It's the Worst Thing You Can Do in Public. I Tried It for a Week.

"The noise is getting to me. The loops of sound burrow into my skull and haunt my dreams, making me feel like Raskolnikov or Travis Bickle or the Joker, someone who gets pushed by society to do something. It must be stopped. They must be stopped. I'm talking, of course, about people who watch TikToks out loud on public transit. After years of videos from phone speakers invading the subways and buses of New York City, I've reached my breaking point."

"I've tried all the normal strategies: putting on my own headphones and cranking the volume, staring down the offenders. I've considered asking the perpetrators to stop. Earlier this year, that approach earned someone two stabs to the chest. It's not like I demand silence. I've lived in NYC for five years, and while garbage trucks and shouts and subwoofers aren't my sounds of choice, it's true what they say: The background chaos is constant enough that it resembles ambience after a while."

"But the tune of TikTok in public isn't one of the necessary sounds of the everyday. It is profoundly, deliberately antisocial: not an invitation to engage with someone else, but the sound of someone else's uniquely tailored algorithm breaching containment. So I decided to fight fire with fire. I spent a week forgoing headphones and indulging my worst self by actively watching videos out loud on buses and subways."

A New York resident reached a breaking point with people who play TikTok videos aloud on public transit. Years of phone-speaker videos invading subways and buses created intrusive, looping sounds that burrow into the skull and haunt dreams. Conventional coping strategies included wearing headphones, glaring, and considering asking offenders to stop, though confronting strangers can be dangerous. Urban background noise is often tolerated as ambient, but out-loud algorithmic videos are described as deliberately antisocial rather than part of everyday necessary sounds. The resident experimented by watching videos aloud for a week to mirror the behavior.

Read at slate.com