I might just be getting old, but I think your music is too loud.

I am somewhat less fortunate than many of my peers in that I don’t have a car and I live several miles away from campus. As a result, I ride the city bus a lot when I need to get around town. It seems as though a lot of inconsiderate people are in the same boat (or bus), because at least once a week on my way to or from class, there is someone on the bus with me, forcing me and everyone else to listen to his or her crappy hip-hop, crappy pop, crappy metal or Nickelback (for which the term crappy is implied).

Sometimes it’s really distracting and keeps me from doing my homework on the bus.

The semester has barely started and I’ve already encountered a handful of vagrants with electronic devices obnoxiously playing their music for everyone else to hear. I’m not sure if they assume that everyone else likes their music, or if they just don’t care, but either way, I hate them. A lot. I feel almost as much animosity toward them as toward the unwashed people who fill the bus with their acrid, day-old body odor.

You hear that, guys? I resent you only slightly less than hippies and the homeless. That’s pretty bad.

These people seem oblivious to how annoying they are, so I just wanted to throw a few enlightening words out there for anyone who fits this description. This applies to those I encounter on the bus and walking around downtown as well as you folks who bump your rap and dubstep music in your cars with your windows rolled down.

It’s really very simple. Are you ready? Here it is: No one else wants to listen to your music. No one.

Even if the music is decent and people would normally enjoy the songs you’re playing, I can guarantee that nobody wants to hear a tinny, awful version of it through your mp3 player’s crappy speakers. They don’t want to hear it through your car’s rattling subwoofers either, for that matter. If they wanted to hear it, they’d play it on their iPods or their own stereos. As much as you might want to be the music fairy, you don’t need to play it for the masses.

Nobody thinks you’re cool for blaring your music everywhere; everybody thinks you’re a tool and that you have terrible taste in music. As for myself, I assume that you’re trying to compensate for something. Or that you’re an idiot. Or both. Why would you want to bring attention to that? It’s sad that we’ve become so socially removed that we make a hobby out of alienating everyone around us, and some of us are oblivious to it.

I think it’s time that we all try to be a little more considerate of others. There are tens of thousands of us on campus and we have to share classrooms, eateries, walkways and public transportation. You start using headphones properly and stop polluting my ears with that terrible noise that you call music, and I’ll stop verbally abusing slow-moving pedestrians who block the bike lanes on campus. Deal?

_— Miki Jennings is a journalism junior. She can be reached at
letters@wildcat.arizona.edu._