Today is the last day of the Montreal Jazzfest. I used to go to a lot of events, but I gave it up on account of the noise level. And movie trailers always find me with my fingers in my ears and a decision not to see that movie. The movies I actually see are relatively quiet, but I don’t know what their trailers were like. Obviously, I would never go to a rock concert.
Having come to parenthood late in life (I’m 59, with a son who’s turning 6 this month), I thought for sure this was the one thing about being a parent that would surely get on every last nerve of mine.
But it doesn’t bother me much at all. I’m still going WTF?! over that.
Movie noise doesn’t bother me, nor does rock concert noise. Admittedly, I haven’t been to a rock concert since I became a parent. But I’d been to a number of rock concerts in indoor venues during my early 50s. No problem.
What bothers me - and always has, right back to my teens - is loud noise levels in places where I’d like to actually converse with the people I’m with. I’ve largely avoided bars for my entire life for this reason, and I hate restaurants where the ambient noise level makes it hard to hear what the other people at my table are saying. If I’d not wanted to talk with friends or family, I’d have gone out to eat by myself. But I was there to eat and talk, not just eat.
Similarly annoying, of late: I’ve stopped going to baseball games because of all the noisy between-innings entertainment they throw at you nowadays. Willya shaddup, dammit? The ‘entertainment’ I’m there for is the damned ballgame, and in between innings I converse with the people I’m with. Or at least, that’s how it used to be. Hell, back in the old days at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, I’d go to games alone, but get in great conversations with other knowledgeable baseball fans seated nearby. At Nats Park nowadays, that would be next to impossible.
So I don’t think I’ve gotten less tolerant of noise over the decades. The situations in which noise bothers me are the same ones that bothered me 40 years ago.
Those are good points, RTFirefly. One of the main irritants is noise levels where I want to talk to someone.
I pondered this some more after my OP, and I realized the following things:
The first: I and my co-workers have changed lunch restaurants twice in the past year, because we couldn’t hear one another over the goddamned music. These are run of the mill fast food places, not sports bars. Oddly we like the food, but had to change due to the excessive noise. At one chain we asked the manager to turn it down, and he said the volume was set by corporate and he had no control over it. :eek:
The second: I went to BestBuy to buy a DVD boxed set recently. After being in the store for several minutes I finally grew irritated by the loud music and decided to leave. I honestly didn’t want to subject myself to it any longer and elected to do without the new series (I can order it online from Amazon and not need earplugs).
So, in addition to my other question(s), **is there some sort of belief or study that causes business owners to believe we’ll spend more when the music’s louder? ** I am literally being driven out of restaurants and stores over this issue.
I wonder if maybe it’s the world that’s changing, instead of me.
The longer something goes on, the more chance there is to notice it and become annoyed by it - and becoming annoyed by something is like a one-way trapdoor that pretty much guarantees you will continue to be annoyed by it in the future.
So the longer you have lived, the greater the chance you will have reached that tipping point for a larger number of stimuli.
Or in summary, old people are cranky because this shit has gone on long enough.
My husband is in his early fifties and despises loud background noise. But he can tune out the yelling of our preschool sons completely.
I - not in my early fifties 
- am not bothered by noise at a restaurant or movie, but I swear if I’m ever hauled off to jail it will be for duct taping the children’s mouths shut and tying them to chairs because I need to be able to hear myself think for sixty straight seconds.
I find this interesting and infuriating in roughly equal amounts.