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The AirPods Effect

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Re: The AirPods Effect

#561

Post by andrepd »

oceanplexian wrote: post #539

Yeah, great article. But it should get to the point. 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 law…

Eh I don't think so. Commutes are as clean and peaceful as they can be in the Netherlands or Switzerland and people are no less buried in their phones with noise-cancelling earbuds on.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#562

Post by hnthrow10282910 »

codeduck wrote: post #226
hnthrow10282910 wrote: post #219

I live in a big city and notice this a lot as well. I’m starting to reduce my headphone usage. My hearing is getting worse at a young age. 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 often use over-ear headphones as ear-protectors rather than sound sources. It muffles the outside world, leaving me free to think. I suspect in-ears have degraded my hearing, so I don't use them any more.

I just got some ear plugs that swimmers wear, quite nice

Re: The AirPods Effect

#563

Post by exmadscientist »

wvenable wrote: post #497
exmadscientist wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

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 healt…

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.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#564

Post by brailsafe »

MarkSweep wrote: post #492
brailsafe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a mistake to conflate passive signaling with asserting oneself, and whether you like the interaction you might have otherwise had or not (as long as it's not clearly harassment or something) it would be rude to ignore people in public whether that rudeness is delegated to technology or not. It's just another way of turning up one's nose, and it's a gross way to operate imo. If you don't like the people y…

You say “as long as it's not clearly harassment” as if that is uncommon. Outside of giving directions at train stations, the times when a stranger has started talking to me in public have been almost universally negative. Often times it starts as a friendly conversation before the harassment or begging for money or scamming starts. Other times the people just start out crazy or harassing. I feel like your conception…

> I feel like your conception that “ignoring people either consciously or through technology is rude” makes more sense in higher social trust situations.

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.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#565

Post by angiolillo »

poncho_romero wrote: post #415
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…

> There's a lot of women who don't want to be chatted up who wear headphones 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 approac…

> 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.

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.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#566

Post by KolmogorovComp »

I’m reasonably skilled talking to strangers (can last about 3-4 hours in planes/trains/buses if the other party is up to it, after that I usually dry out of conversation), and do that frequently.

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.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#567

Post by throwaway2037 »

ChoGGi wrote: post #331
Anthony-G wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar experience here. I grew up in rural Ireland in the 80s where you said hello to everyone but had a culture shock when I moved to Dublin for college. I quickly realised that you don’t greet everyone. I put it down to a being a matter of scale: in the countryside, it’s easy to say hello to everyone when you’ll usually encounter only a small number of people. It’d be impossible to say hello to everyone in a big c…

I usually see a hand wave, or lazy salute around rural Western Canada. Probably a rural everywhere thing?

    > Probably a rural everywhere thing?
I would agree from my experiences living in different countries.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#568

Post by brailsafe »

skywhopper wrote: post #167
brailsafe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a mistake to conflate passive signaling with asserting oneself, and whether you like the interaction you might have otherwise had or not (as long as it's not clearly harassment or something) it would be rude to ignore people in public whether that rudeness is delegated to technology or not. It's just another way of turning up one's nose, and it's a gross way to operate imo. If you don't like the people y…

Wow, it’s wild that you think you have a right to the attention of strangers with whom you have no business. How is it rude to wish to go about one’s day unbothered?

Seems like a tragedy of the commons. People don't have a right to your attention necessarily, but you also don't have the right to be unbothered arbitrarily.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#569

Post by jedberg »

Noise pollution has always been a problem, especially in public transit. We finally have a decent solution. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

Re: The AirPods Effect

#570

Post by throwaway2037 »

pinko wrote: post #135
tptacek wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up on the south side and lived for years in Lakeview; we moved back from Ann Arbor to Oak Park, much later, the only time I've lived "in the suburbs", and Oak Park is more urban than Beverly or Jeff Park are. And then, of course, even after we moved to Oak Park, I still worked in the city every day. No, this doesn't track my experience of Chicago at all.

It's a class thing more than a geography thing. Culturally working-class urban Americans are chatty in almost every American city, save the most recently-urbanized ones (like PHX -- and even there there Latinos are chatty even if whitey ain't...)

Reading a bunch of these posts, a similar thought occurred to me. When I lived for a short time in Manhattan, I found the friendliest / most chatty were always working class types that ran small businesses or worked in the trades. I wonder if it is nothing more than these people are much more exposed to "strangers" through their professions. As a result, they are much less afraid to open a conversation.
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