten years or so. There is also a base rate of developing tinnitus in the population. So, it is more likely to just be a coincidence.
Googling reveals others with the same issue with Airpod Pro 3s.
Have you had your hearing checked out by an audiologist? Any hearing loss?
Hearing loss (age) and damage (loud noise) are the most likely culprits.
No hearing loss at all.
My hearing is actually better than age appropriate, so the doctors say I’ll just have to live with it because they can’t detect it.
Some people have the TV on every waking minute of the day, no matter what else they're doing. Some listen to music or podcasts in the same way. Others scroll through social media whilst eating or walking or even during conversations with other people.
It's not a new thing, either - constant background TV was definitely a thing at my grandparents' house when I was a child in the 1980s. Personally, I find the idea horrifying but I accept that I'm a bit of an outlier!
I purchased bone conduction headphones this year to serve as sleep headphones that work with my custom molded earplugs for sleeping. The headphones work as intended for this purpose, but I was not ready for how greatly they would change the way I move throughout the world.
These let me clearly hear music AND my surroundings. No longer do I need to decide whether I want to socialize with others or enjoy music that I love. The headphones let me do both! (While AirPods have outstanding noise transparency capabilities, speech can get muddied depending on the environment.)
Over time, I became SLIGHTLY more willing to engage in small talk with strangers. This combined with taking public transit to my co-working space (not the norm here in Houston; our transit system is criminally underrated) has improved my life much much more than I ever could have expected. (In fact, taking the bus and train in opened my eyes to how isolating driving really is. Between driving and WFH, you can go months without interacting with another human if desired. That can't be healthy. AI will make this worse.)
If I can make my social outtings in this regard easier and less stressfree, that far outweidghs any anti-social stigma.
I'm usually playing dark noise on noise cancelling earphones most of the time, and that helps me tune out the constant, stress inducing bombardment of unwelcome auditory inputs.
https://www.freethink.com/consumer-tech/sony-walkman-technop...
"Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan- and Thatcher-style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman “a nonstop…masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman as part of a modern trend that encouraged a “protective sort of withdrawal from social connections.” Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug “soma,” from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” creating, as he put it, “an airtight bubble of sound” that was nothing but a “sensory depressant.”
...
The Walkman, critics claimed, was more than just music to one’s ears. It was a tool of societal disconnect ... "
Personally i wear AirPods only in one ear - don't want to be struck by anything i didn't hear coming, and that also doubles the battery time.
Airpods Pro with transparency mode is the best for this
And having music in both ears, nice stereo, etc., definitely decreases situational awareness even if the outside sounds come through fine.
Didn't see any data in the article, not that I disagree, yet what if AirPods allow a return to normality for those who wish to have some distance?
Maybe everyone's just had to put up with extroverted norms until AirPods and mobile phones came along.
Q: Do you consider yourself more introverted or more extroverted?
9% Completely introverted
29% More introverted than extroverted
31% About an equal mix of extroverted and introverted
15% More extroverted than introverted
7% Completely extroverted
9% Not sure
n=1000 2023 YouGov internet poll
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/rwpllcwimy/Introverts%20and%20Ex...
Also, Susan Cain's book Quiet claimed 1/3 to 1/2 of the population are introverted. (Who knows)
The etiquette is to keep to yourself, airpods aren't creating that dynamic. The normal assumption if you don't know the person in most contexts them interacting with you in NYC is they're up to something and that's just normal US city dynamics with > 10 million people on a busy day.
The dynamic changes when you're hanging out in front of your apartment for say a cigarette or something or at a bar or sitting in the park but even then its not wrong to signal you're not open to interaction in those situations its simply more normal to chat with neighbors or other people hanging out.
I think there's also the consideration of: how often have you really wanted a stranger to talk to you on the bus. I've talked to a few women about this, and they don't leave home without headphones because it gives them an excuse to ignore strangers hitting on them in public.
I listen to audio books (fiction) and it's great. I'm an introvert and this actually helps me keep high energy levels all day long. Another plus is I'm usually immersed in the story and not using my phone (well apart from it being a playback device) when sitting down or waiting somewhere.
And it's precisely this extra energy I can use to have more meaningful interactions with other human beings. I don't wear headphones when I go climbing for example and interact with random strangers quite a bit when I do.
I also don't appreciate the stereotypes that are flung about in the article. I'm also German, plenty of interactions as described in his Jalapeno-Story all day every day.
I don't know about earlier options, but the Walkman did become truly ubiquitous, and a large fraction of my peers had or wore these fairly constantly, with discussions at the time of isolation, as well as, fairly presciently, potential hearing damage. Another factor is that the soft foam over-the-ear headphones tended to leak a tinny resonance into the immediate area, and "sound leakage" was commented on and tsked about.
There were also concerns about the antisocial nature of the devices ... or the intimacy of sharing headphones (one speaker apiece for singe-head sets, or for couples, dual-headset options).
SSQ's "Walkman On" dates from that period: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48597698>.
I also remember from the late 1990s the first time I encountered someone walking down the street, talking apparently to themselves, using an early corded single-ear headphone with a mic. Mobiles were becoming more common, but were usually held to the ear. This behaviour struck me as much like what one might see from rough sleepers, though this man was far better dressed than most. The experience is of course now ubiquitous.
Those sentiments are well reflected here: "The Forgotten War on the Walkman" <https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-forgotten-war...> (July, 2025)
HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44449970>
Thanks to this mode the AirPods have now been certified as hearing aids and many other friends and family members have said the same thing: that the AirPods are better hearing aids than actual prescription hearing aids (which usually cost absurd prices)
I talk to those people with those AirPods in as if they have no AirPods in at all, and thanks to those AirPods they are able to hear me better.
This is all a matter of perspective and comfort ability with adopting new paradigms and technologies. You need not see everything from the perspective of “technology bad”.
For a while it seemed like young people were hard of hearing like the elderly, somebody would be camped in a weight machine at the gym resting for 30 minutes and I’d have to stick my hand in their face to get their attention or they’d be walking down the street and I couldn’t warn them about hazards on the sidewalk.
Maybe it just doesn’t bother me anymore or maybe they’ve wised up.
Most people here in Spain have beautiful tattoos <3
Do you ever sit somewhere in public fully relaxed without a care in the world? Do you ever poke your head up to see who else is looking at what you're looking at? Is your expression neutral or natural?
There's always someone nearby doing the same. What happens when you spot them? Don't overthink it.
Seems like there’s a high probability the author just drives everywhere at home.
When I was in college, the line "he can't hear you, he has airpods in" was a meme. It was used as a jab at someone who wasn't paying attention because they had wireless earbuds in. So I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
You can see them. Don’t talk to me. If you must, get my attention first with a wave or something - don’t touch me.
I suspect the latter.
Where did you find the three dollar discrepancy?
vs.
Hey, Barb. <wait for acknowledgement> Where did you find the three dollar discrepancy?
With earbuds or headphones, the method of attention getting has to change: something they can see (wave), or something they can feel (tap the desk, no touching them.)
Ultimately the point is you get their attention, then you engage with the subject. If you're oblivious to the fact that there's an audio barrier sticking out of their ear, don't be surprised when you get no response.
Nothing is more unwelcome than casual conversation with strangers. It's very difficult to know what to say and how to act. I don't have a machine built for interacting with this person, so every conversation is simultaneous developing and operating a machine. No thank you!
And I'm not lonely nor isolated. I've curated the relationships I want. They are high quality, free from social media, and very active. I don't need someone sticking a spanner in my mental machinery on the bus.
I also wear them listening to podcasts doing chores in the evening while my wife is on the couch; whenever she says something I have to ask her to repeat herself and its just not nice.
I also agree with the lack of idle thought; my brain is constantly tied into some content stream.
I need to be more deliberate - maybe I'll only use them for work (I work from home so use the for meetings and to hear notifications when away from my desk) and when running.
Earphones (not specifically apple ones) are great for this. My city has become a touristy hotspot in the recent years, and you can't walk 50 meters through the city center without some homeless guy, or a romanian woman with a baby asking you for money, some "finnish" guys trying to sell your their music cd (that you have nowhere to insert anymore), some scammer offering you a flower or someone trying to sell you a boat tour of a city you've lived in your whole life.
Earphones in and you don't even have to reply, just ignore everyone.
And the lack of music is for the same reason: you need to be aware of the men trying to harass you.
I think it comes down to people not _wanting_ to interact with anyone outside of their circle. I pull out my earbuds _constantly_ when I'm out in order to greet people, interact with retail staff, and hear things around me.
At early college age I was dealing with stress that I for some reason had in a crowded city, and my main help was listening to rhythmic music all the time.
What annoyed me a lot that people from a coffee shop workers to beggars were making me more stressed by insisting that I must get my headphones out before the conversation began.
With release of wireless Apple EarPods this behavior completely disappeared in a following year.
But boredom is _really_ important – that's the DMN activity you want. Boredom gives your mind the chance to reveal things to you that you need to know, and may be actively avoiding.
The reason might be because they grew up in a world where social media was non-existent, so interacting with strangers was more common. As a result, they tend to be more socially intelligent than the younger generations.
Will be thinking about this article the next time I reach for my AirPods as I'm about to leave the house.
I happily "take the bait" cause I am a quite patient person but sadly, people who are lonely have such an urge to talking that they are totally incapable of listening. I consider myself a good listener, competent at signaling than what they are talking about is actually going through but a lot of the time they might as well be talking to a tree.
Is it just me or does anyone else turn skeptical when seeing these precise numbers given to something that seems essentially impossible to measure with this accuracy?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17456916261425131
There is an interview with the authors here:
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-people-spoken-words-year-years...
Every desire for entertainment, education, distraction is filled by the phone. You're obselete.
You can spend hours in an extremely crowded city constantly bumping into people and feel the most alone you've ever felt in your life
Hyperindividualism has won
Plus, processing spoken language is physically exhausting even when I am having an enjoyable conversation with someone I love.
Other people already commented on the overstimulation aspect.
Not suggesting that the world should be remade to accommodate my needs, of course, just wanted to share my experience, I guess.
But with your wife, doesn't eye contact work as communicating need for talk? Body language?
I don't know how to feel about this. I guess I'm happy that they're out of their house at all, but it does feel very sci-fi. In sci-fi books a common trope is for characters in the future to have neural implants that seamlessly and permanently connect them to some mega-internet. 24/7 Airpods is like the caveman version of that.
I do agree that there are "social interactions" that are greatly devalued by people wishing not to be interacted with. But for me the earbuds are usually in to block annoyances, not avoid human contact.
The honking in NYC is unbearable. Add to that the noise that the subways make and the constant construction and you're risking actual hearing damage if you don't wear some noise cancelling headphones.
Every time I go to Melbourne airport in Australia, I’m shocked that nobody - nobody - has their laptop out. In Sydney a few people do. But go to any airport in the US and if not a majority are on laptops at least a large minority seem to be..
So yes - airpods in ears, laptops in airports, city lights at night. Just a sign of how plugged in everyone is to “something” that’s happening.
I’m… sensitive to music I don’t like and find the experience almost painful otherwise. Small pocket, noise cancelling headphones have been a real game changer for me.
> I felt like half the people around me in pubic had some kind of device-connected earwear on their head.
Hey, that's me! Not with AirPods specifically, but I do have noise cancelling headphones. We can talk over lunch or during a break.
> They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.
Now that is just rude.
I wonder how people do this or if my ears are just shaped weird, because I can’t even sit totally still at my desk without them falling out.
The loose fit of the regular AirPods and the wired EarPods never made any sense to me.
I've also heard that the most recent AirPods Pro fit much better for people who have had problems in the past—I think because their rubber buds also have some foam in them, to help them create a better seal.
I've used these to sleep to podcasts or quiet music at music festivals, and they block out the music from outside pretty well. This is because of the flexible rubber seal. My wireless earbuds are hard plastic all the way around and sit (securely) in my earlobes while my wired ones actually go inside my ear canal.
I like using by headphones (which are big and over the ears) as a way to signal when I’m on concentration mode and don’t want to talk, but I do that maybe 30-40% of the time.
Now repeat the whole thing in English, MandarinMelayu then Tamil and blast that record on repeat.
sila berhati-hati di ruang platform, ombothu, ombothu, ombothu
welcome to Singapore
I use the Background Sounds feature on the iPhone, set to Dark Noise, in public transit if there are loud people nearby that my music isn't drowning out. Recommend trying it out. There's a Control Centre shortcut for it too (with an ear icon).
I can hear them better anyway and I have some degree of hearing damage so I prefer them in for protection in those cases.
Most people know better than to strike up a conversation with a stranger who is watching a theater performance, reading in a library, or walking briskly to work. Whereas chatting with people at a club, sporting event, carnival, conference, convention, etc is socially acceptable.
But many places are ambiguous like public transit, gyms, shops, airplanes, etc. Assessing whether someone in those contexts would welcome interaction with strangers requires social awareness.
Unfortunately, some people overlook or deliberately ignore these cues, so folks who aren't interested in social interaction have taken to wearing headphones in those contexts to make it as obvious as possible. If you're the kind of person who is surprised by how many people are now wearing headphones, it may be because you were missing their more subtle cues before.
What I like about them is the ease of use.
+ walkman 80s but diffused as today the Bluetooth headset only years later but not comparable
+ mp3 player 2000s not comparable as capabilities and more of a young adopt early technology
+ smartphones 2010s mass adoption but at least you hear mostly people around you.
+ air pods 10y ago on September -> in 10 years are adopted more than any of the previous tech. Adoption rate is hug (i consider also other brands)
and to be honest there is another topic correlated -> most young people have lived the covid pandemic and interiorizited some behavior
also grown up in some white collar sector live with headset after the pandemic, cause of smartwarking but also the more diffused use of team/zoom/meet in the workplace
now there is also ai (and it's a matter of time we will want a constant access to it that can also be headset related) and smart glasses are near than ever.
there could be consequences in less than 10y.
It's a social science matter nobody taking seriously.
Well that sounds like correlation might not equal causation if i ever heard it.
Wearing on walks around my neighborhood: yes, totally see how this nudges away from spontaneous chats with neighbors / acquaintances as we pass each other and wave, but don't stop perhaps due to the friction of removing airpods and sense we may be interrupting each other.
Sometimes if I see a neighbor I know up ahead, I will preemptively remove my airpods to open the possibility of a chat. Most of the time just a hello, but sometimes a nice catch up. With the airpods, very unlikely to chat.
Having some music or a podcast to listen to on your commute is the new “I have a giant newspaper in front of my face”.
If you want to have a random conversation you totally can! But like all things in life - the other person may not want to have that conversation at that time.
But I'm old enough to have ridden the bus not just before AirPods but before really practical and widespread headphones in general. (Headphones have been available for a long time, but people did not routinely carry them around because they did not generally fit conveniently in a normal-sized pocket.) I've spent probably hundreds of hours on busses, much of that on a college campus where we were probably about as similar a social situation as we can be.
And busses were never rolling conversation hubs. They weren't tomb-silent but the conversations were almost always between parties who clearly knew each other. They weren't some sort of daily forum for the debate of politics, nor a reliable source of small talk.
The only one that I will agree is something I used to do was small talk with the checkout clerk, because the transaction takes long enough to be socially awkward to be standing in silence, but again, inconsequential small talk.
Every time I read one of these articles moaning about how we're all behind headphones and how impersonal the shopping experience has become, I become more convinced we're not listening to Important Social Commentary by Thoughtful Individuals... I think we're reading articles from that tiny minority of super-socially-aggressive people who used to incessently bother those around them with their overly intrusive attempts to converse with us in that distant past pissing and moaning about the fact that we now have the social ability to block them in a way that doesn't exceed our politeness threshold. The people that we've all met that we wish would just shut up, where we're sending them social signals and body language to please stop, and they just continue on.
Now this is what they write in response to that.
Now, I'll cop to being reasonably on the end of the "let me get in and out and accomplish my goal without your contribution", but I've spent plenty of time in contexts where I got to see other people in those contexts, especially as a child, and I just don't recognize the wonderland of social interaction these people seem to be missing out on. There was never a time where these random encounters (ignoring cases where you run into people you already know) were ever anything more than the briefest, most transient touch of humanity, and if someone is in a situation where they are starved for that, perhaps their problems are deeper and lie elsewhere and the solutions are something other than trying to convince everyone else to change for them.
Only have over-ears headphones, so I keep borrowing pods from my wife when I'm cleaning/exercising.
Was very disappointed when she lost them and the replacement - pro v3 - had fixed the rare shape and they started falling out like any other earbuds.
This effect started well before Airods and even smart phones became ubiquitous. The airpods were released in Dec of 2016. Before Blackberries and Iphones, people on the subway all had daily newspapers in their face. In DC we had a free abridged version called the Express.
I wonder what the difference is between this, and culture in EU where small talk isn't really a thing.
Also, nit, but Europe has ~2x the population of the States, and definitely more cultural and linguistic diversity.
Suspiciously close to an AI slop article.
I suspect the constant stimulation suppresses the default-mode network, the idle wandering your mind normally experiences when you're doing nothing.
Before that, I'd sometimes hold my phone up to my ear to listen to a podcast (even on the subway at minimum volume) but it was awkward so not ubiquitous. I think buying a paid of wireless earbuds was one of those decisions that made my life subtly worse overall, like eating a whole tub of ice cream.
I also hate noise and I really love wearing my earbuds (I don't use Apple) with no audio but just the noise cancelling on when I'm on public transport or walking. Sometimes with nature sounds like rain if the coverage is not strong enough.
I never listen to podcasts by the way, I truly hate them. Same with youtube videos, I just don't have patience to consume content at someone else's pace.
Also, although I live in a medium-sized metro area with >8M people, it’s in the South, and I have zero access to public transportation. I prefer to use AirPods for music/podcasts/radio in my car, where I’m alone either way, so that I can more easily answer hands-free calls (which is necessary for my job).
Our society’s problem isn’t with AirPods, they’re just a symptom of the broader social decay that 80-years of inequality and deregulation has brought us.
