I had a comically bad day yesterday, like dropping things, almost lost my keys down the drain on the sidewalk, spilled soup at the store near a makeup section, almost tore my pants, got back from the store only to find out I was out of TP, etc.
It was more funny than anything else, like so much random trivial bad luck in one day is like something out of some 90s Tom Hanks comedy.
But there was one thing that actually annoyed me - on my way back from the store on my grocery trip, my phone suddenly went from a healthy 7% to 0% and died. I was stuck with no music for the remainder of the walk back.
Soooo I was forced to listen to the sound of well - nothing at all basically.
Just birds chirping, wind blowing, leaves rustling, all as I walked the same path I walk all the time and see the same things I’ve seen hundreds of times, just waiting to get home.
Don’t get me wrong I love where I live and everything, it’s a really cool city with good pedestrian infrastructure, I almost never even get close to a car and it’s not some smelly euro village either, but seeing the same things I’ve already seen and having no stimuli at all, it wasn’t that big a deal but it was unpleasant.
That got me thinking - I sometimes see folks not wearing earphones outside, and I’ve heard on more than one occasion from some acquaintances that they don’t listen to music outside, and I wonder - why’s that?
Why would you choose to do that?
And, what do y’all like, do, exactly? How do you deal with the monotony of your grocery trips or things like that when you don’t even have music on? Do you just never get bored of walking the same roads/neighborhoods w/e day after day?
Even though I am listening to podcasts almost all the time I am outside, doing groceries, commuting, running errands, I can totally get that there are people whose brains are wired differently than mine that need what you might describe as auditory monotony because listening to familiar sounds in a familiar surrounding gives then safety and is easier on their brains.
I don’t find this surprising because most people need some degree of routines or rituals to function so I don’t see why this human tendency to reduce complexity (see: Niklas Luhmann) wouldn’t apply to what you’re listening or not listening to.
This doesn’t have to do anything with brain rot, just that brains work differently and need different stimuli.
Hey if the people ITT don’t owe me the benefit of the doubt for being ever so slightly different than their hyperonline idea of a person - so much so swarm downvotes at the very notion of someone just existing who’s basic experiences contradict their faulty assumptions about what’s what - then I don’t owe them that either.
Huh? I mean… I agree that a lot of people in this thread act surprisingly hostile to you but I wasn’t even referring to those people, just trying to give an answer to your question, that feels kinda underrepresented in this thread: We’re all wired differently and need different forms and levels of stimulus to function properly. 🤷
That much is obvious of course, though that’s not to say I don’t appreciate you saying so, frankly it’s like a breath of fresh air after spending time watching poop be flung by monkeys with a passion for it.
Their hostility is unsurprising to me.
As a trans person I get it all the time in the form of vile transphobia.
This isn’t the same of course, this is harmless, absurdly pointless type of discourse, but it stems from the same place ultimately.
All it takes to threaten the hivemind’s simulacrum and bring out the disciples of the distorted reality fed to the closeminded and the afraid by their holy algorithmic funnels is stating the most inoffensive things plainly as they are without mincing words, and voila - holy war.