Culture moves quickly, and it seems to have accelerated in the past 10 years or so. This is evident in how quickly our language develops pejorative neologisms, new words negatively describing some kind of phenomenon or quirk of human behavior. The latest such term can join the ranks of “manspreading” in the list of words born from common minor annoyances that come with public transportation: “bare beating.”
That’s what the British press is calling people who play music or videos out loud in public without headphones. That person on a packed public bus or train blasting TikTok videos or pop songs from their phone, at full volume, at 7:30 AM, isn’t just being obnoxious and self-centered and disregarding the comfort of the people around them, they’re also bare beating.
Bare beaters stand in stark contrast to rawdoggers, the gross-ish nickname for people who just sit there during any type of wait, like on a plane or a train, with no entertainment whatsoever.
Some in the UK are fighting back. The Liberal Democrats are demanding £1,000 fines for public noise pollution, citing a poll showing nearly half of Brits have been annoyed beyond all reason by bare beating, but most wouldn’t dare ask anyone to turn it down. As you would imagine, how this would be enforced is a little murky right now, but the desire to do something about it is relatable.
It’s strange that bare beating occurs at all, considering how inexpensive a solid pair of Bluetooth earbuds or headphones can get nowadays. Yet, despite the affordability and ease of access to a good enough personal listening device that ensures your music/TikTok video/podcast episode remains strictly confined to your own eardrums, some insist on making their entertainment all of our business.
Commutes are bad enough with all of the little miseries that we’ve come to expect as an inherent part of the process. Overpriced coffees, delayed trains, intense B.O. drifting out of the pits of someone who forgot to put on deodorant this morning, and hopefully it’s not you.
Most of us don’t want to add noise pollution to the list of things we should just accept as an unchangeable reality. We have the power to not be so obnoxious toward one another. Maybe, instead of trying to enforce a possibly unenforceable law that may not even come to pass anyway, we just start giving out free, cheap earbuds to public transit passengers like airlines do on cross-country flights.
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