memes

If you have enough money to afford a modern cellphone, you can pay $20 for crappy bluetooth headphones like the rest of us. It's very interesting that it's never an otherwise very respectful and thoughtful individual whose playing their music loudly in a public space, there's always one or two other markers letting you know they're just always an asshole.

I completely agree.

But.

I fucking hate how I can't read about anything any more. Especially instructional things.

It's getting to the point that if there's something I want to learn about or research, I have to watch a video. And of course, I probably didn't bring headphones, because I wasn't planning on listening to or watching anything.

As I understand it, people mostly change their mind (and thus behavior) for two reasons.

The first is in-group beliefs. If someone sees other people in their in-group believing a thing or behaving in a way, they're more likely to adopt that. Possibly the people who play audio in public, their friends and peers are the same way. But if you also might be in one of their groups, like a college kid to another college kid, or a junior professional to another, talking to them might make a difference. But if you're like a 59 year rich old white guy, telling a 16 year old non-white poorer kid is unlikely to land, because they probably see you as outgroup.

The other thing that changes minds is horrible trauma. Like, if you smashed their head into the bus window, took their phone and transferred all their money (via venmo or whatever), then tossed the phone out the window, they might change their mind about being a public irritant. Maybe. They might also take some other lesson instead. But either way you'd go to jail for several crimes, so probably don't do that.

We as a society have given up on doing literally anything to shame or punish people who are rude selfish assholes. In fact a large contingent of society seems to celebrate selfishness now. Considering how your actions impact others is something I feel like capitalism has destroyed by showing the world that the only thing you should value is getting ahead by any means necessary, just pretend your actions have no consequences and sell your soul and you too can definitely ~~never~~ be rich too. I truly believe seeing this play out in real life for our entire lives has just shown people considering other people is a recipe to be worse off than being selfish. Capitalism is a plague.

That's was pisses me off ever since I started to go by train instead of my car for environmental reasons to work. Like what happend that people don't understand the general politeness anymore. We used to be gentle to each other and that means that I don't force other people to listen to my videos as well.

The last time a young mother gave her little 3 year old child an iPad to watch videos. I'm not sure what pissed me off the most, that it was with sound or that the mother gave an iPad to her kid, because it's well studied how bad phones and tablets influence kids.

I was in a train replacement coach the other week, and sitting behind me were some guys who were watching YT Shorts or TikTok (Probably the latter) over speakers. I didn't have my own earphones with me, so I had to hear his shit the whole way through.

If I was any sharper, I would have asked: "What gives you the confidence that any random person nearby appreciates what you're hearing?"

Not Apples biggest fan, but do love that so many people use their earbuds. I noticed a big shift in people using them versus blaring their music and videos on public transit.

It's not even hard to carry them anymore, it's not like we even have to deal with wires. A 10 minute bus ride it's still just easier to pull out my earbuds and pop them in