(more) antisocial behaviour on trains

[Crithylum]

Last week on the Underground, someone was smoking a cigarette at the back of a District line train, then proceeded to put it out and the walk the entire train begging everyone for money. Fortunately no one caved in.

 

[rdevz]

Fight fire with fire: Specifically, with The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray. It's not as if the terrible quality of a mobile phone speaker could make it any less appealing to the human ear, and it's guaranteed to make it impossible to listen to TikTok videos.

 

[185143]

Fight fire with fire: Specifically, with The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray. It's not as if the terrible quality of a mobile phone speaker could make it any less appealing to the human ear, and it's guaranteed to make it impossible to listen to TikTok videos.

Did that with very loud 37 thrash in 1st class on West Midlands Trains once. Mainly to make a point, as there were only 2 of us in there and I was very tired.

It had the desired effect!

 

[cockneyviking]

If I have someone behind/in front of me having a speakerphone conversation I normally just say out loud "your conversation is boring" works everytime, never had a reaction.

 

[northernchris]

I was on a train on Saturday where 2 separate passengers were watching the England game in speaker mode, at opposite ends of the carriage so endured the inane waffle of the commentators in stereo. The conductor came through checking tickets and didn't say a word, so it isn't surprising so many people play content out loud, the vast majority probably don't realise it's against the byelaws.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Some people are more sensitive to this sort of noise than others and it can be very distracting. I'd argue playing music out loud is genuinely disruptive - we're not talking beeping phones here but TikTok videos, watching TV, playing video games with the volume turned up and no headphones.

If you're able to tune out and ignore noises like that, consider yourself very lucky

The OP specifically did mention that repeated notification bleeps were the source of the problem, though the topic has broadened into a wider discussion of annoying noises from devices.
I appreciate that achieving a sort of "zen" state isn't easy. I myself am on the spectrum and when I was younger was very sensitive to certain noises, though by making an effort to not react I found dealing with crowds and noisy places easier. If someone is unable to cope i feel for them, but personally I feel more in control of things if I've actually taken control of my own reaction to things that would otherwise be stressful. Sometimes you can't do anything else, and all you are in control of is how you choose to react.

Fight fire with fire: Specifically, with The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray. It's not as if the terrible quality of a mobile phone speaker could make it any less appealing to the human ear, and it's guaranteed to make it impossible to listen to TikTok videos.

If I have someone behind/in front of me having a speakerphone conversation I normally just say out loud "your conversation is boring" works everytime, never had a reaction.

Now these sorts of reactions I can get behind. If you can't be zen about things, using humour is a useful tool. It can often have more of an impact on the offending individual than getting angry.

I was on a train on Saturday where 2 separate passengers were watching the England game in speaker mode, at opposite ends of the carriage so endured the inane waffle of the commentators in stereo. The conductor came through checking tickets and didn't say a word, so it isn't surprising so many people play content out loud, the vast majority probably don't realise it's against the byelaws.

Doesn't the byelaw in question specifically refer to causing an annoyance? In which case if nobody has expressed their annoyance to the conductor (and said conductor was not themselves annoyed by the football being played), the conductor will be unaware of any breach of the byelaw.

I don't know what the French equivalent of that byelaw is (if it exists), but several years ago I was in the seated coach of a French sleeper where two German travellers were talking quite loudly into the wee small hours. A few other passengers had tried to shush them to no avail, so during the shunt and cigarette stop at Bordeaux I had a word with one of the stewards, telling them of the two blokes who refused to pipe down. A few minutes after restarting, with our Teutonic friends resuming their card game, the steward came down the coach, got right in the face of one of the two Arschlochen, and gave a very loud shush. They were silent the rest of the way to Paris! I can only assume that the steward would not have done this had I not made him aware of the issue.

 

[Ladder23]

Maybe I’m overreacting, but in the declassified first class on a Thameslink service today, all was calm and quiet, around 20 of us sitting quietly, some using laptops or reading the news on phones or newspapers.
One person has frequent notifications pinging, with the volume up full blast.
After about the 30th one in under 5 minutes, my patience was shredded.

‘Can the person with their sound at full volume really not see their messages coming up, right in front of their eyes? Do you really need to inflict that irritating sound on everyone in this carriage?’ I called out.

No response.

Although whoever it was seemingly did lower the volume, as there wasn’t a peep for the rest of the hour’s journey.

Why are people so completely lacking in self-awareness these days?

I appreciate people like you who speak out during these times, this irritates the hell out of me.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There is the "annoyance" thing, but the member of staff could simply say that it was to their annoyance.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Apple provide headphones with lightning connectors. They're not all wireless!

They’ve made a Rod, off their own backs?

 

[Skimpot flyer]

This is not a new thing. Anyone who lived in London during the mid-2000s cannot fail to remember the scourge of teenagers playing music out loud on buses. It got so bad there were numerous questions asked in the London Assembly with the mayor eventually being persuaded to have TfL start a campaign against music being played out loud, including posters and stickers on buses, and the Ts and Cs for the free Oyster card for school age children being changed to state that playing music out loud will result in its withdrawal.

The main change that I have noticed in the last two years is that it is not music being played out loud, but TikTok videos / Instagram Reels and Facebook Videos that are being played out loud. And typically in my experience it is not always children but across the ages. It is exceptionally irritating and frustrating.

Indeed.
A now locked thread I started involved a man in his 50s playing TikTok videos at full volume who then called me rude for challenging him!
Fortunately, other passengers backed me up

 

[Bletchleyite]

Indeed.
A now locked thread I started involved a man in his 50s playing TikTok videos at full volume who then called me rude for challenging him!
Fortunately, other passengers backed me up

I've been (ironically abusively and threateningly, with plenty of effing and blinding*) accused of being abusive and threatening to women for standing several metres from someone and saying "Excuse me, please, would you mind turning that down a little because I can hear it even through my headphones?"

If the guard had been present I would probably have taken it further and asked for her to be removed. 61016 was tempting though I didn't as it would probably have taken BTP away from something more important. Though I suppose the old rule of long distance trains to/from Scotland is that there's always a drunk and someone who's downright abusive (often people who are both) - even Victoria Wood called that ever enduring fact out!

* Some people just can't be helped, though. I was nearly run over in a supermarket car park the other day by a woman driving far too fast for the setting who didn't seem to know what a zebra crossing was, and she gave me a gobful of abuse for her own lack of knowledge of the Highway Code.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

When I saw this thread, I was expecting a tale of genuinely disruptive or intimidating behaviour... not the slight annoyance of a beeping phone. Sure it's annoying and a little inconsiderate, but letting a relatively minor irritation ruin your day is only going to wind you up. You'll find life far easier if you try to let these little things go.

But that's just me, everyone has their own way of dealing with things. I just find it easier to ignore things rather than letting them get under my skin.

Trust me, the volume and the repeated nature of the three-note sound was extremely irritating.
My young nephew has an app on his phone called Tap And Fart, which has about a dozen realistic sounds from ‘quick’ to ‘wet and airy’.
Perhaps I should have used it each time she had a loud notification?
Draw her into saying ‘can you stop that, it’s really annoying‘ so i could say ‘I’ll stop when you stop’ ?

 

[Jimini]

On my sojourn up north earlier from Reading on XC, the geezer behind me’s phone went off no less than 17 times in the 1h15m journey to inform him that there was “motion detected at your front door”. That didn’t start to grate at all, honest.

 

[Kite159]

The worse I've had recently is someone with a notification sound of a part of a song, which kept going off when on a railtour (probably someone who posts to one of those WhatsApp groups which sends a notification when someone else replies etc).

Got very annoying after a while.

But I have noticed a lot more people these days can't seem to sit properly, even doing a short hop between stations, first thing was feet on the seat opposite then leaving rubbish behind [this on a 730 where the litter bin is quite big and visible]. No respect for others nor their environment. Same for those passengers who decide to vape when on the train like it's nothing.

 

[gazzaa2]

I have noticed that noise pollution has got worse on trains over the years (see it say it sorted is nothing by comparison), some of which might be a side effect of the pandemic (some dogs appear not to have been socialised properly which I suspect is due to the same social isolation during the pandemic), and some is because there are a lot of thoughtless morally dead people in society who's parents never civilised them properly, then they go on to have children of their own and apply the same crap parenting, and so the cycle repeats. Another contribution is the lack of consequences. If you are not used to doing something like thinking of others it takes cognitive effort to do so, not putting in the effort is easier than doing so, and if there are no consequences to not bothering, why bother? Wouid there be so much thoughlessness around if there was the risk of a good beating in retaliation, for example? As the saying goes, civilised men are more discourteous than savages because they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing (Robert E. Howard). Symtoms of thoughtless are not confined to unnecessarily inflicting noise on others. People who park trollies in the middle of an aisle in supermarkets leaving gaps either side that are just too narrow to get another trolley past, dog walkers who stop in the middle of a junction of paths to have a conversation simultaneously blocking every path, middle lane hoggers on motorways, the five abreast brigade on pavements walking at half the average walking pace. Whilst any one incident is minor and can be brushed off quickly, when you are on the receiving end of multiple externalities of thoughlessness every day, it can chip chip chip away at your tolerance, and this is why you get things like road rage when the straw breaks the camel's back and someone finally loses their temper like an explosive volcanic eruption.

It keeps getting worse but the open plan carriages don't help. The old compartments seemed more civilised and you'd just be packed in with a few more people which helped with self-awareness, people are less self-aware of how their noise impacts someone a few rows back. But then it was pre-mobile phones at least in the mainstream. People would generally sit and read a book. If they had an audio device it was a personal walkman.