You’re not alone. I hate audible notifications! On the train (always in the quiet section because people just don’t give a shit), in the restaurant, at work, in the park — once I was on the loveliest terrace in the loveliest hotel right outside Deia, Mallorca, looking at the mountains and the ocea — DONGGGHH-GGHH-GHH, a fucking WhatsApp sound appears!
Frankly, whenever I hear more than one text notification sound on a train (90% of the time it’s WhatsApp where I live), I fantasize about the train derailing and delivering a painful and oh-so-satisfying death to the monster in human form who’s responsible! Yeah, even if I and a hundred other people have to die, too, that’s a necessary price to pay. I live in a big city and I’m tormented by notification terror.
The reason is so obvious: these are alerts! They are designed to alert, and they alert everybody in close vicinity to the phone. It’s not an oversensitivity to feel disturbed by them, it’s the desired reaction.
I have maintained for ages that next to the mute and “do not disturb” functions every phone also needs a “do not be a dick” function that ahtomatically mutes all audible notifications once the phone is outside of a geofence (e.g. home location). Or even better, let’s think about whether we even really need these audible notifications at all anymore! Fake software keyboard sounds have, luckily, also become increasingly rare because they are just not needed.
On a side note, I disagree with the notion that this were a specific phone problem, that somehow it’s because we supposedly have become phone zombies. People talking loudly on the phone are exactly as distracting as those sounds, and have existed long before the modern smart phone. Kids watching loud videos or playing games with sound on, or families being overly loud on the train or in restaurants — I believe smartphones have certainly exacerbated the problem, but I think the problem at its core is an antisocial mentality where people live in a bubble and lose awareness of their human surroundings. I’m sure the woman on the train was very aware of the sounds her phone made, but not of the people around her and how this might affect them. Because if you tell someone how annoying this is, the answer is always the same: Oh, I didn’t even realize/I wasn’t aware!
