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I feel like this neglects a huge use case: women that get harassed by random men in public spaces. Headphones are a godsend for this. I have multiple friends that wear headphones even when they’re not listening to anything for this reason. If you live in a major city it can be hard to make it a couple blocks without aggressive hellos.

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This article is more nuanced then just being against wearing headphones, but I do think it's important not to judge folks wearing headphones either on the street or in the office since it is a helpful way to block out distractions and signal to others that you're busy with your own thing.

As a dev I'd often pop on headphone when working in the office even without music when I was working on a serious chunk of logic - I'm on the senior end of things and get lots of questions and sometimes you really get into a groove and want to focus.

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