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
Yes! Do NTs actually prefer this? With the technology we have I sincerely wish it were possible to have volume control of 2 separate soundtracks - the words and the background (or possibly 3, with music on a different track to sound effects). For most videos, on TV or youtube, I would either mute the music or turn it down a lot, obviously unless it was actually music I wanted to listen to!
I enjoy mountain bike videos, fortunately some of these youtubers realise that there are significant parts of their audience who prefer just their occasional voice comments with the sound of the bike. I do not follow ones with obnoxious soundtracks, though there are one or two who sometimes use music but not all the time and sometimes it's even music I like. But I went through a phase of watching climbing videos (despite having less hand strength than a newborn) until I could no longer tolerate their unbearable taste in music. They all seem to like the horrible percussive tracks too. I'd have thought autistic youtubers would be safe, but sadly some of them have too loud music.
I get that some things, like dramas, do benefit from suitably atmospheric music (though too many get the balance wrong such that many people find it hard to hear the dialogue over it) but for videos like the one you shared (which was quite interesting for a while until the music annoyance outweighed my interest in the topic as you said) why can't people who want music as well as content just have their own music on in the background? Then at least they could have music they actually liked as well!