Published on 12, July, 2020
I spend a lot of time travelling on trains in the course of my work and there are two sounds that drive me nuts, to the extent that I’ll go and find myself another seat if that’s possible and, if it’s not, I’ll just grit my teeth in anguish! The first is the sound of people typing on their laptops, the rattling keystroke sounds make me want to scream! Second is the sound of people whispering to one-another. You get this in museums and galleries too. Just speak normally people, there’s no need to whisper, I can hear you anyway.
Obviously, the tick tick sound of IPhone ear buds or Air Pods is also infuriating, but I imagine that’s the case for most people!
Sometimes it's little sounds, like tapping, especially if it's just on the edge of hearing so I'm not even quite certain if it's real (but it usually is my husband!) I hate these sort of small percussive sounds which are increasingly common in the backgrounds muzak of youtube videos, the worst are the ones that sound like finger snapping, ugh! There are channels I have had to stop watching because their music is of this variety.
The other kind of sounds that infuriate me are big sounds like car/house alarms (though actually haven't heard one for a while, which is nice). One of our neighbours had a faulty car alarm which would go off randomly and he was usually good about turning it off, but if he didn't I wanted to go out and smash it with a big axe until the noise stopped! Other noises in this category are the noisy motorbikes or fighter jets we had the other week or those cars that have that weird noise they must think is cool.
Sometimes just the insistence on wall to wall music at all can make otherwise very interesting YouTube videos unwatchable. For instance, imagine this https://youtu.be/05cEM-sU5qk with just the guy’s guided tour and explanation. It would be infinitely preferable. Maybe a few seconds of music to bookend it, but as it is.. sadly unbearable