If I’ve got a song stuck in my head, I tend to sing it under my breath, lips moving slightly, while walking around campus or at work. On the off chance I’m in a good mood, I’ll even whistle out loud, albeit quietly.
How do people react to this? Is it charming? Carefree? Creepy? Eccentric? Annoying?
Who cares? You’re the king, baby!
Doesn’t bother me. Of course I do the same thing, so it probably doesn’t register as annoying to me.
Ditto
This habit can get really annoying when it’s a horrible song stuck in your head. I end up unconciously singing it over and over, even when I tell myself to stop, and I give myself a headache.
I whistle/hum in public all the time. I wouldn’t find it strange. If anything I’d find it friendly 
Yeah, I whistle/sing/scat to amuse myself on long walks.
No, I don’t find it annoying when other people do the same thing – unless they do it tunelessly, which is bothersome until they move out of earshot.
What about people who don’t whistle in public? Are y’all silently hating us?
That is part of what attracted my kid sister to her future husband. She never really explained why. I keep trying this, but so far, the hordes of women have not flocked my way.
Must be my technique.
Maybe it’s the songs we sing. Just the other day, I was singing Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” despite not having heard the wretched song in over five months, probably. Plus, I was doing it both tunelessly and quietly, so people probably assumed I was rambling psychopathically to myself about the Illuminati or phi or something.
I’ve noticed that it’s usually older men who whistle in public. Mostly random notes and warbling, too.
In the late 1980s, I used to hear many African-American men on public transit and the street make rapidfire, short Bronx cheer-type noises, combined with heavy panting, as if they were old-school rapping.
I hear a lot of black women hum gospel to themselves.
You are all devients, and should be rounded-up, shot, stabbed and poinsoned just to be on the safe side.
Um, I mean, it can be slightly irritating sometimes.
I agree that loud and/or close-proximity public singing can be irritating.
That caveat heeded, I don’t care if people sing. I do it myself sometimes.
In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Biff (an unambitious guy, who’s unhappily trying to live up to his dad’s dream that he be a white-collar businessman) gets fired or chewed out at work for whistling on the elevator. When he later in the play declares his intention to switch to blue-collar work, he exalts in the fact that, “carpenters are allowed to whistle.”
I’m an engineer, and when I got promoted to as high as I’m likely to, I decided I’d sing in the stair wells whenever I damn well I felt like it. It feels great!
Singing and whistling in public is very annoying to me. Men tend to do it most in the bathroom, where all business should be conducted in complete silence.
I don’t mind it in public. I find it very annoying at work, as I find all noises that distract me such as tapping fingers, knee jiggling. At one job, years ago, a co-worker constantly hummed and shelled pistachios all day long, proving very distracting when I was trying to do research. The day that she started singing the theme song to Sesame Street was the last straw. :smack:
I think it depends what you mean by “in public.” As a non-singer myself, I don’t mind when I pass a cheerful person in the park or on the beach or strolling down the street who is singing or humming to himself, I think “ah, now there is a happy and carefee person out enjoying this lovely day.”
However, when said person is singing his little song in a place where I am rather stuck with him, like while riding the subway, it is annoying to me beyond belief. I have been on subways cars where more than one person is singing/humming/whistling, whatever. Sort of like “Dueling Banjos,” but not at all clever nor interesting. I want to piece my own eardrums with a fork to make the misery end.
I’ve been known to do it occasionally. It doesn’t bother me much when others do it. Unless, of course, I’m in a store with a stereo playing, and they’re singing a completely different song. I don’t like hearing two songs at once. It confuses me.
It can be stunningly obnoxious. My supervisor always stands right behind me in my personal space reading over my shoulder and humming tunelessly. Believe it or not, it’s the tuneless humming that makes me want to smash her nose up into her skull.
That and the way she watches me eat.
While droning her internal music.
I’m always singing. All the time. I’m not obnoxious, in fact a lot of the time it’s under my breath - but I’m always singing. I tell people early on when I meet them that I’m sorry, but I’m always singing. It’s usually along with the radio in the car/store/salon/whatever, but sometimes I’m working on a piece for work. I sing professionally, and it’s just homework for me to keep my voice in shape and good practise.
I fancy myself a pretty talented whistler. I did it for a long time without realizing it until somebody brought it to my attention (this one said it was cute). Someone recently brought it to my attention with a “will you CUT IT OUT??” Granted, it was that song that goes “clang, clang, clang went the trolley” a la Rosie O’Donnell on The Simpsons when they were on the airplane with Pauley Shore and Tom Arnold, and I’m pretty sure when I finished the loop, I modulated a half step up. Not on purpose, not to drive anybody crazy, mostly unaware, but I completely empathized with her and shut up.
Occasionally, I do belt out a whistle now and again…I can’t help it. But I do try to gauge how annoying I’m being. That is, when I’m aware.
A blanket apology.
We should start a thread in CS about whistling in popular songs.
Weird. When someone mentioned how you can get an annoying song stuck in your head, that’s EXACTLY the song that popped into my head.
I think humming, singing, and whistling should be outlawed, just like dancing.
But seriously, I think it’s only annoying when the person who’s doing it is annoying anyway. Some people are just f’ing annoying.
I sentence all you public whistlers (and your mothers too) to an afternoon car ride with my 82 year-old father-in-law. I assure you, the experience will cure your of your annoying habit. He’s a warbler. And he fancies himself a darn good whistler. He also thinks he can skat. Just the other day he was laying down a skat to Julie Andrews singing supercalifragalisticexpialidocious and I was honestly tempted to drive the car off the side of a bridge. My sanity was saved when my 3 year-old, frustrated and not having enough vocabulary to be polite, yelled “STOP IT GRANDPA!!”