Image: Charisma / FreeDigitalPhotos.netThere are two things I am constantly replacing in life, and maybe you can relate. I often lose sunglasses and break earphones. In the case of the sunglasses, I just like to think that they’re afraid of me and run off in search of freedom from my face (this is not a reflection on my looks, just that I have a really big head and sunglasses tend to strain under the pressure). Either way, I go through sunglasses quite a bit. Then there are the headphones. Every three months or so, I go through a pair of them due to over use. I take them with me everywhere, and if they were waterproof and I had a waterproof Zune (yes, I use a Zune), I would take it with me in the shower. I have them with me at all times, which is no wonder why they have to get replaced so often. And maybe it’s the phenomenon where, when you own something or do something, you begin to notice, more and more that other people around you are doing or owning the same thing, but I am noticing, that people have headphones on all the time.
I tried looking for a study on why this is happening, and I couldn’t find anything. I find that crazy, because there’s a study on everything nowadays. A study on how many times guy’s scratch their crotch, or why women put on makeup, or when to eat food. You’d think with all that, I’d find something recent, but maybe I’m just not looking in the right places, or just plain lazy. I’d like to think it’s the latter. Either way, you can’t escape it, everywhere you go, you’ll find them, young and old, listening to their iPod and going about their business. Apparently, Southern California at least, has an epidemic of broken radios because I see a lot of people in their cars with head phones on, rocking away, without a care in the world which I think is illegal (the headphones in the ear part, not the rocking away part). So why is this topic so important that I decided to write an entire blog post about it? Well, I’ll tell you why I THINK it’s important, and then you can tell me how wrong or how uncanny my level of deduction is. No matter how you slice it, people are listening to something and they’re listening to it A LOT.
You will see studies throughout the internet saying how our society, especially the younger generations, are all socially inept. They’re online playing video games, they’re on Facebook all the time, and they prefer their conversations via text, and researchers are theorizing that we live in a much more isolated society, where people do not like to interact with each other anymore on a personal level. Oh, and by the way, when I say younger generation, I’m talking about people 30 years and younger. We all grew up in an age when tech just jumped up out of nowhere and hit us in the face. We then gobbled it up and asked for more. So when we do see more and more people flocking to their webcams to socialize as opposed to going to the local coffee shop or arcade, you can blame the study above. There are also studies that counter that theory as well, so no one really knows how technology is affecting us in our everyday social interactions. Which makes my theory of why people are listening to their music, much more depressing.
I feel we are living in rough times all around. I hear it on the news all the time, with Occupy Wallstreet, schools having poor standardized testing scores, and even a city that arrests parents because truancy is a problem. People are still unemployed, the government here in the US seems to faltering in the eyes of its citizens and all in all, people are just not that happy. Not to say good things aren’t happening, but the bad are screaming at us and we can’t stand it anymore. And that’s my theory. People are so tired of thinking about and hearing about all the negativity in the world that we escpape into our iPods. We drown out our thoughts, our feelings, and our world by enveloping ourselves in music, and in my case, podcasts. I listen to all the amazing things happening in technology, pop culture, movies, comic books, video games, television, in a way that it keeps me from having to think too often.
A friend of mine once told me, she hated being alone, because it caused her to think. And she hated thinking, because it brought to her mind fabrications of all these horrible things. She could not trust her mind, and I think that’s what’s happening to a lot of people. Of course, I could be completely wrong in all of this, and since I don’t have the means to do a survey, and if I even ask people who are listening to their iPods, they couldn’t hear me anyway because that music is usually pretty damn loud. But this is just a theory, and I’d like your thoughts on this. Why do you think people listen to their iPods everywhere they go? Why is it when we see them walking about, they have those earbuds firmly placed in their ears? Is it to avoid people? Is it a way to excuse themselves from having to talk to anyone? Or is it a way to drown out their own thoughts?
In the end, we all have to step back to reality, oh there goes Rabbit. I do it all the time, I use the podcasts as distraction and inspiration but still take the time to come back to the here and now. And maybe that’s a better theory. People plug their ears not to escape the world, but to keep growing, learning, evolving with music that inspires, lifts the spirit and pushes them forward to bigger and better things. This is all speculation, and I know why I do it, and I’d like to think I’m not the only one who does this. So share your thoughts in the comments below.
