I’ve probably complained about this here before, because it’s one of the most irksome things that I confront on a near-daily basis, but have we really devolved as a society so much that it’s become acceptable to constantly pollute other people’s silence with noise of your choosing? It’s bad enough when people play their music so loudly on their headphones that I can hear it, but people are just taking this to the next level. Today on the PATH in a car with about 15 people in it, there were 3 people having obscenely loud phone conversations, 1 person playing music through his phone’s speakers and 2 people watching some sort of musical on full-blast on an iPad. I’m using the terms “music” and “musical” very loosely here, particularly in the case of the iPad, because whatever was coming out of that thing sounded like the tortured shrieks of someone having a bad trip. In any case, despite dealing with this quite regularly, I’m still shocked whenever it happens. How can you be so fucking rude/selfish/awful?
I’ll leave aside for the moment the headphone wearers, for whom the greatest mystery is how they haven’t managed to go completely deaf by their own devices, because at least they’re theoretically taking measures to keep their noise to themselves, nevermind however feeble. I’ll also leave aside the people on the phone, because while annoying and rude, asking them to not have long, loud conversations while others are trapped in the same space as them is even one level of decency above that bare minimum which is beyond the grasp of the blatant sound-terrorists who make no attempt to take the minimally intrusive step of not foisting their media consumption on the rest of us. It’s not that fucking hard! Headphones are cheap enough that if you can afford that phone that is the source of the problem, you can certainly afford some headphones. Buy them. Use them. Stop being a fucking asshole. NOT THAT FUCKING HARD.
Normally, my approach is to ask the offending party to shut it down, but tonight I was far outnumbered and honestly, I was just tired. Though I didn’t think of it until now, next time I’m taking my headphones out and blasting my NPR podcasts at full volume. Though I’m not always a fan of debasing oneself by getting down to the level of the offensive party, sometimes people only understand when you speak their language. And no one wants to hear Terry Gross or Neal Conan on full volume. No one. So don’t make me do it, assholes. Stop being such navel-gazing selfish little pricks and stop and maybe consider the consequences of your actions. I know, it’s just soooo burdensome to have to think of others on occasion, but that’s kind of the deal when you live in a society. If you don’t like, move to the wilderness or Sudan, or some other corner of the globe where man can roam in the state of nature with nary a thought of the needs of others. I don’t care what you do, just shape up or stay the hell out of my way.
In response to my opening question, probably not, as wolves are pack animals and aren’t so violently antisocial.
observations of the absurd 