Not saying it's right for everyone, but I moved off-grid where my nearest neighbor is 5km away.
20 years in an apartment in the city was enough for me, as I grew older I realized there are too many things outside of my control if I want silence and peace of mind.
I'm sure it depends on demographic/country etc, but I've lived in Apartments where everyone was considerate, no loud neighbours, no smokers. Everyone just peacefully co-existed. (I've also experienced the opposite, and unfortunately, it is more common.)
And I've lived in apartments designed to be much more sound proof, then the neighbors could do whatever they wanted and didn't have tip-toe around each other.
This is the way. I was a great neighbor, back when I lived somewhere with concrete walls between the units. Also, db meters on ebay are great peace of mind. Mount one on your wall and find out how loud is loud enough to be heard.
Exactly. 8-9 people out of 10 are just fine. 1-2 out of 10 (likelihood multiplied by the number of shared walls/ceilings/floors you have) are enough to never want to share a wall/ceiling/floor again.
I'd feel a bit too lonely at 5km distance to the nearest neighbor as a matter of fact I don't think I ever visited or stayed at such a property. Are you completely off grid? What are the drawbacks of living in such a place and is it overall a better deal for you? It sounds very tempting for me too but I don't think I'm ready for this just yet.
Before your last sentence I thought, "wow this person is some kind of space alien." But as soon as you said "this is in Sweden," I understood you completely. I don't know what that says about me or Sweden. But it all clicked into place.
Maybe because you remember that statistic about single person households from a couple of days ago, I think Sweden was 3rd place globally? Though it's also a very happy country statistically, maybe something about the geography and upbringing which make that work better than in countries with comparable numbers but worse results (e.g. Germany or Netherlands)...
I live in a similar place, though I'm not off-grid.
The drawbacks for me are that "town" is about an hour away. But amazon delivers here.
There's no city life, no ordering to-go food or pizza, no movie theater, no ice cream runs to sonic. You have to plan ahead. Socialization happens online or with people in your own home, pretty much exclusively.
It's often hard to find anyone to fix your stuff--you become a framer, a plumber, a roofer, a mechanic. I consider this a net benefit, but it can be taxing at times.
That being said, not everyone does it quite like I do. All my neighbors have jobs in the city, for instance.
I can relate to this very much. A city guy, no one could understand my (also) 20 years of complaining about neighbors with loud music, slamming doors, making noise after midnight, etc etc. I lived on top floors, and I even spent a fortune living in a luxury building that was newly built, hoping sound insulation was higher end. The problem is that bass music travels through everything. I suffered from being woken up in the night by party goers, and early morning by door slammers. Once I wake up, it takes me a long time to fall back asleep. On weekends, when I want to stay at home and just play a game or read, people play music in the afternoon and often I would stress over some sort of party nearby beginning that evening, forcing me to find somewhere to go just to avoid the noise. Eventually I purchased a home in the woods.
What's happening to make us a minority here is at the minimum:
- Younger people are less sensitive to noise, go out more, and generally don't understand how distressful it can be
- Some people are light sleepers as well as get cognitively overloaded, needing relatively quiet environments to relax. People like me are in a tiny minority.
- Cities are the future, they're the greener option, and you're supposed to prefer the dense apartment life instead of the car one, on ethical grounds.
So when I detailed my suffering several times here on HN, and suggested dense cities are not mentally healthy for many people such as myself, I got downvoted. There's a bit of politics behind city living that folks who don't have cognitive sensitivities around noise just won't relent from.
> - Younger people are less sensitive to noise, go out more, and generally don't understand how distressful it can be
When I was younger I lived in a large shared house, constant activity and people coming and going, music always playing, I loved it then.
Now I live in a very soundproof apartment, literally never hear anyone else (our neighbours right next door had a party until 4am with loud music, etc. We didn't hear a thing). I love this now.
As I get older I've gotten more and more sensitive to other people's noise. I find people playing bluetooth devices to be acutely, intensely, irritating. I can't just ignore it, it annoys and distracts me too much.
I've become that grumpy guy who asks people to turn their music down or wear headphones (almost always a negative experience for everyone involved). I talk to management at restaurants and pubs and ask them to turn the music down (mixed results on that one). I have taken a table at restaurants and then walked away because the music is too loud.
It is weird, because this is my reaction to the situation, so I'm responsible for it. A city is not a quiet space, and we can't really expect it to be. But at the same time, the lack of consideration for others is shocking. Walking around playing music on speaker is basically saying to everyone "f*ck you, I'm more important than all of you".
>It is weird, because this is my reaction to the situation, so I'm responsible for it. A city is not a quiet space, and we can't really expect it to be. But at the same time, the lack of consideration for others is shocking. Walking around playing music on speaker is basically saying to everyone "f*ck you, I'm more important than all of you".
It's the subway/train/restaurant usage of phones to spool Tiktok/IG shorts with the sound on, and other noise, that I find maddeningly annoying.
But everything (in the US at least) is very loud, including restaurants. I don't understand why. It's far less likely to happen in W European capitals. As if Americans are extremely loud and love to be engulfed in constant noise. At least, the US and I'd say much of the Caribbean is like this as well.
Is it because we're old that we're bothered? Have things gotten worse? Did we or It change?
> Now I live in a very soundproof apartment, literally never hear anyone else (our neighbours right next door had a party until 4am with loud music, etc. We didn't hear a thing). I love this now.
Unless your soundproofing is thicker than the bass sound wavelength (10m+) it's not physically possible.
I know people who live in standalone houses and complain about people across the street having parties because bass vibrations come over
kids screaming at each other is my psychological breaking point. My sister's fully-detached, really-nice house has neighbours with post-toddler kids that enjoy screaming at each other. It doesn't bother her. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me
> A city is not a quiet space, and we can't really expect it to be.
Why? It’s one thing when it is completely silent – that would be absurd –but when it is full of noise pollution? Rude, loud people, constant shitty music blaring out of every spot.
> The problem is that bass music travels through everything.
It’s not just bass tones—low-frequency vibrations travel through everything. I live in a five-story pre-WWII building, and sometimes, when a neighbor runs their washing machine early on a Saturday morning, I don’t even hear the spin cycle. I just feel it, lying in bed trying to squeeze in a little more sleep. It’s an odd sensation, not painful, but definitely not pleasant.
There are a few topics that illicit this kind of response. I've lived in apartments/condos ever since I moved out of my parents' home, and living through Covid in an apartment was the nail in the coffin. My wife and I decided we would not live in a shared building again - at minimum, we'd only look for places that have a private entrance.
Based on the behavior of real estate in our area (high density suburbs of NYC), I don't think we're the only ones? Condo prices have either fallen or remained static while SFH have skyrocketed.
I also can't stand noise and in my case the solution was to find a two storey apartment at the top floors. They're fairly common in my city.
Another thing that happened by itself was my neighbour with whom I shared several walls moving out. His landlord put the apartment up for sale, but a year later there are still no takers.
I'm seriously considering buying it if only to keep it empty and my place peaceful.
> - Younger people are less sensitive to noise, go out more, and generally don't understand how distressful it can be
Nonsense. This has 100% to do with manners and how your parents taught you. When I grew up making a noise in an apartment was a grave offense, because you make a nuisance for your parents and neighbors.
> - Some people are light sleepers as well as get cognitively overloaded, needing relatively quiet environments to relax. People like me are in a tiny minority.
Double nonsense. I don’t have statistics, but given how bad modern mental health is, I don’t buy that only a tiny minority has problems with sleep.
> - Cities are the future, they're the greener option, and you're supposed to prefer the dense apartment life instead of the car one, on ethical grounds.
You should’ve started with this. I would’ve just skipped the whole message. Complete, utter nonsense.
Unless you believe in the “eat-ze-bug” future, the greener option is to:
- reproduce less
- raise living standards
- drastically increase productivity so we don’t need so many people
Brown noise always does the trick for me when things get noisy, and being very careful about choosing the apartment/room you rent, making sure it's at least somewhat quiet.
Triple-glazed windows do work wonder. I live atm in a modern construction with triple-glazed windows everywhere. Now it's not the city per se, more like the posh suburbs, but it's still an apartment, with neighbors. But you don't hear them, nor do you hear the cars outside.
That said TFA's author is a real dick and that is seen in the way he writes. You don't "teach" your neighbors and you don't program them in a pavlovian way. He obviously has got an inferiority complex and he's expressing it by playing though in the way he writes.
> You don't "teach" your neighbors and you don't program them in a pavlovian way.
Sure you do. Punishment of bad behavior is a basic social rule. Words were exchanged. All they had to do was listen, understand and stop the bad behavior. Had they done that, things would not have escalated beyond a polite conversation. Unfortunately, people often choose overt disrespect instead. They choose to challenge the other guy to do something about it.
If anything they should be glad the punishment was as civilized as this. There are many places in this world where it could easily escalate to actual violence.
> If anything they should be glad the punishment was as civilized as this. There are many places in this world where it could easily escalate to actual violence.
Agreed. But there’s a reason that guy apparently felt no worries about closing the door in OP’s face. Perhaps the likelihood of it escalating was slim. And there’s a reason why OP didn’t knock again.
In the resolution you propose in another comment, deviance doesn’t cease. It transfers to the guy who thinks he can correct people’s behavior with technology. But I need to remind myself where I’m saying this at.
> Perhaps the likelihood of it escalating was slim.
Not as slim as he had hoped.
People feel free to close the door on others because they are used to a life without violence. Their implicit thinking is "I'm not even gonna consider what this other person wants because what's he gonna do about it? Nothing." They think there is no way they will be held accountable for their actions. That's magical thinking.
People really shouldn't ask that question. There are a lot of things that can be done about virtually any situation. People would do well not to forget that.
"What are you going to do about it?" is a challenge. It's refusal to negotiate and a direct challenge to escalate the situation. "If this matters so much to you, then you had better do something about it". Not only does it escalate, it insults the other person. They have no choice but to escalate because the alternative is to be seen as weak which costs respect, especially if the exchange happens in front of peers.
> It transfers to the guy who thinks he can correct people’s behavior with technology.
Yes. The situation has escalated. The other person can either submit or escalate even further. Perhaps into physical violence.
Hope the hacker has a gun and is able and willing to use it. You know. Just in case. Plenty of people out there willing to die over real or perceived slights.
That’s how things are done in Eastern/South hemispheres. There’s a lot of things about respect from those parts of the world that Westeners don’t understand.
It's definitely done in "civilized" societies as well. It's just a lot more indirect and delayed. Instead of punching someone, they might sue them or sabotage them somehow. It's violence all the same, just a different flavor. The violence is so thoroughly abstracted away that people don't even view it as violence proper.
The man who closed the door might’ve had a reason not to expect violence from the guy with the remote. It’s possible that the man perceives violence/respect in ways similar to how it’s done in other parts of the world and saw thought that he could get away with his slight because remote guy didn’t pass as someone capable of violence or qualified for door man’s idea of ‘respect’.
No matter the case I agree that he’s making a gross estimate. I think that he [door man] collected evidence to support his estimate about his neighbor will before this happened. I’m not here to stick up for door man but I’m certainly not going to give remote guy a pass and then philosophize about aggression as to why.
Often talks of violence come from a place of resentment. They’re fantasies. If someone who you have even a limited familiarity with slights your capacity for violence they may have been given reason to. Talk about ‘how things are done’ but only from the perspective of the brute makes me wonder if there’s any familiarity with handling brutish behavior other than by proxy.
Passive aggression is a more frequent outlet than a more managed sort. If it leads to results like the one described here it’s easy to view it as the lesser of two evils, and sure, you can argue that. But the evil persists both in the rudeness and passivity of both parties. The former is readily identified and criticized. The latter often isn’t.
It's not about me. It's about the author of TFA, the person who was hurting him and how he made him stop.
Just two people exercising their freedoms. Officially, nothing happened. It's just two guys randomly using their TV remotes at roughly the same time. If police had been called, they wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.
Yet a game was played. One turned up the volume, the other remotely turned off the TV in response. On and on it went until the volume would no longer get turned up. Victory.
Note that the neighbor never figured out who was doing it. There's no way to know what he would have done in that case. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.
I'm just saying hackers should probably think twice before liberally applying their boundless ingenuity to social problems like these. It can work wonders. It can also escalate things so far beyond their control that it's not even funny. They could easily end up on the receiving end of some serious conditioning of their own.
> But there’s a reason that guy apparently felt no worries about closing the door in OP’s face. Perhaps the likelihood of it escalating was slim. And there’s a reason why OP didn’t knock again.
Most likely because they’re entitled westerner who grew up with laws that protect against physical violence, but not mental abuse.
Humans are more complex than that. If they become aware that someone is applying such conditioning, they will defy it.
For the same reason corporal punishment doesn't work even on an average intelligence child. They quickly figure out that probability of getting punished again is not 100% and even if, that's just cost of doing business - sometimes it's worth it.
It's not complex at all. It's just violence. People are doing things you don't want them to do, so you do something to make them stop. Pretty standard.
If they can muster defiance, it's only because you weren't violent enough. If someone is defiant enough to play probability games with you, just punish them 100% of the time instead, even if they did nothing. He was probably doing it some other time where you didn't catch him, so it's warranted.
There's always someone willing to escalate things further. Things will escalate until someone discovers their limits and backs down. Consequences range from being quietly hated, to being ostracized, to being actively fucked with, to being beaten up, to being straight up killed.
Smart people don't fuck around and find out. They check their behavior so that they don't step on other people's toes for no reason. Violence very often comes with instructions on how to avoid it. Don't do this, and I won't do that. All they have to do is listen and follow the instructions.
The outcome where the obnoxious neighbor learns his lesson and stops his bad behavior is the good ending. The behavior stops, the situation de-escalates and peace is restored. If they keep up their defiance, things will only keep escalating further. Somebody could get hurt.
> Your position just means every disagreement comes down to a physical fight.
> Is that how you want to live?
The threat of violence is always present. It's just that in "civilized" societies it's often indirect and abstracted. People don't usually get violent, they pay lawyers to complain to the courts which have the power to order police to commit measured amounts of violence on their behalf if necessary.
When negotiation fails and police is unlikely to help, people quickly revert to taking matters into their own hands.
Of course they do. Some of the smartest people out there are habitual risk takers. We wouldn't have organised crime if it weren't for people smart enough to not get caught or killed early on.
Your method doesn't take into account that the person you're targeting also has a brain and they will use it against you and also that they have as much power as you do.
Overall you're describing a power fantasy, not reality.
He might have, and my experience is that you cannot teach inconsiderate people, they lack social object permanence: as soon as you don't stand in front of them, they become unaware of your existence and thus are also unaware that their music at two in the morning might be annoying to you.
Better windows don't help either - but they're great for noise outside. The only thing that helps against horrible neighbors is moving. If you've never learned that lesson, you've never had horrible neighbors.
"The only thing that helps against horrible neighbors is moving. If you've never learned that lesson, you've never had horrible neighbors."
Having lived next to a terrible neighbour for over 20 years, I can confirm a horrible neighbour never changes into a considerate one. And often they're the ones that never sell or move (why would they, they're having a great time..).
Almost all the neighbours properties around here have been sold a few times, but not him.
Lucky we've been lucky with our other neighbours who are (currently, and most of the owners of the past too) all very nice people.
We'd love to move, but we really like the location, house and garden. That and anything similar is priced out of our range.
We used to think we got really lucky with the price of our place, but maybe no one bought it because they knew the neighbour that lived there.
But yeah, if you can move, move. Don't hang around hoping things will get better, they usually don't.
I stood my ground once against an awful neighbor. The neighborhood was a fishbowl and he already had a bad reputation that he wanted to pretend didn’t exist. My spouse and I put up a fence on the property line and nowhere else, which really embarrassed him. And at one point we figured out he was eavesdropping on us. I found out he had a record and so I started talking with my spouse in the room he eavesdropped on about getting a restraining order and about his record. It took about 3 months but he eventually packed up and left.
There's a guy in my neighborhood driving a 20yo BMW with a modified exhaust. He also has a motorcycle. If I tried to move to a more expensive area, I would have a guy driving a 5yo BMW with a modified exhaust - the building two blocks away is literally that - 40% more expensive, asshole in an M3 flooring it every time he drives out.
A friend of mine had a prolonged conflict with a neighbour who lived off of his dad's money and who would pound his Porsche at any time he would feel like it.
I actually had that too, but they don't stop sounds from inside the building like constant bathroom renovations etc.
The problem is also that the moment you walk outside you're bombarded with all the sounds of the city. ANC headphones exist but so do air-pollution masks, I don't think that's the way forward or at least that's not how I want to live my life.
> That said TFA's author is a real dick and that is seen in the way he writes. You don't "teach" your neighbors and you don't program them in a pavlovian way. He obviously has got an inferiority
Sure you do, if:
1) your neighbour is an absolute cunt
2) their parents failed to raise a responsible human being
3) law won’t protect you
4) you can’t easily move
5) you don’t use violence
Then you have all the rights to teach the cunt some manners.
I love to be in control of my environment. In my apartment block that means I rely on my sound machine to silence any unwanted noise. Albeit relatively.
20 years in an apartment in the city was enough for me, as I grew older I realized there are too many things outside of my control if I want silence and peace of mind.
Sound pollution is a very real baseline stressor.