Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The AirPods Effect

theescapenewsletter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 824 posts

Re: The AirPods Effect

#301

Post by bloak »

rlpb wrote: post #261
mc32 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those loudspeakers on wheels at volume are illegal in many places -what’s not happening is police caring enough to make arrests. Maybe other jurisdictions will take a cue from Las Vegas and begin enforcing laws to protect normal people from teenagers and adult idiots who still think they’re teenagers taking over streets.

Arrests seem like overkill. Ask them to stop, issue a fine, whatever. Sure I get you're asking for any enforcement at all. But hyperbole has a polarizing effect on discourse we should try to avoid, IMHO.

Yes, I agree, but really we shouldn't even be comparing "arrests" and "fine". The latter is a punishment, and the former is a practical measure to prevent a future crime (such as destruction of evidence) or to prevent someone from evading justice (by destroying evidence, hiding or leaving the country, for example). Obviously some police forces do use arrests and searches and confiscation of "evidence" as a form of extrajudicial punishment but that shouldn't be allowed.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#302

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

asdfsa32 wrote: post #295
ekidd wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This varies enormously by where you live. 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 t…

You're just taking the Western code of social conduct as "normal". Human interaction is completely normal and natural.

You're trying to follow an out-of-date map. Our technology-infused growth of the past 50 years has produced more widespread mental illness and psycopathy than someone in the 80's could have even imagined. At this point in our societal evolution, you cannot assume that HUMANS THEMSELVES are either normal or natural.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#303

Post by ben_w »

petesergeant wrote: post #229
pjc50 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like it when other people try to talk to me. 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 wh…

> therefore a lot of men who are annoyed at this visible signal that the woman doesn't want to listen to them 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.

Given how the media amplify things, it could perhaps be literally just one guy, but FWIW I too have heard of the phenomenon pjc50 described.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#305

Post by t-3 »

hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #279
t-3 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a pedal bike, it's very important because you are most likely to be hit by cars from behind. Motorcycles move much faster, and most riders wear helmets as well, already impacting hearing. The road noise and wind is very loud, try rolling down the window in a car on the freeway and imagine that on .your whole body.

>you are most likely to be hit by cars from behind Do you have a source for this info? It contradicts what I've read about the subject.

Just personal and anecdotal experience, and also that bike lanes usually move with traffic rather than against it.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#306

Post by steve1977 »

asdfsa32 wrote: post #295
ekidd wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This varies enormously by where you live. 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 t…

You're just taking the Western code of social conduct as "normal". Human interaction is completely normal and natural.

Human interaction, sure. Human interaction with complete strangers, 10 inches away from you, enclosed in a metal tube you cannot escape from easily... not so much.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#307

Post by mitchitized »

The author has clearly never tried to leg press 300+ pounds in the gym to Madonna's "Like a Virgin". Sometimes the biggest sell of earbuds is noise REDUCTION, not what sounds they can make.

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.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#308

Post by techdmn »

GJim wrote: post #154
steve1977 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would get very irritated by such behavior. One reason I wear earbuds is to signal that I don't want to get talked to.

Have you tried simply telling people you don't want to talk? "Sorry mate, I'm reading" is hardly difficult.

This is actually very difficult for a significant number of people. Some people really struggle with saying "no" or enforcing boundaries, some people are very wary of negative interactions with strangers. If you are relying on people to explicitly push back on you, rather than reading more subtle queues, you are quite likely adding stress to someone's day.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#309

Post by Gareth321 »

asdfsa32 wrote: post #273
steve1977 wrote: post #144

What I find interesting is that the article seems to imply that wearing earbuds to isolate is somewhat "unnatural" (for lack of a better term). 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 n…

Strongly feeling a need to isolate yourself is not healthy and unnatural.

As they explain, living in such close proximity to thousands of strangers is also not how we evolved. The earphones are an adaptive strategy. Like masks on public transport during pandemics. We don't have to adapt to modern society, but we can make it more pleasant in various ways, depending on our preferences.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#310

Post by projektfu »

tines wrote: post #43

> 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. 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?

That's the central measure of 338 fewer words per day, but the 95% confidence interval was 25–652 fewer words.

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...

Post reply on HN