Both Eyes Book Blog

“Annoying”

I knew at a glance that I needed to read this book. Is it just me, or has the world gotten more annoying lately? Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman explore this in “Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us.”

I want to summarize some points I found interesting, and then talk about things I find annoying. What could be more fun than that? I also want to annoy my readers by deliberately misusing punctuation, but I will refrain, although since this is my first ever blog by iPhone, I’m sure I’ll do it accidentally.

• Annoyance is difficult to separate from anger.
• Initial testing suggests that the higher a person’s body mass index, the more likely that person is to experience annoyance.
• What annoys people depends on culture, physical and mental health status, and gender.
• Listening to half a conversation is one of the single most annoying experiences humanly possible, because we can’t stop ourselves from trying to imagine the part we can’t hear. This is why cell phones are universally reviled.
• Men are more likely to be annoyed by women when they see them as domineering and controlling. Women are more likely to be annoyed by behavior they see as uncouth.
• A baby’s cry acts on the limbic system. Parents are able to tolerate it because they have an emotional, hormonal bond with their child. But to others, it is one of the most annoying sounds possible.
• Fingernails on a chalkboard make a sound reminiscent of a primate alarm call. Our horror of this sound is instinctual.
• Other animals don’t tend to experience dissonance, as in someone singing off-key. (True of my parrot, who finds loud, annoying sounds amusing and loves music though lacking in taste).
• It is difficult to put a finger on exactly what is annoying about an annoying person, but it is clear that annoying people don’t know they are annoying. (To paraphrase Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense.”)
• As a corollary to this, those who are most easily annoyed also tend to be the most irritating. Did someone immediately come to mind for you the way it did for me?

Do you ever have one of those fantastic coincidences that seem designed for blogging? My DH just interrupted me to ask what was for dinner, then peered intently at me and pulled out an errant white hair. I asked him, “For my blog, which one of us was annoying just now?” He said, “Me.” “But my hair! It was just driving you crazy!”

As I was typing this, a kid of indeterminate age and gender ran down our street, calling out operatically for the duration of several sentences. This might have been annoying but was in fact hysterically funny. Why is that? (Possibly because the words were unclear).

I believe our rising level of annoyance is both good and bad. Good, because in the distant past “annoying” behavior often led to overt violence. Bad, because it’s likely a symptom of simple population pressure. There are at least 20% more people around than when I was a kid, and as far as I can tell they all set out to tailgate me.

Compassion meditation helps hugely when dealing with annoying strangers. I find that headphones and an app called “Nature Sound” do a great job of masking noise when working in public. As a high-reactive person, I remind myself that my snit may not be someone else’s fault. I also learned to quit caring about poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling when I married an engineer – a brilliant man who struggles with those things but can beat me at Scrabble. Everyone wins when we learn to take it easy and let it go.

It is my thesis that annoyance leads gradually to positive social change. Personal hygiene is a case in point. Once the majority agrees that a given behavior is not just a pet peeve but intrinsically annoying, social pressure begins to drive the behavior to extinction. Sexual harassment is a case in point. I had a coworker who was over 70 who came up behind me and blew in my ear – something he probably decided was charming back in the 50s. Isn’t it amazing how quickly certain things change?

The social networking world may be a microcosm of accelerated social evolution. Memes such as the xkcd cartoon “Someone is wrong on the Internet” and the term ‘vaguebooking’ spread almost instantaneously. As annoying as your politically ranting friend may be, at least he is expressing his feelings in text. Perhaps in time, maybe even one lifetime, he may learn to relax and regard these matters more meditatively.

The habit of blog commenters who leave long-winded critical remarks and then depart, never to participate in a real dialogue, will probably never die, though. And that’s my pet peeve.