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Public Noise Pollution: People, This Has To Stop

Shane R. Monroe
5 min readApr 4, 2019

Listen up. Your portable devices are not intended for public broadcast. Your pointless phone call, your terrible choice in music, your stupid free-to-play game nor your kid’s favorite dumb youTube channel — there is no excuse for any of this to be played in public; anywhere in public.

We used to Vulcan Neck Pinch people for playing audio in public. Courtesy Paramount Pictures.

A new public indecency epidemic is upon us — and for some reason, nobody is talking about it.

This happens everywhere. Restaurants. Doctor’s office waiting rooms. Bathrooms. Public transportation; anywhere human beings congregate and most certainly anywhere a parent and their children might have to wait around for more than five minutes.

The Speaker Phone

People are walking through grocery stores — essentially using their phone as a walkie-talkie. I assure you they aren’t helping an inexperienced passenger perform an emergency landing of a Boeing 737 Max. They aren’t helping Stu Redmond perform an ad-hoc appendectomy.

I’ve seen people carrying on full, useless conversations .. holding the phone up to their mouths like they are feeding a baby bird from it. Yet, to hold the phone up to your ear? How 2005.

You want the icing on the cake? I’ve seen people with AirPods in their ears using their phone’s speaker in public to carry on conversations.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Hold the phone up to your ear and yell real loud on the phone so everyone notices your new iPhone … like a decent person.

Better yet — get yourself a hands-free private device. They have’em. I’ve seen pictures.

Mobile Gaming

First off, mobile gaming sucks since free-to-play microtransactions took over. Those repetitive, dopamine-engaging sound effects designed to make you spend $4.99 on Smurfberries may add some enjoyment to your time-sink game.

Good lord, we don’t want to hear it. Ever.

If I’m sitting at the pharmacy waiting for a prescription and have to hear that same damn BLING or BONG over and over again because you can’t sit there for 6.5 minutes (yeah, I timed it), play the game with no sound or heaven FORBID find a goddamn pair of headphones to pop on?

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Shane R. Monroe
Shane R. Monroe

Written by Shane R. Monroe

I write, blog, record and review anything that interests me — including humanity, parenting, gizmos & gadgets, video games and media.

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