To be fair when you live in a big city and you have to take the subway all the time, it just feels physically nice to remove the background noise whether it's the noise of the train itself or the musicians or the people asking loudly for money. I don't even have airpods, I have good old earplugs because I often too lazy to choose the soundtrack of my own life.
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)
That's kind of the point the article is making though, isn't it?
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.
> I can sleep, eat, shower, and meditate just as well in the middle of a deadly riot ... as I can in a forest or a dead silent bed room.
You should realize that there are people who can't do that.
There was a point in my life that I couldn'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?
> There was a point in my life that I couldn't do that.
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.
Surely the solution to this social problem, however, can't be "everyone should simply convert to my religion / achieve a higher state of mind where they're not bothered by any form of inconvenience, irritation, or interruption." If it comes to that, most people will continue to wear their AirPods. It's a non-answer.
Living in filth is not natural. Animals and primitive humans know how to keep themselves reasonably clean, to avoid attracting predators if nothing else. We seem to be regressing.
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.
Why should you be bothered by people ignoring you with headphones when you simply could just...not?
Being able to do it in the middle of a riot is, absolutely, a hard-earned skill.
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.
My son, for example, has sensory issues and cannot tune out anything. The "you have to practice it" is like telling a paraplegic that if they just exercise more they'd be able to walk. People are different and have different needs.
> 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.
"When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them."
-- Evelyn Waugh
Paraplegics don't have the use of their limbs. Acting as if "sensory issues" are in the same category is grossly insensitive.
Suggesting you can just practice your way out of biological sensory issues is also grossly insensitive; that's why I made that comparison.
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.
I think that's an unusual scenario, and I'd ask you to consider that that's probably not the argument I was making.
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.
The key word there is appear. How do you know? You're making a lot of assumptions about people and why do things and whether or not it's healthy. You see dozens and dozens people with earphones on at exactly the time when most people don't want to be engaging. Some women put on headphones, often playing nothing, to avoid harassment. But the reasons are endless.
You're assuming all this is "really really unhealthy" but what is the justification for that opinion?
The article is making the case that this is not healthy for society. It is the kind of thing that's fine if 5/100 do it, seriously worrying if 50/100 do, and basically fatal to civilized society if 99/100 people do.
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.
If you read the article you'll notice that it's all opinion. The main quote about research is "There is disappointingly little peer-reviewed research on the effects earphones have on our daily lives and interactions." Even the linked "studies" are all correlation and mixed in with COVID.
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.
I worked in Manhattan often in the 00s and early 10s. Have people forgotten what big city life was like before? Commuters did not randomly strike up conversations. It was an unspoken code you left each other alone. Especially in rush hour commutes. Everyone is waking up or tired after a day of work. It is more about having some personal space in a crowded environment for many. Not everyone processes or experiences that the same way either.
> It was an unspoken code you left each other alone.
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’re chastising the person above you for blocking out the world with headphones while bragging that you have honed skills over time to, due to desire and necessity, block out the world in your own head.
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.
In a way you're right, but what you can do comes from a significantly high spiritual development level. For an average Joe it's quite abstract and maybe even unattainable in this life.
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.
I believe we wouldn't have a tenth of the chaos we are currently experiencing if people talked to their neighbors and fellow commuters more.
With or without headphones, people aren't just chatting around on the subway all the time. I love my headphones and I also chat with my neighbours.
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.
What chaos are you referring to? What do you mean by "chaos"?
A buffer isn’t necessarily isolation or insulation.
You will have to explain. Headphones in work or street environments definitely function to minimize interactions with surrounding humans. I literally think twice before engaging with people wearing headphones and am rather oblivious to people around me when I'm wearing them unless someone is using physical gestures to get my attention.
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.
People are really good at finding virtue within themselves
Wow, was it a computer fraud abuse act thing, I mean claimed to be? Obviously nothing violent!
Thanks for sharing.
I plead guilty to financial fraud, thanks for the interest!
Curious how you project certain assumptions, though. Makes one curious about your own activities.
Few who paid their debt to society and moved on are excited about random strangers wanting to do their own petty little performative mock show trials to sit in smug judgement over them. Please stop.
Almost as if there's a limit to how many demands strangers can reasonably place on a person before we as a society agree that the person should put up boundaries (like, say, putting on headphones and outright ignoring the demands) and even go out of our way to encourage strangers to respect those boundaries.
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.
No defence needed in my case. I made a mistake and paid my price. I feel bad for people who are so bored and miserable in their own lives that they feel the need to elevate themselves by trying to diminish me.
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.
> That's kind of the point the article is making though, isn't it?
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
Counter: my attention must be earned, I do not owe it to randoms.
I agree with this comment.
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.
> They don’t make noise canceling headphones for your lungs yet.
Well, they literally do, they’re just absurd:
https://www.wired.com/review/review-dyson-zone/
I wear my AirPods Pro on the train largely for hearing protection. The DC Metro is loud, with or without people making noise in the train. Different train systems have different levels of loud, but when the Metro is flying through a tunnel it is quite loud.
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.
The metro is a much less stressful experience for me with noise cancellation on. Without them the noise in tunnels just makes me anxious. The outside tracks are all fine without them though.
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.
Traffic and honking can be quite annoying. I find the AirPods Pro knock down quick a bit of noise even when off just because of their tips, but when I want it even quieter I use the noise canceling.
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.
It's not just a social or class issue. A lot of women wear headphones to discourage creepy men from hitting on them or sexually harassing them. The HN crowd skews toward young men and I think many of you don't understand that some women get this constantly on public transit.
Headphones also give an 'excuse'. Some men become really pissy and unstable if they think you're ignoring them, but if you have visible headphones, then you have the excuse of not hearing them.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is a real issue. I'm not a woman, but I'm a gay man and the same thing happens walking through Boystown or at the gym. Headphones have a near-100% success rate at deflecting unwanted advances.
[flagged]
Unwelcome attention is unwelcome attention. The only charitable exceptions might be children and adults with developmental disabilities, who allowably don’t know any better.
> Unwelcome attention is unwelcome attention
Quite right. Allow me to rephrase:
What about the non-creepy men?
>adults with developmental disabilities, who allowably don’t know any better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb9dV_DP5NI
> it just feels physically nice to remove the background noise whether it's the noise
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.