What's wrong with your headphones?
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As usual this morning, I got the bus to work. Unfortunately, also as usual, so did somebody with very little respect for those around them. Anybody who has been on public transport in recent years will no doubt be familiar with the sort. They come in all shapes and sizes, but they all have two things in common: a phone with a loud speaker and a bad taste in music.
I'm a music fan myself—and a musician, in fact. I love music. Well, I love many forms of music at least. But I appreciate that whatever style I'm listening to (usually rock/metal, but it really could be anything), it might not be to everyone's taste. I also frequently listen to music on my journeys to and from work. But I do so via a delightful invention we commonly refer to as "headphones". Admittedly, I might not be the only one that can hear what I listen to, and I'm sure those sitting next to (or near) me might hear something if they listen hard enough, but I've made an effort to minimise the impact on others.
It would appear, however, that this is a dying trend. More and more frequently, I find myself listening to other people's music on the bus. And despite my fairly eclectic tastes, it's rarely something I want to listen to. Worse still, sometimes it's being played so loud that, even with my own music blaring through my headphones, I can still hear it. A couple of times, I've even seen people I can only describe as idiots actually wearing PC speakers in place of headphones. Not content with the speaker on their phone, they've actually gone out of their way to obtain something to actively guarantee to annoy everyone in a fairly sizeable range.
Aside from the blatant rudeness, there are two things that bug me most about this. Firstly, of the hundreds (perhaps even thousands?) of times I've had to put up with this nonsense, I can perhaps think of only one or two occasions where the music being played was either (a) something I would listen to or (b) something mainstream enough as to be almost tolerable by a majority of people. More often than not, it's dreadful 'garage' style music with rambling morons spewing out meaningless, rapid fire drivel about how difficult their otherwise idle lives have been. The second thing is that, despite how terrible the music already is in the first place, it is made doubly so when played back at high volumes through a tiny (and tinny) speaker from the back of a phone.
Whatever happened to treating those around you with respect? I wouldn't ask anyone to go insane and engage those around them with polite and stimulating conversation, but for goodness sake must you instead annoy them with the aural equivalent of being repeatedly kicked in the groin?
Tomorrow I'll be back on the bus. Hopefully my iPod will be suitably charged to at least numb out some of the pain...