I might be in a minority saying this - and particularly so here on HN - but I struggle to understand why you'd be willing to use a tool like this, as OP did, but not to politely ask someone to keep it down?

Exactly! Every time I asked someone respectfully to lower their noise, it worked. Most times they apologized, I think sometimes people don't realize they're annoying others. It might be intimidating the first couple of times, but it's so much better to feel assertive and not be annoyed anymore.

Last time this happened was in a bar, there was a pianist playing, and a group sat right next to the piano and started being very noisy. I went and asked them to lower their voices. They apologized, and shut up entirely. Later, someone came to thank me for that.

On the other hand, I would never dare using that tool, it feels a bit childish and would make me feel like such an ass!

My wife and I were sitting in the coffee shop/dining area of our grocery store not long ago, eating breakfast before we bought our groceries. There's a gentleman who's usually there on the same weekend days that we are, and he watches videos on his phone very loudly. It was clearly annoying everyone around, but this being Minnesota, nobody was going to bother him about it (instead they just do little glances over their shoulder or the "OPE" eyes at each other lol).

Finally, one older woman gets up and walks over to him. My wife and I are like "Oh shit, she's gonna let him have it, here it comes." She taps him on the shoulder and says "Excuse me, can you turn that down? It's very loud." And you know what he did? He said "Oh, sorry," and turned it down.

She said thanks and went back to her seat, simple as that.

I have seen fights break out in the subway over people being loud. People playing loud music in public often seem to be the types to be looking for trouble, they want someone to tell them to turn it down, so they can say no and escalate. In a lot of cities this is a big risk.

Think of it as catering to the fantasy of a geek's revenge.

The keyword is fantasy.

> so i built a tiny app that plays back the same audio it hears, delayed by ~2 seconds. asked claude, it spat out a working version in one prompt. surprisingly WORKS.

Note, they never said they actually played it and then person realized they were being disrespectful and stopped. That whole scenario is supposed to happen in a hypothetic fantasy world, and every reader here is supposed to take in the same way for themselves.

Have you tried asking many people to "keep it down"? Generally that doesn't end with them politely keeping it down.

Because social anxiety, typically. “What if the person tells me to fuck off? What if they make a scene of it?” Especially if six years ago you are the person who was in your teenage years, chances are your social skills are not what they could be if you didn’t spend a year in lockdowns.

Conversely, if you are the kind of person able to come up to a stranger and ask them (politely and respectfully!) to change what they are doing, you likely the person with the social skill to do other things well too.

My experience has been that people are usually (>50% of the time) offended and non-compliant, no matter how politely you ask. Who am I to ask them to be quieter? They only stop if something annoying is happening for them, like this app, or audibly responding to their call/video.

This feels like a case of imaginary revenge. I doubt the tool was actually used. Creating this tool was part of a revenge fantasy.

If someone has too much social anxiety or is too afraid to politely ask the other person to turn it down, using an actively annoying option like this isn't going to help. This is more likely to induce a confrontation.

I was at a Bills game in Buffalo last year. 5 rows ahead of me was big tall dude, who stood up and would not sit down. This was blocking the view of everybody behind him. People grumbled, but nobody said or did anything for about 20 minutes. I was quite peeved. Then an old lady right behind him gently tapped him on his shoulder and reminded him that he was blocking the view of several people behind him. The dude shrugged his shoulder and said, "not my problem, you can stand up too if you want". I am a mega-nerd, but I lost my cool right there and then and started screaming at the guy. My girlfriend, who didn't want to see me get beat up, pulled me away from the scene.

Many people are just massive assholes. Asking nicely does not work. Particularly big drunk dudes at an American football game. That was my first and last visit to a football stadium.

It's a great example of (effective, apparently) passive aggression, and, I would guess, is motivated by all the same reasons as any other kind of passive aggression. E.g., fear of open confrontation, or a desire to create a situation that is just as or more undesirable for them so that the other person actively chooses the thing you want, of their own free will.

It is very difficult to stay polite while getting very angry. Politeness is usually reserved for respectful people. If somebody acts in a way that is perceived as intentionally disrespectful (whether that's actually the case or not), there is a severe psychological dissonance to overcome. Also physiologically people will get nervous, voice shaking, facial tension and twitching, heart racing, mind getting foggy when severely agitated which makes trying to act polite even more difficult. It's easier and seemingly more sensible to just skip straight to snapping or ... bottling the rage up to eventually release it against somebody sufficiently harmless - humans are monkeys after all (which isn't even necessarily bad, we should just strive for civilizing the chimp and strengthening the bonobo within us.)

It's a way to avoid direct confrontation via passive aggression.

I mean, he took a picture of the guy posted it on his twitter calling him a 'fat uncle'. I don't think he cares about being polite.

lol this is a very good point

if you have the balls to do this next to someone, they will immediately recognize what you're doing right after they stop (if they stop).

that's gonna be 100x more awkward than asking them politely would have been.

Because then you don't end up with an idea for a coding project.

> didn't have the courage to speak up.

i would hope you're not the minority. i'm in your camp.

Agreed. Especially since something like this seems much more likely to get the other person to turn on you. It’s passive aggressive.

Seriously, this is as easy as tapping the dude next door and telling him to tone that volume down.

Negative social skills on that Twitter thread

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