Earbuds: The End of Civilized Life As We Knew It
Is it their right to ensconce themselves in their earbuds’ sounds? Of course, it’s their right. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Many are familiar with what dogs do because they can. But it would be truly a dog’s life if that were all the dog did. Inter alia, he would die of hunger, with all but his tongue muscles dramatically atrophied.
In the past, that distant country for which so many yearn, Wordsworth wrote such memorable lines as these, in 1804, that glowingly express the joys of earbudless solitude:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Similarly, a blog by Oberlin College psychology professor Nancy Darling evokes the joys of solitude while working in her garden without being tethered to her earbuds:
It was midway through pulling up last year’s mouse-gnawed kohlrabi that I remembered I had my new cell phone in the back pocket of my jeans. Hours’ worth of music. Weeks’ worth of audiobooks. Streaming on-line radio. I even had the earbuds in my jacket. Yet somehow, despite what looked — and indeed, turned out to be — hours’ worth of tedious manual labor ahead of me, I didn’t put them on.
My senses were completely full. My hands were stirring through cold, crunchy vermiculate, damp moss, and earth, re-energizing my one and only raised bed. I could hear my breathing, drowning out everything except for the cardinals arguing over turf and that yellow bellied sapsucker that has been calling all week. Just like when I’m swimming, I was totally aware of the air going in and out of my lungs and the sheer physicality of my labor….That entirely filled my attention.
By mid-morning, the pumps were running, the fountains bubbling away, and the water clear and replenished….I moved on to the long rows of dead tomato plants, pulling old vines off of rhubarb finding its way to the sun….I’d catch and shake myself after a minute or two. Nothing anywhere on the surface of my mind, but completely occupied.
Like my muddy pond — you couldn’t see anything in it, but you knew there was something important happening just below the surface.
And I’d have lost it all if I’d turned on the music.
How powerfully Professor Darling describes what may so exasperate you when you encounter the swarms of Earbud People. They seem deeply unaware of what they’re missing, be they in “city or in forest,” in Leonard Cohen’s haunting phrase. They’re out of it everywhere.
The world would be a more civilized — as well as an intellectually and spiritually richer — place if the Earbud People would disengage from their technology and re-engage with the world both in communal life and through the luminous experience of true solitude. But this will not happen.
I regret to say that in this day and age, you’d be well-advised to obtain a free subway map and not depend on people who make clear by their behavior that they do not wish to engage with you, with themselves, or with anyone else. From now on, if we’re in public, we’re on our own. The Earbud People aren’t here to help. They’re the end of civilized life as we knew it.
-– Belladonna Rogers
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The practice of wearing buds is certainly less uncivilized and aggression invoking than that famous habit from the last century where urban yout’ would wander around in public with a boom box attached to shoulder and ear.
So many of those types were lucky to have survived the times without severe physical injury or having said appliance used as a suppository.
The current habit will die off when a few more distracted users are hit by cars.
Ray Bradbury first alerted us to this problem in “Fahrenheit 415″, people walking around with earshell radios, oblivious to anything or anyone around them. I now recognize a number of other notable ways our technology helps people avoid contact. One of the most effective is Facebook. The software is designed in such a way that people are forced to communicate in monosyllables and grunts. Facebook users can collect hundreds of ‘friends’ and never communicate with any of them on any meaningful level whatsoever. Any use of the return key, as in taking a breath for a new thought, automatically sends the message. It’s like trying to have a conversation at a rock concert–the software is designed to preclude any trace of intimacy or coherence.
I hate it when the Earbud People crank up their music so loud that you can hear it sitting right next to them. First of all, it’s rude. Second of all, aren’t they going deaf with all that “music” blaring in their ears? And God forbid if you ask them to turn it down. They look at you as if you are some sort of monster. They remind me of those people in the 1970s who walked around with those big boom boxes annoying everybody else. It seems incredible that people today can’t just walk around a little and be left with their own thoughts. Personally, I think they play the music real loud as a desperate cry for attention. Too bad they can’t get it because they’re tuning other people out.
Most likely they are already suffering from hearing loss due to having had the volume up too high. So now, they can’t really hear their stuff any more unless it’s turned way up.
What I find truly regrettable is the miserably low quality of the stuff that is being listened to these days. It’s even worse than the urban boom-box noise of the 1980s.
People used to be able to think when classical music was playing, because that type of music was designed to be conducive to thinking. That’s probably why kids these days don’t like it.
Yes, thinking is hard work for most folks. They get bored easily, because they would rather not think. They seek entertainment and distraction, so as to avoid thought. We all do at times. Vegging out occasionally is necessary. It is not a good lifestyle, though. Remember… you are not bored; you are boring.
Interesting. Earbuds have been a lifesaver for me, for exactly this reason.
I have a fairly serious social disorder that makes interaction in public difficult, at best. No medications have helped. Having the earbuds in, as you mentioned, essentially broadcasts a ‘do not disturb’ message, which makes basic shopping, etc., a bit more comfortable.
I don’t even have to turn my iPod on – and I often don’t – just having them in is enough. Is it anti-social? Maybe. But not everyone is a social person. Should one person’s discomfort at seeing earbuds in public trump another’s discomfort at interacting in public while shopping for necessities? It’s not like someone who tried to strike a conversation with me would get much. I almost completely shut down.
(Actually, believe it or not, I got the idea from an episode of the T.V. show Heroes. An episode featured a deaf woman, played by Deanne Bray, wearing earbuds – not connected to anything – for a similar purpose.)
I completely agree – though I don’t have a serious disorder, I’m very introverted and dealing with people on a daily basis often leaves me drained of energy. I choose to focus my energy where it counts: family, work, and personal thought. For years, earbuds were my defense against unwanted intrusion into my privacy – and like you, I was often not listening to anything. Since I have small children now, I don’t do this as often – but when they are older, I am certain my habits will revert.
I don’t have the excuse of having a disorder, but I’m quite an introverted person and this article made me pretty angry. It reminds me of the realization I had the last time I was on an airplane and I ended up sitting next to a really chatty person: this person was from the South somewhere and probably thought her questions of “oh, where are you from, honey, how long will you be in Chicago for, etc.” were socially obligatory to fulfill the politeness owed to the person you happen to be sitting next to on a plane. I’m from the Northeast and find that sort of thing really fake, and I wish people would just leave me alone. (On this particular occasion, I was pretty stressed because I’d had a flight delayed, and I’d barely gotten off standby onto this one.) A few years ago I resolved that if this sort of thing ever happened to me again, I would answer in some other language and pretend not to be able to speak English, but it has happened again and I haven’t yet had the balls to attempt this trick.
But anyway, at my age of 21 I’m a member of the complained-about generation, and I am admittedly guilty of listening to my iPod in public. I currently live in a large city and I don’t have a car, so I walk a lot (up to 30 minutes each way – if it’s more than that, or if the sidewalk situation is really awkward, I’ll take the subway) and it definitely staves off the boredom (it’s a city, the scenery is nothing special – but I do pay attention to landmarks, otherwise I’d probably get lost).
But if people have their music on so loud that they can’t tell if someone is trying to talk to them (because they legitimately need help/directions), then yeah, that’s just dumb. Especially on the subway, where you also might want to hear the announcements about how long it is until the next train arrives and such – and those are well nigh unintelligible anyway.
Also, I’m likely to be listening to Schubert, not some obnoxious crap with lyrics like “HEY LET’S RAPE WOMEN AND KILL COPS BLAH BLAH BLAH DRUGS ARE AWESOME”.
Chiarina, I thank you for your comment and am sorry this column caused you to feel anger. You channeled it into some very helpful comments that calmly and clearly made the case for how you feel.
Well do I remember being in my early twenties and dreading traveling next to the very kinds of people you describe. It may surprise you and others who describe themselves as introverts that such conversations, especially on planes, are one way some people cope with anxiety.
That certainly doesn’t mean you have to play along, but it’s something to file away in the back of your mind. You always have the right to say, “I’m listening to some classical music for a music exam,” or something to that effect that will (1) cut off the conversation that you don’t wish to have, and at the same time (2) not insult an older person who may, unbeknownst to you, be shaking in her boots about the flight.
When you wrote, further down, that “I’m a serious amateur classical musician and composer. Music IS part of my reality. I listen to recordings of pieces on my iPod in order to learn them (the better I understand what’s going on, the better I’ll be able to play the piece in my next orchestra rehearsal). It’s an active kind of listening (listening for form and counterpoint, deciding what I do and don’t like about the performance, etc.), which I think is a counterexample to the claim that listening to music prevents thinking” you made it clear that virtually nothing in this column applies to you, personally.
May you never have to sit next to anyone like that again — but it is likely to happen as long as you’re young! Older people are often interested in speaking with younger people in an effort to learn more about a different age group. But you have ways of coping with that without causing yourself discomfort and wasting your time, and without being unpleasant to the other person.
I wish you all the best with your musical studies and your composing and I do apologize for causing you to feel one of life’s most distressing emotions, anger. You used another of your skills, the ability to write very well, to express it in a way that communicated extremely effectively. That itself, is yet another important gift in life.
Enjoy Franz Schubert, one of the great traveling companions one could ever wish to have, wherever you may go.
Alyric and Jamie W., thank you for writing as clearly and helpfully as you did to present the situation from your perspectives. You both added a great deal to my understanding. I believe you also added to the understanding of other readers, as well. I welcome you to this Comments section and much appreciate your thoughtful and educational contributions. Many thanks to you both.
As a commuter with a 90 minute MARC ride, followed by 20 minutes in the Metro, I use earbuds…to listen to wave sounds in the morning, so I can sleep on my 4:58 a.m. train ride. It blocks out the occasional rude morning conversationalist. I also wear them on occasion in the Metro, without listening to music, specifically so I can be alone with my thoughts, and not be approached by anyone. Sometimes half the riders on the Metro are wearing them, and I often wonder what percentage are doing what I’m doing: listening to nothing, just not wanting to be bothered. (Earbuds do serve as nice earplugs to mute the din of the train station and Metro, as well. I also use them for that reason, to protect my hearing…)
Hmm, dunno, I’m not about to get bombarded by too many annoying street noises (and people holding one-sided conversation with their phones, gah) just because you cannot be bothered to use the Iphone or a map to find your way. Also, if you use a noisy train or plane, earbuds keep out the worst noise.
That said all, if you really need my assistance, I’m fine with being tapped on the shoulder. And just because I may be engrossed in listening to something, it does not mean I don’t use my eyes to carefully scan my surroundings, nor does it mean that I would not help anyone either. (would a deaf person be antisocial?)
But my earbuds are my portable bit of privacy and I often wear them without actually listening to anything because if you sit there without earbuds, it invites random nutters chew your ear off with boring conversations, far worse, if you’re female, it attracts legions of sex-starved idiots who enjoy harassing and humiliating you by whispering obscenities in your ear because of their peculiar cultural background (to put it politely). Those earbuds function like a Burka in many ways… ;-D
Moreover beggars and charity chuggers find it easier to pester you — earbuds signals prominently that they are wasting their time with you and it gives you a great excuse to get assertive with time wasters for daring to disturb you and thus cut short the moments they’ll steal from you.
Also, a lot of people don’t listen to music but to audio books, and speech doesn’t quite drown out reality the way that music does. Besides that audiobooks makes good use to otherwise wasted time, you can educate yourself quite a bit whilst commuting.
So, earbuds is no problem at all if you use them wisely, how about trying it out?
Here is a nice librivox free audiobook to travel or chore with: http://librivox.org/the-log-of-a-cowboy-by-andy-adams/ or if you like it history, try this: http://librivox.org/history-of-the-united-states-vol-i-by-charles-and-mary-beard/
So true, RightwingHippy Chick: I use my iPod and Earbuds when I’m working in my shop or outdoors. When my wife approaches, I pop the earbuds out and give her my full attention. Otherwise, I listen to music and books. In the past months since finding LibreVox.com, I listened to about 150 great books. These have stimulated my thoughts, filled my mind with good things, made the time pass quickly while doing necessary tasks (mowing lawns, weeding, cutting wood), and enhanced my life. I’m 76 years old and am able to catch up on books and music I missed while investing a busy career helping others. There is plenty of time left to hear the birds, watch the squirrels, feed the horses that live behind us and appreciate nature. Now I am trying to get my Grandkids to plug into great books to enrich their lives. Thank you RWHChick and LibreVox.
I wear my ear buds at work. I don’t listen to music. I am usually listening to the Glenn Beck radio program. My mind goes a million miles a minute at times and I am easily distracted. When it comes the time to put my head down and get things done, I put in my buds and go to town. My mind has something to do while the rest of me takes care of the mindless work that I need to do. I can spend an hour at the copier scanning invoices but often times I giggle as I listen to another funny bit on GB. When I get ready to enter my payroll I put in my buds and enter away. Payroll starts as basic data entry. I make fewer mistakes when I can hear my fingers hearing the keys. I am an office manager for a construction company on a jobsite and sit right at the front door. I can hear people talking and I can hear the phone ring. When someone comes in the door I take the buds out and pause what I am listening to so that I can give the person the proper attention.
The main problem I have had lately is remembering to turn the volume down when I switch from listening to my iPod in the car to listening via ear buds. Nothing will scare the crap out of you more when it is full volume and you weren’t ready for that.
Hey — the 80′s just called, they want their headline back.
Seriously, I’ve read the variations on this theme since the Walkman came out, and I was in grammar school then ! I spent my high school years as a “headphone” person. I hit college and just stopped. I don’t know why, maybe because I had Big Speakers in my dorm.
Headphones, earbuds — boomboxes on the shoulder — we’ve survived it for 30+ years now. I would be hard pressed to call this a new problem.
Exactly what I was thinking, Chris.
It may even be worse than that. I teach at a large metropolitan university and keeping my students focused on their classwork rather than on their electronic devices is a constant challenge. (Yes – I know that makes me a hopeless dinosaur.) I explicitly require that all earbuds, earphones, iPads cell phone etc. be put away before class. During my lectures or class discussion I can see different students looking hungrily at their backpacks or bags where their gadgets are (hopefully) stowed. It’s like a smack addict anticipating his next fix. (Don’t get me started on all of the subtle nuances of in-class texting.)
Students come to me for conferences wearing, not only earbuds, but studio-grade headphones. I refuse to talk to them until their headgear is removed and the music device shut down. It’s like I’m asking them to cut off an arm.
Belladonna writes….” Earbud people are like heavily-medicated people — swathed in an inner universe that’s at once protective and unreflective. They’re neither in touch with others nor with themselves.”
That strikes me as perfectly correct. Efforts to teach tough new concepts and “critical thinking” skills are increasingly difficult when there is the ever-present mini-Nirvana of the earbud void.
Funny thing is, they’re mostly listening to shit. I’m just glad I can’t hear it. Now if we could only get the idiots with overly large stereos in their vehicles to switch to ear buds, we’d really have something.
Guilty as charged.
I like to listen to books on mp3 on my iPod when working out, grocery shopping, riding the metro or even driving. Basically, any time I’m alone and doing things that don’t actually require a lot CPU cycles, I like to listen to books. And the ear-buds do isolate me from those around me.
To the folks in the gas station or store, I apologize, and I won’t wear my iPod while going through check-out anymore.
this is not a main comment- since I don’t live around earbud types. But- isn’t New York an overwhelming sensory experience? Noise, industrial noise, random noise, screechy noise, metal on metal noise? Not, trees, birds, sanity, but hellacious, raw, random, ugly noise? We don’t hear ear-bud comments from leafy,small burgs with delightful songbirds, right?
I would think anything that would make CSLewis’s version of hell from Screwtape Letters- less hellish, and more lovely and orderly would be a good thing.
Loved the first picture … zoned out … and NOT in the zone.
And your thoughts reminded me of something else.
The business of talking on cell phones, almost in preference to the people around one.
I’ve been thinking of it as “the absent presence.” I work in downtown Chicago and it’s easy to see how many people literally “live” their phones. Clamped to their ear, walking, driving, commuting on the El, these folks find the people at the other end of the conversation more “real” than the person next to them, their phone conversations more real than real-life. How would they function without the phone??
Assuming they weren’t in more face to face meetings, they would deal with it as they always did – by tuning out – especially when traveling on the Subway. 50 years ago on the hellish summer un-air conditioned subway cars, while riding out to Coney island to give my sweat glands a change of scenery: do you think we discussed Proust? There were these huge fans that ROARED: one couldn’t think.
I listen to books on train – what should I concentrate on, the smell of the poor demented derelict 10 seats away?
If privacy and personal space is a good, and rare in this world, the earbuds give a good simulacrum: grab it where you can. Cell phones add drama and feed self importance: annoying but trivial. Unless one is in a friendly group it is not overly rude to use the phone as long as the call is short and to the point.
With strangers, if they are not causing annoyance, what is the issue? Do we think we are going to crate the Agora of Athens on the L train?
They’re doing what makes them happy. Be glad… you can still interrupt them, or are you the real introvert?
Anyone who’s been reading this column for more than a week knows that Belladonna Rogers is no introvert, Baobo. OTOH, you might be projecting.
They “act as if” — ? They have no responsibilities, strictly speaking, to those around them other than to leave them in peace. To accept and answer a query — hopefully, politely in both directions — is a courtesy, and should be appreciated as such.
That having been said, I too am disturbed by the phenomenon of “absent presence” which portable electronic devices, including cell phones, have made endemic. It’s not irresponsible in the conventional sense, but the atomization it entails does reduce the sense of neighborliness that would otherwise exist in transient public gatherings such as subway cars and kiosk waiting lines. As another commenter said, it’s preferable to the boom boxes, but it represents a similar, albeit lower-volume, loss to civil society for all that.
Not only that, anyone who goes out in public with earbuds stuffed in his ears is putting himself in danger. Not only from unheard traffic but from the thugs and transients, unnatural spawn of the War on Poverty, who lurk in all our towns and cities these days. Walking down the street, riding the subway, you have to have your senses alert at all times if you don’t want to become a victim.
What about the other side of this? I’m 40+, going back to college, and ESP. when I’m on campus, I can’t begin to say how many “close calls” I’ve had as a DRIVER. From earbuds to cell phones — these people don’t even look one way, let alone both — and just step off the curb, walk across streets, parking lots, you name it. If *I* was in their la-la land, they’d be dead, mowed down by a car. Not that I zoom around, but I’ve had to slow down to a crawl to avoid these morons. I remember one close call where I literally had to squeal my brakes, making the car’s rear slide; what did I get for my efforts? A “wish you were dead” stare and the finger, of course. It’s my fault you’re an idiot?
I think what Belladonna is bemoaning is that everyone wants/needs to be isolated from time-to-time, but not ALL the time. It seems so many people have simply become habituated to this kind of behavior. I hope this article at least sensitizes the people who have developed this as a (bad? rude?) habit, w/o thinking it through, or having a compelling reason (i.e. mental disorder) for tuning out everyone else a large percentage of the time.
I was reading all the comments and you’re the first one to mention this. I was going to post it if nobody else did. I only use earbuds when I’m in the gym or walking my dog. All other times I want to be aware of what’s behind me. And even at the gym I’m checking the mirrors. It’s that pesky martial arts training…
Stating that people with earbuds can’t think deep thoughts is a weak straw man argument. No effort is made to establish this assertion with data or example. Furthermore, no acknowledgment is made of the argument that listening to music enhances the ability to think deeply, even in an effort to refute it.
If this is the standard for commentary on this subject, then I have no qualms in offering my own opinion: the aggrieved statements in this article and many of the comments represent the common complaints of needy extroverts who feel entitled to continuous social affirmation from the people around them. These sad, selfish people, wholly dependent on goodwill of strangers on subways for the attention they crave, deserve our pity. One day they may grow up to live fulfilling lives as independent people, but I doubt it will happen as long as they feel entitled to the time and conversation of everyone they encounter.
your rudeness and lack of appreciation for an interesting column that no one forced you to read is over-the-top. “needy extroverts” is your idea of some brilliant diagnosis of people who are open to others and not full of your brand of rage?
No, no that’s not it. My point is that the column itself condemns earbud users out-of-hand for contributing to the end of civilization without offering much more evidence than the pique of those who resent total strangers who ignore them on the subway. The article offers diagnoses of both anti-social tendencies and lack of ability to mentate for those who choose to isolate themselves with earbuds. You read this article and then called me over the top?
As for my feelings about extroverts, I’m not filled with rage, only a mild weariness. I’ve lived with them all my life, and while I don’t understand why they need to chatter all the time, I don’t hate them for it: as an introvert, stranger’s opinions don’t excite my interest to the point of rage.
THIS.
Being “open to others” doesn’t mean we should be obliged to try to engage meaningfully with every random stranger on the bus.
I seem to remember reading about some psych studies about how extroverts don’t have as much brain activity as introverts when they’re alone, and this might be why they seem to need lots of stimulation from other people.
Also, I resent total strangers who DON’T ignore me on the subway (unless they have a really good reason, like I dropped my wallet or I’m on fire and didn’t notice).
“I seem to remember reading about some psych studies about how extroverts don’t have as much brain activity as introverts when they’re alone, and this might be why they seem to need lots of stimulation from other people.”
I have no idea if that is true or not, but I like it and will consider it to be settled science.
Found a reference to it:
http://www.uthealthleader.org/archive/mind_body_soul/2005/introvertsvsextroverts-1221.html
The introverted brain has a higher level of internal activity and thinking than the extroverted brain. It is dominated by the long, slow pathway of another neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Introverts require a limited range of not too much or too little dopamine, another brain chemical, and a good level of acetylcholine to keep a calm feeling instituted. Acetylcholine serves as a trigger to the brain to conserve energy and stimulates good thinking and feeling.
Laney explains that the extroverted brain just doesn’t have as much internal activity going on. So, it scans the external world for stimulation to fuel the shorter, quicker dopamine pathway. “The signals from the brain travel to the Full-Throttle (sympathetic nervous) system that controls certain body functions and influences how ‘outies’ behave,” she says.
But, an extrovert needs its sidekick, adrenaline, to help cook up more dopamine in the brain, Laney says. Like plants to sunlight, their energy comes from the places they go; the people they see. “Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will be calling someone on his cell phone.”
Ms. Rogers is lamenting a dearth of sociability. But it is not new. It goes back all the way to the days of the Walkman. And before then, people read books and newspapers.
Some people, especially those who live in cities, seek solitude wherever they can get it. Some do not like to be social every waking hour of the day.
Another outstanding article, Belladonna. Indeed, it’s one of your best because it offers such an interesting meditation on the sorrows of modern, technologically suffused life. The comments are also outstanding and actually taught me something new. I had never thought about the solace these devices give to people who actually have deep-seated issues interacting with others. That, at least, is a silver lining.
>>”They block one of the most important human activities: thinking.”
Is this assuming they are listening to music?
I don’t wear earbuds in public, but at home listen to podcasts, talk radio, etc. on my phone.
Hardly “non-thinking” listening fare.
But I do agree earbud wearers in public tend to be socially oblivious.
Being a long time hearing aid wearer I detest having anything in my ear all the time.
If you wear an ear bud long enough and loud enough you can expect to wear plastic in your ear whether listening to music or just to hear period for the rest of your life and the first words out of your mouth when spoken too will be..”WHAT, Say that again please!”
The author doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Did she ever ride the New York subway in the days before earbuds? If so, did her budless fellow-passengers seem relaxed, comfortable, alert, friendly, interested in meeting new people and making new friends? I doubt it. Probably more like they just wanted to be left alone and get the ride over with. The only people who really dig the whole subway experience are tourists.
The fact is, people have NEVER been perky and friendly on the subway. Most of us DO want to be left alone. We’re on our way to work or to class. We’ve been at work on in class all day. We’re tired. We’re busy, We’re stressed out. Our minds, if we let them, are going a million miles an hour thinking about all the stuff we have to do today or when we get home or tomorrow or the rest of the week. And our personal space is crammed full of strangers who are just as frazzled as we are and who also don’t want to talk to us or be BFFs. If the guy next to me wants to shut out the world, good for him. For some of us, the subway is literally the ONLY place we can relax because we have nothing else to do but sit there. We all understand each other. And our buds facilitate this public privacy, giving us something to do besides pretending to read the ads in order to avoid making eye contact.
Nobody except the author is offended by any of this.
Skipping your anger-management classes, have you, Bugs? Many readers who have commented make clear they agree with the author. You sound like a person no one would want to have anything to do with. Keep those earbugs workin’ for you. They sure beat your personality if this comment is any example.
That’s the whole point, Jackson. I am not a happy person. Riding the overcrowded, unreliable, uncomfortable, hot, stinky subway every day makes me even less happy. I deliberately limit the extent to which I experience my own commute. If I focused any attention on the fellow passengers crammed in around me, I’d probably end up saying and doing a lot of unpleasant, embarrassing things. It is better for everyone if I sit quietly with my eyes closed and my “earbugs” in, listening to soothing music.
As for what many other commenters have said on this page – they’re wrong, and need to stop minding other people’s business so much.
I’m glad I took the time to read your article. I’m not an earbud person nor do I talk on the cell phone in public and so much of what you wrote hit home with me whether personal experience or what I’ve simply known deep down. You don’t pull any punches and it’s a subject you shouldn’t. It is a deterioration of which can be symptomatic of other depravities increasingly degrading the fabric of society, and we really have to know it for what it is. Thank you for your time.
I liken these addictive, reality-escaping personal devices to Soma. It’s a brave new world.
I disagree.
I’m a serious amateur classical musician and composer. Music IS part of my reality. I listen to recordings of pieces on my iPod in order to learn them (the better I understand what’s going on, the better I’ll be able to play the piece in my next orchestra rehearsal). It’s an active kind of listening (listening for form and counterpoint, deciding what I do and don’t like about the performance, etc.), which I think is a counterexample to the claim that listening to music prevents thinking.
Not that I don’t also listen to music more passively. I have Spotify running right now, as I’m typing this comment.
I’m with you on the extrovert/brain stimulation thing, but I am not going along on this ride.
That may be your reason for earbuds, but no way am I giving all the “earbud people” that kind of wide-ranging benefit of the doubt, as in “Oh, he/she must be an amateur classical musician and composer.” Not gonna happen unless they are carrying a cello.
I wasn’t saying that — I was just trying to describe a situation in which the “earbuds = soma” claim breaks down.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, not will I ever be, an “Earbud Person.” But something you must ask yourself is whether the people you see wearing earbuds are doing so all the time. Could it be simply that you notice them more because there are more people using them because they are now so widely available? Do you know that the people you see wearing them are wearing them all the time, or only when you happen to see them?
Are you keeping track such that you can make a definitive statement that anyone at all is an “Earbud Person,” wearing earbuds all the time? If not, how do you justify such sweeping claims as “the end of civilized life as we knew it”? Your piece sounds like this:
“The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.” – Assyrian tablet, circa 2800 BC
The other issue that I encounter constantly is when I am commuting home on my bike. It is legal in my state for me to ride my bicycle on the sidewalk. Of course the common rule is that as you approach a pedestrian you ring a bell or some other noise thing and yell, “On your left!” tell them that you are about to pass them on their left side. If they do not respond you pretty much have to slow down to a crawl as you pass them being prepared to stop immediately or veer away if they move to their left. It is so rare anymore that the pedestrian hears me because they have earbuds plugged in and can’t hear anything! It’s not only dangerous for me but especially for them!
It’s great that we’ve solved all of society’s really pressing problems, and we can now tackle the growing earbud menace.
Because really, people listening to music and minding their own business is surely going to kill us all.
Who cares if you need directions- get a map.
The degree of sheer denseness is surprising on a web site that usually attracts bright people who make intelligent comments. Your comment has no bearing on anything except your foul state of mind. Not all directions can be discerned from maps, like which stairway leads to the correct platform. People are always going to need to ask questions that can’t be answered by any iPhone or even any posted map.
But Jones. Don’t you worry. No one would approach you if they had the slightest interpersonal radar. Every word you wrote, and your charming attitude will assure you that you’ll be left alone, including when you need help. Your comment shows you need a lot of help already. Too bad you vent on web sites and not at a gym or a bar.
Must be easier to take pot shots at women you don’t know than at a living woman who might give you the swift slap in the face you deserve. Or kick in the butt.
Hey, and enjoy your solitude, dude. You’ve sure earned it.
If I lived in a place as densely populated as Manhattan and couldn’t follow Snake Plissken, I’d use any strategy I could find to maintain some kind of mental privacy. Earbuds wouldn’t be my first choice, but they’d be in the toolkit.
Earbuds hurt my ears. I don’t know how people can stand them and as far as I’m concerned it seems like a habit destined to promote deafness. Want a good stock tip? Buy stock in some hearing aid company – they’re going to do great business!
Belladonna is talking about the loss of a common courtesy that connects us all socially. That loss is a loss. Maybe it’s not something everyone has seen or experienced over a period of 10 or more years. But it’s there. People are distracted from one another … by music, by remote electronic friendships, and even by comment boards on the web.
It’s good to look at that … to wonder about it … to ask if it’s a good thing or not … to ask how it has changed us.
As for offering assistance to one another … or asking for assistance, that’s simply part of the human experience unless one wants to be a hermit. It’s human right? Like posting up here in the comments section
I put my earbuds in to listen to Rush when I eat lunch at my favorite Italian restaurant in town. Alone.
I confess to being a convert now, after reading the comments. But no matter how hard I have tried in the past, I have never been able to wear earbuds. Also didn’t know that is what they were called. I jam them in, screw them in, attempt to tape them into my ear sockets and within seconds they invariable fall out. I can’t tell you how many movies I have watched as silent flicks on airplanes. I don’t think I’d mind listening to Rush or Beck or Schubert. And, btw, what’s the difference (thinking-wise) to writing while listening to, as I am doing this moment, Maria Callas in the background? I think the cellphone is much ruder than the earbud–as well as potentially far more dangerous to one’s health, unless the earbudder gets hit by a truck. And here I was anti earbuds, thinking they represented a numbing down of those generations trailing behind me. Thank you, all of you.
I don’t care for earbuds. However, I often wear headphones while working in a computer lab. It has the power of a “Do Not Disturb” sign, and with the headphones connected to my smartphone’s microphone, I can hear anything in the room.
As soon as I get on the metro here in D.C. the earbuds go on. Listening to some good classical music on a rainy fall day while riding the metro just seems right.
There are obviously times when earbuds are inappropriate. When you’re just sitting around minding your own business in public or in private is not one of them. However, it’s rude to wear them in situations where you are expected to listen to or interact with another person. Nothing says “I’m important and you’re not worthy of my attention” like listening to music or talking on the cellphone while someone is trying to ring up your purchase, take your order, teach you something in class, or check you into your hotel room. Most people I’ve seen doing it also can’t multitask very well. They end up getting in the way and wasting everyone else’s time because they’re not paying attention to what they’re doing. And don’t get me started about the selfish jerks who wander around aimlessly, walk into you on the sidewalk, or step in front of your car because they’re busy playing with their precious devices. Traditional concepts like “watch where the hell you’re going” and “be considerate” don’t seem to apply to them. So earbud people on the train are understandable and relatively harmless. When they get up and start moving around, however, they become annoying and sometimes dangerous. I agree that some people are literally addicted to their electronics. If you can’t walk half a block from one class to another or from the train station to your office without talking to or texting somebody, you may have a problem.
I don’t think people who listen to mp3 players are necessarily antisocial, which appears to be the prevailing opinion here. I have the buds in my ears for some period of time almost daily, not at excessive volume, not unaware of my surroundings, and not to say ‘leave me alone’. Usually, I’m listening to talk radio but also to university lectures, commentaries, interviews, and books and not just mindless Top 40 pop tunes. For me, there’s just never enough time in the day and so I choose to use it as productively as possible while away from work and family. Sometimes, that involves doing some light tasks like email on my laptop or reading a book in public. Based on what I’ve read here, a lot of folks would label any activity that doesn’t make me immediately available to entertain others as contributing to the end of civilized life.