Petition: Music Free Buses in London

[milesy]

It's just, y'know, kids.

it's not though, that's the trouble. it's adults too. they should know better. bring back national service, hanging's too good, etc.

i bet Orang Utan always plays his boring music really loudly on the bus.

 

[STFC]

Surely the US military must have developed a gadget which disables all electronic equipment within a certain radius? Anyone know where you can buy one?

Alternatively, does anyone have an mp3 of Ride of the Valkyries? That could be a good one to combat Usher/R Kelly on the bus.

 

[Orang Utan]

it's not though, that's the trouble. it's adults too. they should know better. bring back national service, hanging's too good, etc.

i bet Orang Utan always plays his boring music really loudly on the bus.

Nope, I play ultra cool music really loudly but wear insulated head phones so only I can hear it

 

[Cloo]

Alternatively, does anyone have an mp3 of Ride of the Valkyries? That could be a good one to combat Usher/R Kelly on the bus.

Maybe we should carry around portable brass bands to start up a round of 'When the Saints Go Marching In' every time someone starts up music on their phone.

 

[Loki]

Thinking about it, I do suspect (and hope) it will be a fad... after 18 months or so, kids'll get bored of not being able to hear the music properly and will go back to headphones and find some other way of irritating people.

Yes, bluetooth is to blame most I reckon. Suddenly people went through a stage of wanting to share downloaded MP3s and "amusing" ringtones/video clips on their phone with anyone who cared (not me). When people get bored of that it will *hopefully* die down.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

I petition ain't gonna do fuck all! Bring back corporal punishment!

 

[Cid]

it is irritating. But it was also irritating back in nineteen-hundred-and-whatever when me and my mates used to get on the bus and play Thin Lizzy tapes on our boombox.

It's just, y'know, kids.

Yeah, but at least a boombox has passable sound quality and doesn't sound like skeleton bollocks in a biscuit tin (copyright fannypad). It's an insult to any kind of music to play it through that kind of speaker, just sounds so utterly shit.

 

[scott_forester]

Everyone here uses earphones. Is that not the case where you are?

These are people on a bus, so they're a bit poor.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

These are people on a bus, so they're a bit poor.

If they can afford the cel phone, they can afford a pair of cheap headphones etc.

 

[hipipol]

Sing-a-long-a-bus-ride

I have discovered, quite by accident that whining along with the music in a high pitched and slightly out of tune way tends to put them off.
On a varient of the Raverdrew method, red faced but friendly in a manic way, smiling and whining, high pitched and drifting off key from time to time works wonders.
Some have not only turned off the "music" but have left the bus early
My how I laffed

 

[boozybirdie]

That could be a good one to combat Usher/R Kelly on the bus.

You've seen Usher & R Kelly on a bus , times must be hard.

 

[rutabowa]

i like a bit of music on the bus.

 

[rutabowa]

You wouldn't happen to leaping to the assumption that cyberfairy was inferring that "obnoxious idiots who play their tinny r'n'b on the bus" are invariably young black males would you?

er, but that's true? or maybe i'm missing the point.

 

[Loki]

Use headphones then

 

[rutabowa]

Use headphones then

no what i mean is, i don't mind other people playing music, i quite like the shared thing... i use headphones if i'm listening.

 

[STFC]

You've seen Usher & R Kelly on a bus , times must be hard.

Er, no. Nor was I proposing to get a load of Valkyries (whatever they are) to ride on the bus and battle the aforementioned singers!

 

[hipipol]

Valkeries: Mythical Nordic female angeltypes who ride flying horses and carry the Heroes who have died in battle to heaven
Its a bastard getting those flying horses on to the top deck

 

[Streathamite]

I really do think some of you need to get a grip. it's a minor irritation, and every day, for the rest of your lives will be full of minor irritations, and none of the worth getting stressed over. focus on a newsp\aper or book. block the sound out. It's easy.

 

[milesy]

oh well in that case i'll join in and become an inconsiderate cunt just like the rest of them because - hey - life is full of minor irritations so what's one more gonna hurt?

 

[Loki]

I really do think some of you need to get a grip. it's a minor irritation, and every day, for the rest of your lives will be full of minor irritations, and none of the worth getting stressed over. focus on a newsp\aper or book.

You simply don't get it. If it was that easy I wouldn't be complaining. I love reading a paper/mag/book on a bus, it makes the journey as nothing. But I can't make the world around me disappear and focus on this when some moron is fiddling with their miniature noisebox playing shitty fucking jangly annoying tunes near me. It's impossible. I cannot do it. I wish I could. (And I'm far from alone on this one).

 

[killer b]

I really do think some of you need to get a grip. it's a minor irritation, and every day, for the rest of your lives will be full of minor irritations, and none of the worth getting stressed over. focus on a newsp\aper or book. block the sound out. It's easy.

good call.

or get a great big ghetto blaster and play some venetian snares back at 'em...

 

[milesy]

You simply don't get it. If it was that easy I wouldn't be complaining. I love reading a paper/mag/book on a bus, it makes the journey as nothing. But I can't make the world around me disappear and focus on this when some moron is fiddling with their miniature noisebox playing shitty fucking jangly annoying tunes near me. It's impossible. I cannot do it. I wish I could. (And I'm far from alone on this one).

i try, and sometimes i can rise above it all and be as super-chilled as some of the people on this thread. but other times, the level of inconsiderateness gets to me and i want to smash people in the jugular. it's bad enough being on a packed bus, stuck in traffic, after a long day at work, when it's dark outside, the windows are steamed up cos it's raining so you can't see out you've only got an aisle seat and none of the windows are open and every cunt is chatting as loud as they can in their mobiles, without having to put up with four or five different but equally as shit songs playing as loudly as possible through speakers as shit and tinny as possible. thankfully this doesn't happen that often on my bus route, but when it does, the three mile walk home in the rain becomes a far more attractive option to be honest.

 

[spanglechick]

ok - this doesn't work for everyone, i know, but it's how i cope with a million similar irritations every single day at school:

smile and indulge them. they're enjoying music. they're making themselves happy and it really is harmless. they're often sharing music as a group experience. Now, I hate RnB, which it often is - and I hate the tinny sound of phone speakers - it isn't nice to hear, but neither, truthfully, is bus full of squealing three year olds singing tunelessly or asking interminable questions - and i always smile indulgently at that too. It's a survival strategy for the sake of my blood-pressure. I force myself not to care. I remind myself that it's nicer to like other people.

yes they're often adults, yes even teenagers should know better, but

- you aren't going to change them
- there are bigger, more important battles to fight
- what really is the harm to you?

 

[kyser_soze]

I wouldn't mind if the speakers weren't so shit and you got some bass out there - it's the tinny-ness I can't abide.

Besides, I usually just ratchet the iPod up a notch and ignore the yoot...altho i did once see some lass in her early 20s and I just thought 'Get a fucking life...and some headphones'

 

[milesy]

ok - this doesn't work for everyone, i know, but it's how i cope with a million similar irritations every single day at school:

smile and indulge them. they're enjoying music. they're making themselves happy and it really is harmless. they're often sharing music as a group experience. Now, I hate RnB, which it often is - and I hate the tinny sound of phone speakers - it isn't nice to hear, but neither, truthfully, is bus full of squealing three year olds singing tunelessly or asking interminable questions - and i always smile indulgently at that too. It's a survival strategy for the sake of my blood-pressure. I force myself not to care. I remind myself that it's nicer to like other people.

yes they're often adults, yes even teenagers should know better, but

- you aren't going to change them
- there are bigger, more important battles to fight
- what really is the harm to you?

that's just made me even more fucking stressed

 

[Loki]

ok - this doesn't work for everyone, i know, but it's how i cope with a million similar irritations every single day at school:

smile and indulge them. they're enjoying music. they're making themselves happy and it really is harmless.

It may be harmless as in not causing me physical injury, but it is making it impossible for me to enjoy reading my book/paper/mag and while the journey away.

I know it sounds crazy, but maybe they could invest in headphones like most people with enough intelligence to use cutlery so we can all enjoy the journey.

they're often sharing music as a group experience.

Funnily enough, mostly they're just playing it to themselves

 

[milesy]

I know it sounds crazy, but maybe they could invest in headphones like most people with enough intelligence to use cutlery so we can all enjoy the journey.

it wouldn't be too much to ask, would it? as johnny said, if they can afford the phone or the MP3 player, they can afford headphones.

Funnily enough, mostly they're just playing it to themselves

yep. to be honest, i'm surprised that i haven't seen fights break out between people trying to hear their own music over the noise of the person's next to them.

 

[Streathamite]

You simply don't get it. If it was that easy I wouldn't be complaining. I love reading a paper/mag/book on a bus, it makes the journey as nothing. But I can't make the world around me disappear and focus on this when some moron is fiddling with their miniature noisebox playing shitty fucking jangly annoying tunes near me. It's impossible. I cannot do it. I wish I could. (And I'm far from alone on this one).

I appreciate the irritation and it is anti-social.
BUT....I thought i couildn't block it out, then found I could by focussing completely on said text. I'd have thought a highly intelligent, able bloke like you could, too. Ultimately -it's just a (small) noise, it's not as if you were in the middle of Fabric on DnB night.
and what spanglechick said.

 

[milesy]

so if you can't block out other people's music on the bus by reading, you're not intelligent?

you're weird, jezza

 

[Streathamite]

so if you can't block out other people's music on the bus by reading, you're not intelligent?

you're weird, jezza

that wasn't quite what i meant, and you know it, but one should - most people should - be able to master the art. ditto everyone else holding conversations with friends on the bus, which I'd have thought just as intrusive
I'd love to know how a nyone thinks sxuch a ban would be enforced and policed should some obnoxious little git sitting at the rear of the bus decide he's damn well going to play his mp3, and everyone else can do one. the bus'll be stopping and starting every five minutes.