“Can you hear me? Is this thing on?”

Through all the movie tropes we’ve come to know and love (movie villain: “Don’t trust anyone!” Later… “I told you not to trust anyone!”) one rings true to me in my line of work: malfunctioning microphones. Pun intended.
It happens every. damn. time.
Character walks up. Character speaks into microphone. Microphone feeds back. Character makes face. Character begins to speak again, microphone magically fixed.
(Let’s hear it for all those invisible, fictional AV guys in movies that are able to correct feedback so quickly.)
Now like helicopters exploding in movies, most people don’t even notice that it happens every time. I get it, most of the time it’s done for comedic effect, or to show that a character is nervous. But Hollywood writers don’t have good faith in microphones. That little detail which we’ve all heard and are familiar with from a limited standpoint underscores a lot of what we feel during public speaking.
The feedback or broken microphone underscores our nervousness about public speaking. And for many people, having this weird looking silver thing put in front of their face doesn’t help. Most people don’t know how a microphone works. They don’t understand polarity patterns or gain structures. And that leads to a lot of confusion when suddenly a microphone has to be used to be heard.
From my point of view, it’s extremely frustrating during live events. We have a very helpful instinct that tells us in unfamiliar circumstances to emulate those who we believe to have some idea of what they’re doing. This copycat function is how we learn. So think of the issues this causes when most people have only seen microphones in movies or tv and every time they see one it doesn’t quite work. Talk about consumer confidence. It’s like a car salesman having to sell to people who have never driven a car. Common people, you don’t need to know how the engine works, you just need to know how to drive — learn about polarity patterns.
(It’s worth mentioning that most of the microphones we see in live situations [concerts, news programs, public speeches] work perfectly fine, Trump campaign rallies notwithstanding.)
So how do we get past this fundamental disconnect between the amateur speaker and his microphone? More education would be nice, but most people don’t see the need to learn. It should just work. Unfortunately, like your car, you have to learn to drive first to get where you need to be every time. Other than that you’re just getting lucky.
Luckily we’ll keep taking your money whether you know what you’re doing or not. :-)