Not to be an old man yelling at clouds, but pretty much everyone is annoying nowadays, and nobody has any common sense, manners, or common courtesy. It’s been this way for ages, and it’s one of the reasons I never leave my house. Y’all act like animals!
Among the most annoying of these offenses is people’s cell phone habits, and a recent Reddit thread shows just how much one in particular is driving many people crazy.
A man on Reddit criticized people who have their cell phone’s typing sounds turned on.
Why? WHY?! Why are some of you doing this?! As the Redditor put it in his post, “tack tack tack tack tack… that is all I hear from behind my head as someone is typing a dictionary response behind me.”
He’s talking about those sounds that your phone makes when you’re typing out texts — those incredibly grating, profoundly ordinary little taps that are turned on by default when you buy a phone but couldn’t be easier to turn off.
I’ve personally never understood this. It’s like when people don’t change the batteries in their smoke alarm and just sit there and tolerate it while it gives out that shrill beep every 30 seconds. Do you not hear that?! Are you not ready to burn yourself alive with annoyance?! What is the matter with you?!
It seems I’m not alone. The Redditor said that it regularly disturbs his work, especially when trying to chip away at “detail-oriented Excel sheets” and other tedious work. While his appraisal of what’s behind this habit struck many as odd, nearly everyone agreed that it was annoying.
The man called this bad cell phone habit ‘elitist’ and claimed that people are doing it to be ‘cool.’
“I hate having to put my headset on but good lord, don’t be that (person),” he wrote. “It may sound cool but you are nothing but an elitist (jerk).” Elitist? What does this have to do with elitism?
If you’re as confused by that as I am, you’re not alone — nobody on Reddit was really getting it, either.
“How does leaving key-press sounds on make you elitist?” one of several baffled Redditors asked. “I seriously doubt anyone feels superior because ‘phone make noise when type.'”
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The man answered this question by saying, “Most people I see (doing it) are the same ones as those who drank Starbucks when it was a status (symbol),” which, to those of you too young to remember the ’90s and early 2000s will sound insane, but Starbucks WAS indeed a status symbol back then. It was even politicized! Conservatives called us “latte liberals,” and it was code for being out-of-touch and elitist! (My how things have and have not changed).
That still, of course, does not make any sense — there is nothing cool or status-adjacent about having tapping sounds turned on on your phone. That’s not a thing. Phones aren’t even cool anymore anyway! They’re just a thing we all have in our pockets now. It’s not 2004! But there is no denying that typing sound is deeply annoying — he’s got us there.
Many pointed out that some use the sounds for accessibility reasons, but mostly, people don’t know how to turn them off.
A couple of people pointed out that they use the taps because it helps them type more accurately. Keyboard clicks, the official name for the sounds on an iPhone, are part of the phone’s haptic features which give a tactility to the phone’s functions.
In essence, the clicks are a replacement for the actual buttons we used to have on our phones back in the dark ages. “I literally have it for the tactile feel because buttons no longer exist on a smartphone keyboard,” one person wrote. “I’m sorry but without it, I misspell a whole lot more.”
So, OK — some people have these incredibly annoying sounds turned on as an assistive device of sorts, which is, of course, fine, and we should probably all be less judgmental. But as other Redditors pointed out, this is not likely the most common reason for having them on — many people just don’t know they can be turned off.
“Some old people don’t know they can (turn them off)!” one Redditor wrote. “When I see older people in my family doing it, I now ask them if they like it that way… Nine times out of 10, they say, ‘You can make that stop? Please do it for me!'”
I had this experience with my nearly 90-year-old aunt, who saw me one day composing a text in silence and said, “Now why doesn’t your phone make those (redacted) CLICKING SOUNDS?” I showed her how to turn them off and her gratitude was overwhelming. “I was about to flush the (redacted) thing down the (redacted) toilet!” (Aunt Steph has a mouth on her that is not suitable for this website.)
Anyway, for the record, here’s how you do it: On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, then Keyboard Feedback, and turn off Sound and/or Haptic. On Android, go to Settings, then Sound & Vibration, System Sound, and then turn off the keyboard sounds.
There! Now, you have no excuse not to turn them off. (Unless you need them, of course, in which case you’re forgiven… but only barely!)
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.
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