I’m not all that sure this belongs in the Pit, because I’m not all that mad at anybody. I guess it’s no skin off my nose if people want to blast their ears and ruin their hearing. But it still amazes me that people do this and don’t seem to comprehend how they are screwing themselves up.
Oh, okay. I guess I am a little frustrated with people when they play their car radios so loud that the whole neighborhood vibrates. Fine if you want to mess up your own ears, but keep it to yourself—some of the rest of us want to be able to hear when we get old.
So I guess this rant is related to that. Anyway, here goes:
Look: it’s a well documented fact that if you keep on listening to your stereo or walkman too loud, you will lose your hearing, and probably have some serious hearing loss when you get older.
This little public service announcement was inspired, I suppose, because I noticed a comment someone made about a certain portable music device. “It doesn’t go up loud enough,” they said. What? Are you insane?!?! All these Walkman-type devices go up way more than loud enough. I can’t imagine a scenario where you would have to have it louder than the maximum on one of these players.
I’ve been aware of this problem for a long time. It always amazes me how people will selectively filter out what they don’t want to hear. (Hear, yes—in more ways than one.) Ever since High School I’ve been telling peers, “Don’t play that too loud, you’re lose your hearing.” They would always just blow me off. Now one of my friends (one who always blew me off) has suffered some hearing loss. She claims that she “didn’t know” and “nobody told her.” Yeah. Right. Blow me off if you like, but don’t pretend later that you weren’t told, especially to the person who told you. :rolleyes:
Other people just roll their eyes when they are told something like this (I guess that is always going to happen—who wants to be preached at?), but down the line I daresay that a lot of them will be bleating about how they “didn’t know.” Well, so sorry, but a lot of you did know, you were told, but you just blew it off. Enjoy your future hearing loss.