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Comment by plantain | Hacker News Reader

Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.

That I really don't get (and I experience it a lot using transit for my commute) . It seems more common now, but you'd think it would be less common. Headphones used to be bulky things, now Bluetooth earbuds are tiny things easily put in your pocket -- why not use them?

Because fuck you, that's why.

More seriously, whenever I ask a young person on public transport to use headphones (and luckily I live in a region where I can safely do that and enjoy some authority as an older person), the response is usually that the youth doesn't have headphones on him for whatever reason (doesn't own any, left them at home, whatever). But with the breakdown of this taboo, people don't feel that not having headphones should stop them from sweet TikTok dopamine.

iPhones also have a horrible sound management system which is just finally getting better. People keep their phone on silent at all times for this reason.

If from the start they had simply had separate volume controls for alarms / phone calls / media / alerts then I think this would not have become a trend.

Complaints about loud audio on public transport are common in Europe, where the predominant phone OS is Android, not iPhones.

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom.

What you experience is a cultural difference.

Well, not quite. Not showing your hair or not eating in public may have meaning in somebody's culture/religion, but it doesn't hurt anyone else either way. Playing video/music without earphones does. And surely people must have experienced it from the other side when people nearby were playing music they didn't care for. I think it is reasonable for people to ask themselves "Would I like it if someone near me did <X>?", and if the answer is 'No' to not do it themselves. Maybe this is "shame" or maybe simple empathy.

Have you traveled Latin America? Loud audio in public is so normal there that immigrants to Europe often can't see what all this fuss is about when people complain about loud phones on public transport. This is very much a mutable cultural thing.

Eating in public places not mean for eating subjects others to the smell of your food in the same way that listening to something on speaker subjects them to unwanted sound. Hijabs are more indirect but I would disagree that it doesn't affect others.

> What you experience is a cultural difference.

In that not all cultures recognize causing negative externalities as a bad thing?

Negative externalities is culturally dependent. The Japanese consider the sight of a person eating while walking to be a negative externality. Are we going to start complaining here on HN about people doing it? No, we recognize that those taboos vary across time and space.

The difference is some taboos are just based on tradition, and others are based on actual damage. Nobody is hurt by seeing someone walking and eating -- they can just not look at them and the problem is solved. You can't not just hear the noise people inconsiderate not to use headphones make.

In cultures where the sight of certain things is taboo, telling a local person that they have to direct their gaze elsewhere feels as much of a rude imposition as someone's phone audio reaching your ears. Please try to step beyond your own cultural upbringing and realize how arbitrary and mutable all these things are.

But then people get angry if you don't want those "cultural differences" in your daily life. And when people question why you prefer private transportation.

shame only works if there are consequences. if you're not calling them out then you are complicit. you are accepting that, and you need to live with it.

if you want someone to respect your feelings then ultimately you will have to make them. for broke-ass hoodrats, for whom economic factors won't work, that means eventually going to Louis' ultima ratio -- e.g. calling this out may lead to a fistfight on a moving bus.

More to the point, we currently share a society with many people of a violent culture, which makes directly shaming them dangerous and unwise. This was not always the case. The death of shaming is largely related to the increased daily proximity to violent subcultures who do not fear consequences.

Those subcultures have their own notions of shame and honor, and have lines they are careful about crossing and willingness to turn to violence if their honor is overly injured.

Disapproving glances on the subway when their music is too loud does not rise to that level, however.

Or their shame of playing TikTok audio in public is less than their shame and anxiety of dealing with the modern world (including crowded mass transit)

FWIW I use public transport daily and it basically never happens (I honestly don't remember a single time, it's that rare). Maybe it's cultural thing, I mean country dependent? Loud teenagers of course happen, but they don't play music out loud.

It's a cultural thing. For example if you go to Japan, you can hear a pin drop in trains.. cultural homogeneity plays a large role in this.

In my experience it's dominantly teen-aged kids who are just figuring the world out, or in more unfortunate but very rare cases 30-somethings who never quite grew up.

I was that shameless annoyance once too. It doesn't mean shame is dead.

It's easy to blame the young generations.

I noticed olders are more ignorant too:

* Standing prolonged in the way during smalltalk? Even 60y+ seems to have lost the art of stepping aside as much as possible.

* Stopping a crosswalks, esp. when children are waiting? 50y+ seem more prone to just driving ...

I think there’s a difference between knowing you’re doing something wrong and not caring, and not even knowing you’re doing anything wrong. What you’re describing is usually the latter.

They definitely get glares and annoyed looks from fellow passengers. And they must be oblivious if they’ve never noticed other people distractingly listening to music next to them or whatever.

That’s more about power than shame. When people feel powerless imposing on others is one of the only ways they can take a semblance of power back.

Antisocial behaviour is easier, major crime is harder. Doesn't seem like the worst tradeoff to me.

In what way are these two things related that would make this a tradeoff?

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