I used to judge people for going about their daily lives with headphones on (like shopping) as being antisocial. In the last few years, I’ve come to realize they were just quicker to realize how annoying our society is and I’m increasingly likely to join them.
Recently I went to a mall and visited all the department stores. One of them had a guy playing a piano live and my first thought was “how quaint”. Then, as I sat and waited for my wife to try things on it struck me that I wasn’t hearing horrible music played over speakers - the piano was really nice. Why can’t places go back to playing relaxing music like that (even recorded)?
Drag shops with phonics in. Drag has autism and doesn’t need to hear 50 people’s conversations and bad pop music just to have a migraine when drag gets home. Drag does not think the grocery store is a place for social interaction anyway.
I’m definitely in agreement now, it just took me a bit longer to get over the shift in social norms.
IMO, there’s two main factors at play. First, the speakers in most stores suck. They have to buy them at volume (quantity, not loudness), and install them everywhere. The primary reason they have them is for paging, so they can make announcements and request that people go places. Music just gives the speakers something to do while not doing announcements.
Due to the amount of speakers they buy, and their primary purpose being for announcements, they don’t exactly buy high quality speakers. If the store has existed for a long time (maybe 10+ years), then it’s likely they’re analog, so the quality is also affected by the amps they’re using, and the cables, etc.
As long as the system can still do paging/announcements without issue, the business really doesn’t have any reason to spend money on upgrading it.
For the most part, most companies have connected these to some kind of satellite radio or music streaming system (like Spotify, but more business centric). It’s just plugged into the ancient sound amps for the analog system, often by someone who isn’t an audio expert, so levels are often all over the place, sometimes to loud and blown out, other times too quiet and details in the music are too quiet to be heard.
As long as the speakers still perform the announcements/paging that the company requires, they don’t care if the music sounds bad.
There’s a lot more to say on it for contributing factors, but the main drivers for it are not to play music. With the shift to digital and everything needing to update their music providing device, coupled with untrained people doing the connections for the new music solution to an ancient speaker system, it’s unsurprising that it sounds like garbage.
Great points on the horrible quality of sound in these places. I was referring more to the selection of music, but playing it at low quality certainly makes it worse. My kids joke that the grocery store is where old pop songs go to die.
Theres a restaurant I go to which plays music that youd expect from a fallout game. The old folks like it cause nostalgia but a couple other folks on the younger end have said something along the lines of “I heard this in Fallout New Vegas” its great, also apparently Big Iron played once and a bunch of old bastards and younger guys sung along to it. I wish I was there for it.
Its not their fault. The phones took away their headphone jacks.
lol, no fellow commenter, this also happened before they did that, there was even an ONG or random group here that walked around with very cheap wired earbuds to distribute to these rude people a decade ago. It just wasn’t video but downloaded mp3s.
Even current non Bluetooth are adapting the new Usbc insert so that’s not it.
Nobody took away their headphone jacks. It’s them who bought devices without one.
Ehh a bit disingenuous. Apple, samsung, and google took away the headphone jack. You either have to get an old phone (like late 2010s) or buy it from niche companies (sony phones, gaming phones, or some chinese phones)
I mean, yes, but a 3.5mm to usb-c adapter is like $10, so that’s still not really an excuse.
Most people use wireless headphones these days, and usb-c headphones are getting more common. (I’m hearing impaired, all headphones sound the same to me, but maybe an audiophile will tell me why usbc headphones suck compared to 3.5mm)
When I bought my new pixel I went to the gym that afternoon and immediately realised I couldn’t use my headphones because I hadn’t been mindful of my missing headphone jack. Worked out in silence, and bought an adapter on the way home for my headphones. Problem solved.
There’s tons of quiet things you can do on your phone if you’re bored and don’t have headphones.
The only people who are allowed to have their phones on full volume plasting noises without headphones are visually impaired people, because otherwise they’d need to put their headphones in just to check what time it is on their phone.
My brand-new Samsung phone has a headphone jack.
I see what you’re saying though, and while that may be true now, it hasn’t always been the case. If sales of the first iPhone model without a headphone jack had hit an all-time low and people kept buying the older models instead, Apple likely would have realized the mistake and brought it back. They did this with their shitty laptop keyboards and removing the HDMI port and card reader too. But instead, people just complained and still bought those devices anyway, signaling to manufacturers that it was okay, and then others followed suit and here we are now.
There’s always alternatives for people willing to stick to their principles. My device still has a removable battery as well and so did the one I had before.
Im glad you still believe in consumer friendly phones. Unfortunately all the flagships oned have decided one port is enough. As for consumer repairs, I wouldnt be surprised if it becomes completely impossible soon, given that apple did try blocking third part parts before with the iphone 13.
Unfortunately all the flagships oned have decided one port is enough.
Customers showed them it’s enough. I don’t blame the companies for it. Supply and demand. Why add features in your devices that only cost you more money to implement when removing it has no effect on the sales.
As for consumer repairs, I wouldnt be surprised if it becomes completely impossible soon
Consumers will be able to choose between repair or replacement of defective products within the two-year legal guarantee period. Companies will have to repair a product for free within that period, if cheaper than a replacement, and continue to offer affordable repairs for five to 10 years after a product’s sale even if it is outside of the guarantee.
Manufacturers and distributors will also have to inform consumers of their right to have products repaired and offer spare parts to independent repairers at reasonable prices.
People weren’t great about wearing headphones in public either.
You phone shouldn’t make any sound whatsoever when you’re in public period.
If someone told me to silence my phone in public they would get laughed at. And if you persist I’ll tell you to call the cops, who will then proceed to laugh at you.
Theatres, yeah, they shouldn’t even vibrate.
Presumably, for such a complaint, the cops wouldn’t even bother to come to laugh at you unless they were very very bored. This is probably true in both circumstances you described. Also, I can’t speak for others, but unless detained I wouldn’t stick around most public locations long enough for someone to complain about a notification from my phone. Even if a call is received and must be answered, it seems appropriate to accept the call and leave the immediate shared area if possible. Obviously, in such circumstances as a moving bus, quickly leaving isn’t really feasible.
However, I partially agree with the person to whom you responded. Your phone shouldn’t make any media based sound (videos, music) in public. I also mostly agree with what I think you’re saying: in most circumstances, notification sounds are inoffensive. Movies are not the only exception to this but definitely are one. Laughing in the face of someone who requests quiet in a public shared area seems rude, though, and might escalate the situation.
To elaborate, recently I went to see a dental surgeon. As I approached the waiting area, my immediate thought was to set my phone to vibrate. Once I entered, however, I realized that not only was there a TV in the space; also there was an elderly couple watching TV on their phones. Not only were they doing so, not only were they watching something different from what was on the TV, not only were they watching their media at BLARING volume, but they were also watching vastly different content. In this circumstance, notifications could be - reluctantly - forgiven, but their blasting and conflicting media made it very difficult to concentrate on filling out my paperwork.
I’m too much of a wimp to have approached them, but in that circumstance I think it would have been appropriate to ask them to silence their media and would have only required a vague awareness of the existence of others for them to have done so without prompting.
Though the cops, if they came, would likely still have just laughed.
An aside: as soon as the presumed wife left the waiting area, the likely husband shut off his media. I don’t know what that means, but wanted to mention it.
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Wilco, you won’t be the first, and you won’t be the last. Even of it’s some sort of kink.
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Oh, you think this is some sort of threat? Please threaten me…
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You’re the one pushing it.
Call the cops?
Yea you’re obviously a child. I mean literally based on that response.
How am I a child? Dude makes up a rule and I’m supposed to follow it? Really?
It’s not a law, and telling someone to call the cops os pointing out the absurdity of the demand.
I wouldn’t call the cops. I’d just fling it into the ocean. Who would call the cops for you then? You can’t. You have no phone.
See? We all make decisions every second to be or not to be jerks. You’re not special.
Ah, so you’ll commit assault because my phone isn’t on silent. Buds you need a reality check.
You’re assaulting others airspace and committing harassment. that isn’t your right but then suddenly everything is a crime when someone else does something to you. Pick a conviction. Narcissism isn’t an excuse.
My phone making notification sounds isn’t assault, not even close. Taking my phone is theft.
Pick a lane.
You’re convincing no one that you’re that important enough to get a notification. Sad face.
You’re convincing yourself that you’re important enough to dictate others actions.
Pitiful.
It interferes with public emergency announcements so there should be some clear enough airspace for it.
What if, what if, what if. The world is noisy.
That’s just an excuse to be an asshole. Not to consider. This is how sociopaths reason.
Go up to everyone whose phone you hear and tell them to put it on silent.
Expecting people to be silent in public is asinine.
Expecting everyone to cowtowing to your wants only in a public space that’s for everyone is asinine and narcissistic
And expecting others to be quiet for you isn’t?
Done talking to you.
No u.
Nobody should even speak in public! Or breathe my air!
A narcissistic sociopath is someone who exhibits traits of both narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). They may have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a lack of regard for others, and a tendency to manipulate others to get what they want
They might be a literal child, as implied by their name.
I was making fun of this entire concept. If talking in public is allowed, it implies that everyone is comfortable with a person emitting a certain amount of noise. What form that noise takes is idiotic to divvy up and bitch about.
Explain to me how if you’re annoyed by music playing, why is that any more valid than someone else being mad at talking? Or someone else for whistling? Singing? Phone ringing? Vibrating? Where are your arbitrary lines?
You can’t be serious. Or you don’t spend a lot of time in public.
Most people’s conversations in public are fairly quiet. People often do get annoyed of people are having a screaming or otherwise disruptive conversation on the subway. Most humans don’t find a quiet conversation that distracting though. Hearing half a conversation annoys most people- I think it’s because the brain keeps trying to figure out what’s happening.
It’s not really “”“arbitrary lines”“”. The shared theme is “don’t distract other people in public”. Whistling fails this check. So does singing. As does a phone alarm going off. But also like most things that annoy or tolerate are arbitrary.
This is especially true if you need to hear announcements like what stop this is or that this train is going express.
Anyway, my current thinking is you’re doing some sort of “bit” as a selfish child, or you just don’t spend a lot of time in public.
So you would like legislation passed to outlaw street performers? If I’m a child for asking these questions, what does that make you, an angry old man yelling at kids? Maybe I’m just not as bothered by people living there lives as you are. I expect noise in public.
Street performers aren’t the same as people watching videos on their phone.
It can ring and give notifications, as long as they aren’t set to something obnoxious.
It becomes obnoxious no matter what it is when they’re having a text conversation with someone and it’s going off constantly
For me, if I’m actually having a conversation in public, I’ll silence my phone.
Right, but they were suggesting it should be silenced at all times, by default, even for the very first notification.
Put your phone on vibrate, you’ll survive.
No, I don’t think I will.
In the before time, the long long ago, people didn’t have a portable social media machine
That’s what my phone is set at 24/7, the only time it makes a noise from the speakers is when the alarm goes off in the morning.
I have my phone set so it sets itself to vibrate when it disconnects from my home WiFi. It turns the notification sounds back up when it reconnects. I’ve never had to worry about it again.
That’s the way
Well they should silence it at that point because obviously they’re paying enough attention to it and expecting responses, so they should be waiting for the vibrate if not looking at it directly.
But people don’t need to have their phone silenced at all times while in public, they just need to be attentive enough to answer and silence it. I frequently don’t even feel the vibration.
I’m pretty old but do you know the Woody Woodpecker laugh? I used to work with a girl back before smartphones that had that as her text notification. It was the whole thing which takes like five seconds so sometimes it was just that fucking sound almost non-stop. Here it is, cursed fucking creation.
It’s kind of amazing that I haven’t really thought about Woody Woodpecker since watching the cartoons as a kid and the animation doesn’t look familiar at all other than yeah that’s the right colors, but I could hear the laugh in my head immediately on seeing the name, without having to play the audio.
i couldn’t even make it through the 8 second video. i cant begin to imagine what you must have gone through. my heart goes out to you
I can’t imagine the ptsd you have
That sounds like something they would do to prisoners in Guantanamo.
Unprompted, I will tell you the most obnoxious ring tone I have ever heard. It was on the subway and a voice was suddenly loudly proclaiming: “Warning! Warning! The owner of this phone is a self-confessed binge drinker” until some douchebag picked up the call.
It’s probably obnoxious in real life but I really wanna do the ZZ Top ringtone from Bad Monkey
The worst part is that it’s just normalized enough that you can’t really call it out.
It’s normalized because it’s not a serious problem, it’s a minor, and extremely temporary annoyance the vast majority of the time.
It’s incredibly obnoxious and there’s never a good reason for it.
Headphones are dirt cheap. Use them in public. No one has ever wanted to hear your bullshit.
Clearly you’ve never spent an hour+ on a bus with someone watching TikTok on a fucking Bluetooth speaker.
that has not stopped me from calling it out. in my experience, most people seem to be unaware that it bothers other people (or at least they claim to be unaware).
that said, a decent number of them are unwilling to change their behavior after being told that it does bother people.
100%. Public areas need enough clear airspace for emergency announcements as it puts everyone in danger.
Some other things to add:
- Stand left, walk right on escalators and moving walkways
- Do not walk more than two abreast, and be aware that there may be people behind you who want to walk faster.
My main gripe with society is that everyone else is in their own little worlds and I’m stuck in the real one dealing with them all.
Stand left, walk right on escalators and moving walkways
This will get you killed in the UK. People would cheer.
Treat yourself like a car and park - I see too many people just stopping in the middle of wherever to check their phone. It’s not hard to take a quick glance and find a spot off to the side. They should teach this stuff in schools.
Stand left, walk right on escalators and moving walkways
This may be region-specific. In my area, I generally see it the other way around. But unless you’re the only person, it’s usually pretty clear which side to stand.
Yeah, I got it backwards. Unless you’re in a former Commonwealth country and you drive on the left
That’s was pisses me off ever since I started to go by train instead of my car for environmental reasons to work. Like what happend that people don’t understand the general politeness anymore. We used to be gentle to each other and that means that I don’t force other people to listen to my videos as well.
The last time a young mother gave her little 3 year old child an iPad to watch videos. I’m not sure what pissed me off the most, that it was with sound or that the mother gave an iPad to her kid, because it’s well studied how bad phones and tablets influence kids.
I wish I could by train to work. I honestly wouldn’t even mind the noise if I had the option to take a train. I bring my noise cancelling headphones everywhere so I doubt I would even hear it.
Noise cancelling bluetooth headphones are so awesome. I also use them all the time. It was just one day where I forgot them and it was a very bad day to not have them with me
Literally had a dude do this when the VP debate was on, and he was all cheering and pumping his fist soyboying about JD Vance
Did you punch him in the face? I that would hold up in court.
no I told him to shut up and he told me I was being immature and told me to shut up and I told him that he was the one who was disrupting things that needed to leave and half of the store tried to take his side and say hey this is America buddy he can listen to whatever he wants to and I was telling them that he should get some headphones for his Nazi propaganda and then the guy eventually fucked off muttering under his breath and the managers knew that I was cool so I sat back down and chilled
Worst thing about someone watching a reel out loud is you hear the same 15 second sound bite 30 times while they’re reading the comments.
or 5-second disconnected bits while they scroll
That’s my wife, then after like 2 minutes she tells me to watch it.
I JUST HEARD IT 23 TIMES!
Oh no oh no oh nononono
I think one of the platforms used to pause at some point reading comments if you fullscreened them, then changed it so it would play unless manually paused first. YouTube Shorts?
Hearing the same 15 second soundbite 30 times… tremendous for engagement!
some folks firmly believe everyone and everything exists solely to entertain them snd they cannot fathom that anyone else wouldnt feel the same
I don’t have this problem because whenever I’m in public I have my headphones on. Even if I’m not listening to anything on them they’re still good enough to muffle every other sound blasted by others.
It’s easier to adapt myself than it is to educate everyone else I guess.
Ever go hiking? Skiing? Sit in a park? This is the same concept as some douche blasting shit on their Bluetooth speaker while you’re trying to exist in the moment.
Maybe it’s hard to conceive of for some, but the world shouldn’t be shielded by headphones.
Ever go hiking?
On a trail, where you are not subjected to anybody else’s noise for more than a second as they pass you by?
Skiing?
You’re skiing down a slope and a person is skiing next to you with a Bluetooth speaker?
Sit in a park?
Outdoors, where you can put some distance between yourself and them?
Maybe it’s hard to conceive of for some, but the world shouldn’t be shielded by headphones.
You’re right, it’s already shielded by air. The air that you can put between yourself and the other person.
The point was regardless of whatever they’re doing, you are only as subject to their poor behavior as you choose to be.
If you’re not going to do something about it (and please tell me what you would actually do about this beyond complaining on the internet), then your only other choice is mitigation, which involves just keeping headphones with you to block out other people’s noise or learn to find more peaceful spaces.
Outdoors, where you can put some distance between yourself and them?
Sure, if it’s one person. Where I used to live, the nearest park would have multiple groups engaged in loudness wars, each upping their volume in response to the others, so nobody could enjoy the park. Public spaces shouldn’t be held hostage by assholes who don’t understand how to behave in public, to the detriment of everyone else.
As far as what to do, it would be nice if the existing rules would be enforced that prohibit this behavior, but people cry racism for being told off for bringing a massive speaker to blast merengue and dembow in the park and somehow find support, rather than people asking why they’re blasting any type of music in the park to begin with.
I don’t disagree with the last part.
The thing is that either I shield myself whenever it’s possible so I don’t get annoyed over other people’s actions and get to live a reasonable nice day, or I let myself be annoyed by them and don’t enjoy my hiking or sitting in the park experience anyway.
Either way I don’t really encounter these people unless I’m using public transportation. If I’m on the beach then I sometimes encounter them but then it’s chill and I can just find another place.
This is also a good way to ignore panhandlers and other people approaching you with unsolicited bullshit.
Video is the cancer of the internet. We figured out how to send quite literally a novel per second and people use that bandwidth to talk… like… this…
I know you’re joking and that there’s a lot of garbage videos out there, but what possible value would there be in sending a novel per second? Can anyone read a novel per second? It only makes sense to use the higher bandwidth to send higher density information like video, audio, or interactive media like games.
I’m absolutely 100% not joking. Using video to convey something which can be conveyed through words and a couple images is just idiotic. You can cram an entire Baldur’s Gate 1 walkthrough with maps and all into the footprint of some bro saying “so you grab the wrench -”. Literacy rates are horseshit nowadays, wonder why
I completely agree.
But.
I fucking hate how I can’t read about anything any more. Especially instructional things.
It’s getting to the point that if there’s something I want to learn about or research, I have to watch a video. And of course, I probably didn’t bring headphones, because I wasn’t planning on listening to or watching anything.
this is what closed captioning is for, ya know and the other thing
I need headphones regularly for learning languages (Duolingo), learning coding, learning about physics etc So there are always Bluetooth headphones in my small bag.
There’s no life without them
This is not really true in my experience. The vast majority of instructional videos and video essays are just repackaging a text resource, often just the list of references from Wikipedia. I think you’re just falling for the veneer of professionalism that makes YouTubers popular, but remember it doesn’t actually mean they know what they’re talking about any more than a random forum poster. There are of course exceptions, but the glut of instructional videos is just because they’re profitable, not because they’re actually full of unique knowledge.
Then you wait until you get home or to an otherwise appropriate venue. No one wants to hear a tutorial they didn’t ask for about putting up drywall on their commute home or in the grocery store.
Not Apples biggest fan, but do love that so many people use their earbuds. I noticed a big shift in people using them versus blaring their music and videos on public transit.
I saw a guy on the bus doing this and I punched his lizard.
Just put in your own headphones. Problem solved. But I guess you can also continue to complain to the void I guess 🤷🏻
Some of us don’t always travel alone.
- I do often wear them with nothing playing, but even that impacts my situational awareness, which is even more impacted if I put music on.
- I don’t want to be listening to music, a podcast, etc., right now, I just want to hear the low, white noise of the environment. This is especially applicable when out in nature.
i usually put my in-ear buds on, but turned off if i dont feel like listening to anything
