We need to stop blasting. Why refuse? | Opinion

From the back seat of the Uber I was driving, two teenagers sat, transfixed on their phones. I could hear every word and utterance coming from each phone. Neither passenger seemed bothered by the other’s conflicting content, but I could no longer hear the instructions on the Uber navigation system.

I asked everyone who could hear me in the car, “Honey, do you have headphones?”

“No …”

“OK, can I ask you to turn the volume down? I just can’t hear the driving instructions.”

They both complied, but I couldn’t help but feel that I – the one in whose car they were traveling – was the grumpy dinosaur defying a newly accepted cultural norm.

So, since the Mesozoic era, I have coined a term (I think?) to explain this behavior. I call it blasterbating – one part loud projection, one part self-satisfaction. Blasterbating is the loud consumption of digital content intended solely for oneself, but to which everyone nearby is subjected. I would like to politely ask all blasterbaters to please cease and desist their blasterbation.

Blasterbaters are everywhere. I’m constantly confronted with a barrage of gunfire on the subway, in airports, in the back of my Uber. Blasterbation Nation includes the young and the old. Teenagers wait at the hair salon, watching videos at full volume and laughing. Older fast-food employees sit at booths, watching videos so loud I can hear them from across the restaurant. They’re not idly listening, but they seem delighted. And they all seem unfazed that someone nearby might not be as amused.

Reddit threads abound on the issue of shared audio. A 2022 query to Miss Manners, in which a coffee shop patron asked whether it was appropriate to ask another patron to put on headphones, stated, “I feel like playing something loud enough for someone else to hear is imposing your choice on others, and is therefore inconsiderate.” Miss Manners agreed.

This is certainly not the busking of yesteryear, where street or subway artists would entertain with the sound of a boom box for the enjoyment of all. This is a large-scale grossness for which there is a solution: headphones, which almost all mobile phones are now equipped with.

Blasterbating may seem like a developed-world problem, but its implications are much more insidious. We’re not fighting to find a misplaced pair of AirPods. We’re fighting to geolocate our manners, and even to agree on proper etiquette.

Cell phones themselves have shaped American society—an amalgam of cultures and languages—rather than the existing culture that opposes the ubiquity of the cell phone. What was once the preserve of on-call traders and surgeons (for whom urgent communication was essential), we no longer question whether a mail carrier or a future sixth-grader should step away from present society to tend to his phone. An expensive pocket robot commands us, not the other way around.

Yet a general decorum of respect for shared spaces predates cell phones and phones in general. When we look at the social contract theories of our ancestors, for example, what strikes me is that the old curly-haired Frank, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, specifically believed that individual rights, including private property rights, should yield to the general will. Rousseau would no doubt have been quite angry about the blasterbaters violating this part of the social contract. However, Rousseau may also have observed that cell phones were already undermining the general will For a time, rather than serving the common good, we had simply accepted them as commonplaces, undermining any assessment of what was good and right.

Given the relatively rapid adoption of cell phones as a major part of modern life, questions of courtesy are often tricky. But I believe we can use our own mirror to adapt to their use. I want blasterbating to be the same source of discontent that people feel when they are criticized for picking their nose or scratching their vulva in public.

As one Reddit user observed, not wearing headphones was symptomatic of “main character syndrome.” In other words, “people are becoming more and more self-absorbed, and it shows in the way we glorify social media and this whole ‘look at me’ culture. If everyone with a cell phone is now able to present themselves as a main character, it’s no wonder I (and others who resist blasterbage) feel like the bad guy. I’m not just asking people to turn down the volume. I’m asking them to be minor players on a major stage.”

And I have no problem with this downgrade. In fact, it strikes me as the best ending for a book or movie. The unsung hero scores the winning goal. The good guy finishes first. The self-centered former alpha male rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. Cue the theme song as he puts on his new pair of Beats by Dre.

Kendra Stanton Lee is a teacher, writer, mother, and occasional Uber driver. To learn more about her work, visit www.kendrastantonlee.com.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.