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The Sound Your Phone Makes is More Annoying Than Someone Talking
When I last visited Vancouver, it seemed to me like there were way more people playing audio off their various devices than what I’m used to in Tokyo. People would be just walking down the street, or biking, blasting some music from a Bluetooth speaker. People in cafes think nothing of playing videos or games, or having a phone conversation with the speaker at full blast. People do this kind of thing in Tokyo, too, just nowhere near as pervasively. Near as I can tell, it’s a global phenomenon, anywhere audio capable devices exist.
One time, I was sitting at a cafe, and a woman sitting beside me had her child playing some kind of game on a tablet, making all the frenetic noises games make. I asked if she had some headphones that the kid could use. She said no, with a clear overtone that I was the one creating an imposition by asking. I asked her if she could at least turn down the sound, but she said that it was no louder than a person would make if they were talking. I said it was very different, but that I didn’t want to get into an argument about it, and that’s where the conversation stopped.
Later I told my brother about the interaction, and he was surprised that I had asked. Not because he thinks it’s strange that I would find the sound of a video game annoying, but that he felt that the difficulty of the…
