I might be in a minority saying this - and particularly so here on HN - but I struggle to understand why you'd be willing to use a tool like this, as OP did, but not to politely ask someone to keep it down?
Finally, one older woman gets up and walks over to him. My wife and I are like "Oh shit, she's gonna let him have it, here it comes." She taps him on the shoulder and says "Excuse me, can you turn that down? It's very loud." And you know what he did? He said "Oh, sorry," and turned it down.
She said thanks and went back to her seat, simple as that.
The isolation and atomization of modern individualized living has led people to be so controlled by their anti-social anxieties, fear, and loathing of other people, that they and OP won't even try.
That dude shouldn’t be turning it down; he should be turning it off.
My go-to line is: “Excuse me, do you have any earphones?”
If I am on a bus or something I have asked other people to turn their audio down, but most other places it's easy enough for me to just move somewhere else.
Public music should be celebrated. This is someone sharing a cultural touchstone and y'all just want to be antisocial robots.
I don’t drive, I take public transit daily, and am old enough to remember when you would never experience anything like this (even in the heyday of boom boxes in the 80s). So yeah I’m not convinced it’s a “me” problem.
And returning to the point, if you asked someone 30 years ago to turn their music down they would either comply or say something nasty - not physically assault you.
The music he was playing was ridiculously bad. Obviously subjective but this was such terrible low effort stuff that I am not sure it would even make it to SoundCloud. Think “your stoner friend’s demo tape you try to listen to but can’t get more than three minutes in”
We were in a long tunnel and he turned the volume up, which I don’t think anyone wanted. I yell over the speaker and say he should that shit off. He said people here want it, to which I say “no they actually don’t. See how everyone here has headphones on? If your music was any good you wouldn’t have to force people to listen to it as hostages. If you want to actually test this then go to Washington Square Park, not the fucking train”.
He called me an asshole, turned the music even louder, and kept it going until I left the train. I don’t think he agreed with my reasoning.
The keyword is fantasy.
> so i built a tiny app that plays back the same audio it hears, delayed by ~2 seconds. asked claude, it spat out a working version in one prompt. surprisingly WORKS.
Note, they never said they actually played it and then person realized they were being disrespectful and stopped. That whole scenario is supposed to happen in a hypothetic fantasy world, and every reader here is supposed to take in the same way for themselves.
If you ask someone to turn it down, it can immediately come off as confrontational, even if you're being polite. With this solution, though, it's kind of hilarious because in one sense it's more confrontational, but the original music blaster would have to ask you to turn it down - but it's just their music.
I'm a pretty nonconfrontational person, but the one time I lost it was when this late middle aged woman kept chatting away on her cell phone in the quiet car of the LIRR despite other people previously telling her that she was in the quiet car (I believe my exact words were "Hey princess, what part of 'no cellphones' do you not understand" - there is a giant sign at the front of the car that says no cellphone use). But I don't think I'd ever do this in a public situation where the rules weren't so clearly spelled out.
At least it is for me. Especially when it's my moth... you know what? Never mind. If I keep going I'll spiral out.
"As with anything in life it depends on a huge number of variables such as location, number of allies the other person has, the threat potential you represent, the number of allies you have, your standing on the social ladder, if you're in a position of power, your ability to understand social clues, the exact method how you ask, yada yada"
Did you walk over? Did you say hi? Did you lower yourself to be around their height? Give them a second or two to get used to you? Tell them first that their noise is loud ? Ask them in a respectable tone if they would lower it, just a bit? Did you give the impression that you were asking, not demanding?
Of course I won't ask a drunk or aggressive looking person. But there is a wrong way to ask, and a better one.
The chances, regardless how nice you try to ask, that the person who elected to broadcast their tiktoks or calls to the whole wagon at full volume goes "oh, sorry, I'm so embarrassed, I'll turn this off", are very low.
Last time I tried to ask "can you use headphones?", the guy answered "I don't have headphones" and put the volume even louder.
A person who cared even a tiny bit would not have started to begin with. Asking is almost futile. These people simply seem to be used to get away with inflicting themselves to people around without consequences. The worse part is that if you do nothing, you participate in this.
What can you do.
I think it can only work if it becomes very socially unbearable, or if they got fined for this. Or, indeed, if it brought them nuisance. In that regard, this HN post's solution is interesting (not sure it's good though).
- loud person does not care in the first place, that's why they do the loud act
- usually they are more than 1 person, outnumbering me
- although some places have public disturbance prohibited laws, unless there is a law enforcement/security around, chances of me being ending up in a hospital is higher than chances of stumbling on a decent person
- it is easier to act or play stupid
---
on a similar note, last time when i asked someone to lower their volume while having headphones on me, they demanded my headphones because they claimed they were too poor to buy one. -- i am talking about 20$ type-c earbuds vs 16" macbook size marshall speaker. -- as a result, i did not give my headphones and they continued to play music.
I personally detest the kind of people who behave like this. It all just exudes deliberate fakeness; if anyone were to try this on me I'll only be irritated more than anything else.
I've learned in my time in cities that it can be very hard to judge who is likely to be aggressive and who isn't.
Seems like you're from western Europe, and maybe people are nicer there, but once you get to a place with strong racism, classism, wealth disparity, you suddenly find that being civil has little weight.
So then the question becomes how well you've sampled that catastrophic risk before you say what the real risk is. As an example, I've been mask off and partying since as soon as that became legal. Haven't gotten sick from COVID yet. Shows, house parties, sharing drinks with people who later had it. Tested often because I was this high risk. Zero positives.
I could say "actually, if you just do the things that I did you'll be fine". After all, I've been fine. Nothing happened. I just didn't get sick. I've got the winning formula.
Not the latest model, huh? That’s certainly a passive-aggressive way to suggest you upgrade…
If you are in a venue where politely asking someone to keep it down, results in them actually responding, you generally don't need to ask. You are among conscientious people to begin with.
For the most part, about 99% of the time, the whole point of drawing attention is waiting for someone to politely ask them to turn it down. And it isn't so they can respond in kind.
It's tolerating the intolerant (their intolerance to understanding social order). They need to be bludgeoned back (metaphorically).
Conversely, if you are the kind of person able to come up to a stranger and ask them (politely and respectfully!) to change what they are doing, you likely the person with the social skill to do other things well too.
Now imagine the same situation but the person comes up to you and says “excuse me but would you mind turning your volume down a bit or using headphones? The sound from your phone is really bugging me and I would really appreciate it.” Which situation is more likely to piss you off?
And sure you might respond poorly to both but I see no universe in which you respond positively to the first while I think there is a good chance you respond well to the second.
On the other hand if the person approaches you and says “hey buddy turn that shit down”.. but the kind of person to use this 2 second delay thing in my experience would never have the confidence to do something like that so not even worth considering.
As opposed to building a tool to actively annoy them without politely asking them a question? This doesn't follow.
I doubt the tool was actually used.
Gotta start somewhere!
Many people are just massive assholes. Asking nicely does not work. Particularly big drunk dudes at an American football game. That was my first and last visit to a football stadium.
Also, basically every pro and semi-pro sports stadium nowadays has cell-phone-contactable security that you can summon to handle situations like these. The threat of being kicked out of his $250 seats is way more of a threat than that of being confronted by a "mega-nerd".
I wouldn't make a habit of contacting security over every little annoyance, but if they're obnoxiously blocking an old lady, that's the time to use it.
P.S.: your karma is currently 1337, sweet
If someone has too much social anxiety or is too afraid to politely ask the other person to turn it down, using an actively annoying option like this isn't going to help. This is more likely to induce a confrontation.
Last time this happened was in a bar, there was a pianist playing, and a group sat right next to the piano and started being very noisy. I went and asked them to lower their voices. They apologized, and shut up entirely. Later, someone came to thank me for that.
On the other hand, I would never dare using that tool, it feels a bit childish and would make me feel like such an ass!
People doing these kinds of things don’t give a F about anyone else. They’re terrible “humans” and should be treated as such.
1. This is a lighthearted joke that someone made after having a bad experience with others being noisy in public. (Most likely scenario.)
2. The author is going to actually use this tool in public, in which case they are either a power-tripping asshole who gets off on "outsmarting" people, or a limp-wristed coward without basic social skills.
> I don't think he cares about being polite.
If you're polite, debate civilly, say reasonable things and act like a normal person, you are a nobody on X. Nobody will see your tweet. Nobody will engage with it. You might as well have not said anything.
Negative social skills on that Twitter thread
if you have the balls to do this next to someone, they will immediately recognize what you're doing right after they stop (if they stop).
that's gonna be 100x more awkward than asking them politely would have been.
On the other hand if you can force people to behave through machine processes it's much more effective than human processes