The weather hasn’t been so good. Recently I saw a chap with a beanie hat, fashionably knotted scarf, cutting edge hoodie and a shoulder bag. Board shorts and flip flops made up the bottom half. Seemingly every climate was being catered for, apart from the one he was actually living in; it was raining.
He was texting too – faster than Tiger Woods on Valentine’s Day. This though, is about what was in his ears. Siberian Surfer Man would not entertain fluff or unsightly hair. He was a subscriber to little electronic buds of sound – an iPod child of the musical millennium.
This is not a rant, since I have an iPod and am extremely attached to it. As an adornment, it is a handy tool for downtime with unlimited potential to entertain and amaze.
Since Apple launched their mobile music player in 2001, common consensus is that they have taken about 75% of the mobile music player market. Worldwide sales over the last three years exceed 150 million – in other words, enough to provide every human being in the UK with at least two each.
Whatever your opinions on capitalism and consumerism, here is a marketing feat of breathtaking magnitude. Progress continues unabated: their phone has already become iconic, their electronic reader will no doubt join it and we are collectively seduced by retail sales points which are no longer shops but pristine emporiums of life-enhancing technological advancement.
Even the crustiest cynic must concede that the ability to cram thousands of CD’s worth of music, videos and web surfing potential into something about the size as a packet of fags is pretty nifty.
Where there is pleasure, however, there must be pain – even champagne can give you a headache (apparently). As we collectively embrace music and technology continually on tap, we could also reflect on life before the year MP3 AD when Emperor iPodus took to the throne.
The first popular hypothesis is that continually listening to music can be dangerous. Michigan State University reports that iPod use may possibly inhibit heart pacemaker function. It also reports that continual consumption of loud music can impair hearing, but that is nothing new.
Sceptics would observe that everything is dangerous, even crossing the road – ironically this is one of the most dangerous plugged-in activities, and there are many instances of enthusiastic pedestrians paying too much attention to the hits of Dizzee Rascal and not enough to approaching buses.
This should be kept in context; iPods are not inherently dangerous. The sharpest of knives need claim no fingers if used with care.
The second popular hypothesis however, is more abstract and subjective – it suggests an increasingly anti-social society, and offers plenty of subjective evidence in support.
Earphones may be small and discreet but they give out big signals on buses and in waiting rooms – “DO NOT APPROACH ME. DO NOT APPROACH ME AND DEFINITELY DO NOT TALK TO ME”.
Perhaps those with less subtle, full ear headphones are just making sure that the message can’t be misconstrued – “Please don’t disturb me, I am recreating the experience of sitting in the front row of Led Zeppelin’s Earls Court triumph in 1975; talking to me will interrupt Jimmy Page mid-riff and would be like switching off the national grid.”
This could always be the grumpy complaining of the previous generation, but give it some thought. Talking to strangers on buses has long been associated with those who are borderline bonkers and it is often ill-advised.
Those wired for sound may be just enjoying a few minutes of self-indulgent entertainment between responsibilities at home and work, if so they are fully entitled to some ‘me’ time. If not though, are they ignoring potential opportunities sitting beside them?
There are plenty of cheery souls who enjoy initiating impromptu conversations with no other agenda than to pass some time, music free. There are even websites to help adventurous travellers who aren’t plugged into to Jay-Z or Tinchy Styder.
One website gives a ten point structure for chatting to people on buses, and offers sample conversation formats which start with questions like “how has your day been?”, “I haven’t seen you on this bus before….”, and “isn’t this the most marvellous weather?” Realistically, using these could ensure white-coated supervisors and a straitjacket at the next stop.
The last two decent chats I’ve had myself on a bus started with the lines “Bugger me, I didn’t think we were going to get through that gap” and “I think that bloke who just got off was completely bollocksed.” If those sitting next to me had been plugged into iPods, they would have missed these rich observations and the light-hearted chit-chat that followed.
Throwing yourself off the deep- end of impromptu social conversation with an unknown participant is known as “social skydiving”.
Not as dangerous as it sounds. After all, there is always the default option of earphones should it transpire that the person you have just engaged in good natured discussion is, actually, the “nutter on the bus”.
There are also practical benefits of not immersing yourself in the hits of the Black Eyed Peas or Pixie Lott and excluding your surroundings. One fellow student (who I got to know when we were both sans earphones in the library) got a girl’s phone number after a conversation in the IT room. It may not be true love, but it’s a start – and they may have missed their chance if music had distracted them. There are surely countless tales from all over the world of the chance meetings that sparked eventual relationships.
There is the old tale of someone who once helped a familiar looking man in a queue in airport newsagents when he dropped his shopping on the floor.
He was the only person without music, alert enough and socially available to pick up the sweets and magazines scattered over the floor, and to get involved in the good-natured conversation as he helped the butter-fingered stranger to the seating area where his “friends” were waiting for him.
If he had been plugged into earphones like everyone else and hadn’t helped, Adam Clayton of U2 would have had to crawl around the floor and himself and Bono would never have wished him all the best for Christmas. It’s absolutely true.
My own view of talking to strangers is coloured by an experience many years pre-MP3 AD. A man I started chatting to in a waiting room, incredibly, for some reason, found me intriguing enough to piece together what he knew about me to track me down and offer me a job. I accepted. In retrospect, I suppose he could equally have been a serial killer. He wasn’t, and now as an iPod listener, hopefully such chances won’t elude me in future.
Perhaps neither hypothesis is accurate, and we should synthesise our own. When plugged in we are consuming some creative product, and there can’t be anything too bad about that, irrespective of individual taste.
iPods are like vodka – safe if used responsibly but leaving without one once in a while is definitely advisable. We can be a generation who can make small talk with strangers and still have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lyrics of Lady GaGa and Chipmunk.
The message to Siberian Surfer Man is that it may be worth leaving an earplug out to see what else is on offer – a rock star in trouble, a telephone number for a job, a date, or even a weather forecast.
