Yes, you are a crank, but you are not alone. Either way, we should at least acknowledge the crankiness.

Not everyone owns headphones. Some people might have received the speaker as a gift or decided on the speaker instead of headphones. How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide. If they want to listen to music from a bluetooth speaker, that's what they want to do. There's a lot more outdoors for you to use as well so rather that stewing, just find more outdoors. Especially on trails. Just keep going. Or wait until they have kept going. I've never seen a bluetooth speaker that's big enough for someone to be on a trail with that doesn't "go away" after a minute or so.

I have discussed the speaker on trails issue with friends, and we've noticed that the louder one's speaker is the shittier the music it is playing.

> There's a lot more outdoors for you to use as well so rather that stewing

There are also many deep caves in which you can listen to music on speakers. Why aren't you going to these caves?

The societal contract is that your freedom stops where your neighbours freedom starts. This also applies to the noise you produce.

> How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide. If they want to listen to music from a bluetooth speaker, that's what they want to do.

What if it interferes with my desire to NOT listen to their music on their bluetooth speaker?

Often when I encounter a person loudly listening to music or videos on their phone in a cafe, it's because they are completely unaware of how loud they are or they obviously have some challenging psychological issues ( I live in SF ).

I have a lot of wired headphones I got off of Temu, I just give them a pair.

How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide.

If they're blasting music in a normally quiet place, they are deciding for me. You're literally giving priority to whoever chooses to be less considerate of others.

> How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide.

Oh no, it absolutely is. Societies have laws, and even just social norms, that don't stop applying "outdoors". Unless you're in the ocean, I suppose.

Pack out what you pack in. Stay on the trail. No loudspeakers. Very simple.

This is probably the most perfect illustration of toxic empathy I have ever read.

> Not everyone owns headphones. Some people might have received the speaker as a gift or decided on the speaker instead of headphones. How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide. If they want to listen to music from a bluetooth speaker, that's what they want to do. There's a lot more outdoors for you to use as well so rather that stewing, just find more outdoors. Especially on trails. Just keep going. Or wait until they have kept going. I've never seen a bluetooth speaker that's big enough for someone to be on a trail with that doesn't "go away" after a minute or so.

I am very open to the argument of "you do you", which is pretty much my philosophy also. But I do think there are /some/ limits to this, because some behaviors are inherently anti-social. My philosophy is more than "you do you" should apply to policy and regulation, meaning that we should not criminalize or directly punish anti-social behaviors that don't cause direct and immediate harm. But that definitely does not mean that we should not shame people for acting in completely inappropriate ways, or directly inform them that their behavior is unwelcome, or otherwise seek to ensure that we act to exist in spaces devoid of anti-social behavior.

I've had this same exact scenario happen, and I simply spoke to the person and told them to lower the volume, use headphones, or stop altogether because they were scaring away the wildlife that I was there to see and photograph. They apologized, lowered the volume, and we both went back to doing our own thing. Most people are reasonable, and act in anti-social ways due to lack of awareness not malice. We are both sharing the trail, and we are both there to experience nature, and that very well might include many different modalities (including accompanying music), but if someone is acting in a way that completely prevents me from enjoying nature I definitely have the right to say something, to complain about it, and to complain about it after the fact, and "you do you" is not a valid argument in response to that.