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Comment by noworriesnate | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed the same thing even on airplanes, where everyone is offline. Unfortunately in that case almost everything is either sleeping, consuming corporate entertainment, or reading books.

BUT there are always a few people who are open to talking. I prefer talking to being on the phone when I'm in flight. I get to have a long conversation about 1/4 of flights.

If you read old books like Pilgrim's Progress you see people walking towards the same town together, and they always struck up a conversation. Look at the Canterbury Tales: some really great literature that consists just of fellow travelers having a storytelling contest! We are missing so much humanity in our kosher lives.

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At least in the US, most aircraft have internet now - many people are not offline. And even if they're not paying for the internet service, a number of airlines deliver their free entertainment services through personal devices - so they may be watching the same sort of content that would be in a seatback TV on other airlines.

Speaking personally:

I also tend to just load entire books onto my phone for flights. Reading on a small screen doesn't bother me.

With regards to talking - I like talking to strangers. However, the plane is one of the few places I try to avoid striking up conversations. People around me having loud (and it is loud, because talking quietly on a plane is impossible) conversations for hours about nonsense is something incredibly annoying to be on the receiving end of. While I enjoy actually having a conversation, I also know that by doing it I'll be annoying a half-dozen other people not involved in it but forced to listen to it in an environment where they can't do anything to escape it, and it feels rude to do that - especially since I don't enjoy when I'm in their position.

Does anyone remember when the TVs on airplanes hung down from the ceiling and there was only one or maybe two movies on the flight? There was either nothing on the back of the seat, or there was a very expensive satellite telephone.

I still do what I did then - read. I just read on a Kindle now instead of a stack of paperback books bought at the airport.

A fond memory I have from about 25 years ago when I was still a kid:

I was flying economy on KLM with my mom and dad, family vacation to Europe. About a few hours prior to landing, the crew put on some Mr. Bean movies. Back then at least on that flight as far as I can still remember, there weren't seatback screens; only those dropdown TV screens on the ceiling above the aisles, so everyone had to watch Mr. Bean.

Well tell you what, Mr. Bean is bloody hilarious and I was a kid. I couldn't help but burst out laughing even though I knew it was bad manners, and in short order the entire cabin was laughing with me. That was a fun day.

If you like those kinds of storytelling-on-a-pilgrimage stories, I highly recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A large part of the book consists of a group of pilgrims-of-sorts traveling together and sharing stories, which gradually help you understand what's really going on.

I apologize if this comes across as 'how dare you talk about pancakes when I prefer waffles', but I just want to mention that, like a lot of people, I destroyed my hearing when I was young and now I struggle to hear on busses and planes.

If someone talks to me on a plane I say "Sorry, my hearing is really bad", and its really embarrassing when they respond by speaking so loudly the whole plane can hear for the rest of the flight.

Have you considered using hearing aids?

Yes, I've tried two different hearing aids, and they were both worse than useless. They often amplified the wrong voices in the crowd, and not even consistently. It was like listening to the radio and having someone constantly changing stations.

If you've got a recommendation for one that is able to identify which voice in the crowd I want amplified, I'd appreciate it!

I don’t have first hand experience, I just know someone who described a similar problem and then raved to me once they got hearing aids about how life changing they were for that problem.

It sounds like yours were trying to actively amplify certain voices? I wonder if that’s sounds good but doesn’t work sort of feature. Naively it seems like just shifting the volume on everything should work as long as the frequency curve matches the lost frequencies. The brain is what is separating the voices, not the ears.

Hope this advances faster https://masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2023/04/mass-e...

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