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Discussion (94 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
And I'm not an introvert!
All of this long predates Airpods.
I think this is a cultural difference, not a technological shift.
In part it’s taking away the shared experience in public and making it “my” experience.
I'm more of a "talk when talk is needed" person but still social. i don't really interact with strangers in the street and I assume business social interactions (like restaurants) are just that, business, so I'm polite but i'm not going to crack a joke with someone i've never seen before and will likely never see again. My experience was the complete opposite, loved Portugal, would easily move there if salaries weren't shit, people were nice, i felt welcomed anywhere i went, might have been the only place outside of Brazil i have really felt at home.
I think its important to NOT BE RUDE with the random people you meet in the street but I also see no reason so strike a conversation with them. If I happen to see something that picks up my interest, like a band shirt, book i like or something like that, i might bring it up if we're going to stay in the same place for long, but starting a conversation out of nowhere just isn't a thing for me.
We're talking to strangers at the bus stop, at the grocery check out, or just wherever. It's just phatic conversation, nothing needs to come of it. Chicagoans aren't just friendly, they actually love the art of the conversation -- every conversation is a chance to put in the reps.
But the minute you step into the suburbs, this habit disappears.
Earbuds stop this practice dead in its tracks. You can't deny that.
Even the older introverted people I know, who I would characterise as quiet, would find it really rude to get in a taxi and not chat to the driver for the duration of the journey.
With people doing their entire careers remotely now I can only see this shift happening faster and more intensely. Small talk is a skill like any other and I think it's a sad skill to lose on a societal level. And I say this as a serious introvert that doesn't love to make small talk. Nine times out of ten, when I do make the effort to e.g. talk to a taxi driver I come away happier.
I’ll talk to strangers when it makes me feel good. But most of the time I try avoid inviting weirdos to complain about minorities or marginalized people from someone who has driven away anyone close to them.
I hope you don't complain when people use social media or have LLM as their daddy to cope then :)
I would suggest that it's your avoidance of talking to strangers that makes you think this is how a lot of them think. And it kind of proves the point that society can suffer because of it. If you went out tomorrow and talked to 100 random strangers for 10mins I'd be surprised if any of them complained about minorities.
Chances are at least 20 of them would.
I also do agree with the comment that airpods do seem to get in the way of the most basic of social etiquette. Simple "please" and "thank you" are increasingly rare since you can't recognize the cues when your ears are full of something else.
It's essentially the same unspoken etiquette rule as what you're socially expected to do if riding a crowded elevator.
Go commute by NYC subway 10 times a week, M-F especially during peak tourist season and you'll understand.
I intentionally behave completely different if I'm in a small town of 3000 people or walking down the street, shopping, riding transit in a large city.
#moraloutrage
Yeah buying airpods seems like better idea than being stabbed/beaten up
Correlation for sure, I’m less sure about causation though. It seems equally likely to me that other factors are driving increased social anxiety/isolation which in turn drives people to wear headphones to avoid social interactions.
Even watching someone else walk around a city with headphones/earbuds in is something that makes me uncomfortable by proxy. It's like someone deciding that walking around with beer goggles is a good idea
Didn't see any data in the article, not that I disagree, yet what if AirPods allow a return to normality for those who wish to have some distance?
Maybe everyone's just had to put up with extroverted norms until AirPods and mobile phones came along.
Q: Do you consider yourself more introverted or more extroverted?
9% Completely introverted
29% More introverted than extroverted
31% About an equal mix of extroverted and introverted
15% More extroverted than introverted
7% Completely extroverted
9% Not sure
n=1000 2023 YouGov internet poll
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/rwpllcwimy/Introverts%20and%20Ex...
Also, Susan Cain's book Quiet claimed 1/3 to 1/2 of the population are introverted. (Who knows)
For a while it seemed like young people were hard of hearing like the elderly, somebody would be camped in a weight machine at the gym resting for 30 minutes and I’d have to stick my hand in their face to get their attention or they’d be walking down the street and I couldn’t warn them about hazards on the sidewalk.
Maybe it just doesn’t bother me anymore or maybe they’ve wised up.
I swear my tinnitus is a result of use of AirPods.
I never wore any type of earphones ever. Then started using AirPods for calls, during workouts or on a plane. A year later I developed tinnitus and the only thing that changed in my life was wearing AirPods.
I’m no doctor, and who knows what caused my tinnitus. But it’s irreversible. I constantly hear a humming ring now and it’s super distracting, especially trying to go to bed.
I’m no doctor. But heads up for those who haven’t used inner ear headphones.
Source: got bad tinnitus from motorcycling, became depressed with suicidal ideation and then got over it.
Have you had your hearing checked out by an audiologist? Any hearing loss?
Hearing loss (age) and damage (loud noise) are the most likely culprits.
Every time I go to Melbourne airport in Australia, I’m shocked that nobody - nobody - has their laptop out. In Sydney a few people do. But go to any airport in the US and if not a majority are on laptops at least a large minority seem to be..
So yes - airpods in ears, laptops in airports, city lights at night. Just a sign of how plugged in everyone is to “something” that’s happening.
When I was in college, the line "he can't hear you, he has airpods in" was a meme. It was used as a jab at someone who wasn't paying attention because they had wireless earbuds in. So I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
> I felt like half the people around me in pubic had some kind of device-connected earwear on their head.
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?
I think there's also the consideration of: how often have you really wanted a stranger to talk to you on the bus. I've talked to a few women about this, and they don't leave home without headphones because it gives them an excuse to ignore strangers hitting on them in public.
https://www.freethink.com/consumer-tech/sony-walkman-technop...
"Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan- and Thatcher-style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman “a nonstop…masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman as part of a modern trend that encouraged a “protective sort of withdrawal from social connections.” Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug “soma,” from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” creating, as he put it, “an airtight bubble of sound” that was nothing but a “sensory depressant.”
...
The Walkman, critics claimed, was more than just music to one’s ears. It was a tool of societal disconnect ... "
Personally i wear AirPods only in one ear - don't want to be struck by anything i didn't hear coming, and that also doubles the battery time.
Airpods Pro with transparency mode is the best for this
And having music in both ears, nice stereo, etc., definitely decreases situational awareness even if the outside sounds come through fine.
I wonder how people do this or if my ears are just shaped weird, because I can’t even sit totally still at my desk without them falling out.
The loose fit of the regular AirPods and the wired EarPods never made any sense to me.
I've used these to sleep to podcasts or quiet music at music festivals, and they block out the music from outside pretty well. This is because of the flexible rubber seal. My wireless earbuds are hard plastic all the way around and sit (securely) in my earlobes while my wired ones actually go inside my ear canal.
I like using by headphones (which are big and over the ears) as a way to signal when I’m on concentration mode and don’t want to talk, but I do that maybe 30-40% of the time.
I wonder what the difference is between this, and culture in EU where small talk isn't really a thing.
Also, nit, but Europe has ~2x the population of the States, and definitely more cultural and linguistic diversity.
I suspect the constant stimulation suppresses the default-mode network, the idle wandering your mind normally experiences when you're doing nothing.
Before that, I'd sometimes hold my phone up to my ear to listen to a podcast (even on the subway at minimum volume) but it was awkward so not ubiquitous. I think buying a paid of wireless earbuds was one of those decisions that made my life subtly worse overall, like eating a whole tub of ice cream.