This essay is for two kinds of readers: people who find themselves bothered by someone making unpleasant noises at work or in public, and people who have, even for a moment, wondered, “Wait… could I be doing that too?”
This is an observational essay about human behavior. I am a middle-aged man myself, so I am writing it partly as an exercise in self-examination.
Now then.
Many people have probably found themselves bothered by the noises some middle-aged and older men make, consciously or unconsciously.
Snoring. Sneezing. Loud chewing. Sucking air through the teeth. Tongue-clicking. Burping. Huge yawns. Constant sniffing. An “oof” every time they sit down, stand up, or move. The unnecessarily assertive clink of a glass being put down. The long, satisfied “aaahhh” after taking a drink. Some go further and loudly clear phlegm from their throats.
And although it is not technically a sound, restless leg-shaking deserves a mention too. It is visual information, but to the person forced to watch it, it can become a kind of noise inside the brain.
Of course, coughing, sniffing, throat-clearing, and similar sounds may result from illness, allergies, or physical changes that come with age. I am not criticizing symptoms that a person genuinely cannot avoid.
In reality, two things overlap: age and physical condition can make certain sounds more likely, while at the same time there remains the question of how much a person tries to restrain those sounds or adjust his behavior out of consideration for others.
What I am discussing here is the kind of everyday noise that could probably be reduced with a little awareness, yet continues to be released into shared space with little concern for the people nearby.
Why do some men in this age group keep doing it?
I used to think it was simply a matter of bad manners or lack of awareness. But the more I watch people, the more I suspect that this does not fully explain it.
Several things may be interacting:
- as people grow older or rise in status, fewer people are willing to correct them;
- long experience in hierarchical organizations may leave behind a strong sense of rank;
- some people lose the habit of seeing themselves from another person’s point of view;
- “behaving properly” may be understood as obedience rather than adjustment to the environment;
- and when people feel that no one is watching them, their underlying “default OS” begins to show.
This is not a research paper. It is a hypothesis built from everyday observation by someone who belongs to the same group he is writing about.
The conclusion first: the need for self-regulation increases while external correction decreases
As people grow older, the need to regulate their own behavior generally increases.
When we are young, parents, teachers, senior students, supervisors, and others correct us. During the years of raising a family, roles within the household and relationships with other people also provide a certain amount of behavioral correction.
But as men grow older and rise in status, fewer people are willing to speak frankly to them. Subordinates keep quiet. Colleagues avoid the trouble. Family members may eventually give up because repeated criticism changes nothing. Strangers in public have no obligation to educate them.
In other words:
The need to regulate your own behavior increases, while the amount of external correction you receive decreases.
If metacognition does not take over where external correction disappears, small deviations in behavior remain uncorrected.
I suspect there is another factor as well.
For some men, “behaving properly” may remain unconsciously associated with “obeying someone.”
If that is true, then once a man begins to feel, “There is no one here I need to bow to anymore,” he may not merely switch off obedience. He may switch off the habit of turning down his own volume and presence in shared space as well.
I will call that habit output regulation.
This confusion between release from obedience and release from output regulation may be one of the keys to understanding the phenomenon.
Women make noise too. The difference is what they do with it.
Women cough, sniff, burp, sigh, and make other bodily sounds too.
Yet in my own observation, people who continuously release such noises into shared spaces without much concern seem disproportionately likely to be middle-aged men.
Of course, there are quiet men and women who are completely indifferent to the noise they make. Individual differences are obvious. Even so, this kind of release from output regulation seems to me noticeably more common among men in this age group.
The difference is not whether the body produces sound.
Many women notice when they have made a sound, consider whether it might disturb other people, and make some effort to reduce it when possible. They cover their mouths when coughing, step away to blow their nose, keep their mouths closed while chewing, and may briefly signal embarrassment or apology if they unexpectedly make a loud noise.
The sound occurs, but it is not simply released into the environment without mediation. It is adjusted.
Recently, while eating at a restaurant, I noticed a man and woman sitting near me. They appeared to be a married couple.
The man was making fairly loud chewing noises. The woman beside him, by contrast, ate remarkably quietly and neatly.
I have no idea what she thought about the way he ate. Perhaps she had corrected him many times before. Perhaps she had never cared at all. I cannot know.
But when two people sit at the same table, eating under the same conditions, and their eating noises are that different, it becomes difficult to explain everything by saying that people simply become noisier as they age.
It is not that women are physically capable of restraint and men are not.
Many women appear to notice the sounds they make and feel a need to regulate them. Some middle-aged men either fail to notice their own sounds or fail to see any reason to restrain them.
Or they notice, but think:
“This is normal.”
“I’m not bothering anyone.”
“Anyone who cares about something this trivial is too sensitive.”
The difference may therefore have less to do with ability than with a lifetime of being required to regulate oneself—and with what that regulation came to mean.
Why are women less likely to switch off output regulation?
One possibility is that men and women have historically learned somewhat different meanings of “behaving properly.”
From a young age, women have often been evaluated in considerable detail for the volume of their voice, the way they eat, their grooming, their friendliness, the way they sit and move, their consideration for others, and how they appear and sound to the people around them.
Whether those expectations were fair is a separate question.
But one possible result is that many women become accustomed to observing themselves from the viewpoint of other people.
There may also be another important difference.
For some men, the person in front of whom they are expected to behave properly is often “someone above me.”
For many women, the range of people toward whom adjustment is directed may be broader: the person sitting beside them, a friend, a shop employee, a family member, a stranger, or simply anyone sharing the same space.
In other words, the adjustment may extend horizontally rather than only vertically through a hierarchy.
If a person regulates himself only in front of superiors, then once the superior disappears, the regulation can disappear too.
But someone who has internalized the rule “When I share a space with other people, I slightly adjust my own output” has no reason to switch it off.
A person can eat quietly without obeying anyone. A door can be closed gently without anyone giving an order. An object can be placed down quietly even when no important person is present.
That is not obedience.
It is adjustment to the environment.
“Being a good child” contains both obedience and adjustment
As children, we are told:
“Behave yourself.”
“Mind your manners.”
“Be quiet.”
For a child, two very different things are mixed together in these instructions.
One is obedience. A child stays quiet because the teacher is there, behaves because a parent may scold him, and minds his manners because an older or more powerful person is present.
The other is social adjustment. A child stays quiet because other people are using the same space, eats in a way that does not make others uncomfortable, and controls his movements so that he does not unnecessarily disturb the environment around him.
Children do not need to distinguish clearly between these two. From the outside, both look like “being a good child.”
But somewhere in the process of becoming an adult, I think we are supposed to separate them.
A person does not have to submit to authority.
But:
That does not mean he should discard his ability to adjust himself to other people and to the environment.
A mature adult, in my view, is someone who can regulate his own output by his own judgment even when nobody is there to scold him.
If obedience and adjustment remain fused together, however, a man may grow older and begin to think:
“I’m not a child anymore.”
“No one can tell me what to do.”
“There is nobody here above me.”
And with that, release from obedience and release from output regulation may happen at the same time.
He may think he is simply being free, when in fact he has also switched off the mechanisms that regulate his behavior in shared space.
A corporate title and how a person is judged outside the company are two different things
Some middle-aged men carry the status they acquired inside an organization into places where that status no longer means anything.
Men are often more sensitive to hierarchy than they realize. Someone who has spent decades in sports clubs, seniority-based companies, or organizations with clearly defined ranks may become accustomed to dividing people into two categories:
“people I need to be careful around”
and
“people I do not need to be careful around.”
When that way of thinking spills outside the organization, an unconscious judgment may appear:
“There is no one above me here.”
“These are not people I need to worry about.”
Then there is no perceived reason to reduce one’s physical presence, keep the noise down, or think about the comfort of other people.
Rustle.
Thump.
Slurp.
Haaah.
To the person making them, these may feel like perfectly natural actions. To everyone else, he may look as though he is treating a public space like his own living room.
A position inside a company is a role granted by that company.
It is not a superior human rank in public space.
If those two things are confused, a person may develop the mistaken assumption:
I am someone others should accommodate, not someone who needs to accommodate others.
Why do some men suddenly become quiet in front of someone clearly above them?
There is an interesting phenomenon here.
Some men who normally make a great deal of noise suddenly become remarkably quiet in front of someone they clearly regard as superior.
The throat-clearing decreases in front of the company president or an important client. Objects are placed down quietly during an important meeting. Eating becomes more restrained when dining with a senior figure.
Suddenly, it is as if someone has turned down the volume knob.
If a person’s volume and movements change depending on who is present, then at least some of the noise cannot be an entirely uncontrollable physiological phenomenon.
The ability to suppress it exists.
But the person may be deciding which people deserve the use of that ability and which people do not.
If so, this may be evidence that manners were learned not as environmental adjustment, but as submission to hierarchy.
The problem is that strangers in public spaces then become categorized as “people I do not need to accommodate.”
Silence does not mean approval
One major reason people who make unpleasant noises fail to recognize the problem is that nobody corrects them.
But silence from others does not mean that nobody is bothered. Often, speaking up is simply more trouble than it is worth.
Very few people will approach a middle-aged stranger and say, “Your sniffing is really loud,” “Could you sigh a little more quietly?” or “Could you put your glass down more gently?”
The same thing happens at work. If the person is older or holds a higher position, correcting him can create unnecessary tension. Why take that risk just to improve someone else’s behavior?
So people remain silent. They move to another seat, talk to him less, and reduce contact to the minimum necessary.
But the person himself may interpret the absence of criticism as:
“Nobody minds.”
“There is nothing wrong with me.”
In reality, people may simply have passed beyond the stage of complaining and started quietly moving away.
Silence is not approval.
Sometimes it means that people have simply given up trying to correct his behavior.
Metacognition means looking at oneself from someone else’s position
The less external correction a person receives, the more important it becomes to ask how his behavior is experienced by others.
That requires metacognition.
How loud does my throat-clearing sound to the people around me? How noticeable are my footsteps or eating noises in a quiet room? How do my sighs or the way I put objects down feel to other people?
Someone who can ask himself these questions can adjust his behavior without being corrected.
Someone who cannot may turn:
“I don’t mind it”
into:
“Other people don’t mind it either.”
An especially troublesome variation is:
“I don’t worry about little things. That means I’m easygoing.”
But there is no relationship between being unconcerned about the unpleasant noises one produces and having a generous personality.
Being tolerant of discomfort directed at oneself may be broad-mindedness. Being indifferent to discomfort one inflicts on others is a failure of imagination.
A person’s “default OS” appears when his guard is down
People can manage themselves when they are nervous or being evaluated.
At dinner with an important person, they pay attention to how they eat. During a serious interview, they sit down carefully. In front of someone they have just met, they are unlikely to slam things onto a table.
But deeper habits appear when the guard comes down.
While eating. While sitting in a waiting room. While riding a train. While relaxing in the office break room. When a person thinks nobody important is evaluating him.
In those moments, conscious self-presentation weakens.
That is when the person’s default OS appears.
Eating with the mouth closed. Handling dishes quietly. Closing doors gently. Walking without unnecessarily heavy footsteps. Showing a little consideration when coughing.
Some people do these things naturally even when nobody is instructing them.
Others seem to release all regulation the moment there is no one around to monitor them.
Chew, chew.
Thump.
Slurp.
Haaah.
I think a person’s worldview leaks into these unconscious movements.
Human dignity may reveal itself less clearly when people are deliberately “behaving well” than when they believe nobody is watching.
I do not mean intelligence in the sense of how much knowledge a person possesses.
I mean the practical intelligence required to place oneself among other people, imagine how one’s actions affect them, and regulate oneself when necessary.
The way a person behaves when his guard is down may reveal both that kind of intelligence and the culture that has become embodied in him.
Making oneself less noticeable is neither weakness nor obedience
Some people dislike the idea of adjusting themselves to their surroundings or reducing their presence.
They interpret it as submissiveness. They believe that doing exactly as they please represents freedom, while adapting to a situation means worrying about what other people think, flattering authority, or suppressing the true self.
I think the opposite is closer to the truth.
Read the environment and reduce one’s output when necessary. Step forward when necessary. Disappear quietly into the background when necessary.
The ability to make one’s own presence less conspicuous when circumstances call for it is an important form of adaptation.
Shouting because one wants to shout, walking heavily because that is how one feels like walking, eating however one wants, or talking simply because one feels like talking may look like freedom.
But if those are the only behaviors available, then the person is simply obeying his own impulses.
A genuinely free person can express himself or refrain from doing so.
He can step forward or disappear into the background.
In other words, he can regulate his own presence.
To me, that represents a far greater degree of freedom.
Conformity means handing one’s standards of judgment to someone else.
Adaptation means keeping one’s own standards while choosing the behavior best suited to the situation.
Two types: those who do not notice, and those who see no need to restrain themselves
People who make unpleasant noises can roughly be divided into two types.
The first does not realize that he is making the noise. Sniffing, throat-clearing, sighing, and muttering have become such long-standing habits that they no longer enter conscious awareness.
This is primarily a metacognitive problem.
The second type knows that he is making the noise but sees no reason to suppress it.
“This is nothing.”
“Other people can put up with it.”
“These are not people I need to worry about.”
This is more about consideration for others, hierarchy, and how the person understands behavioral adjustment.
The first lacks awareness.
The second has awareness but lacks a perceived need for restraint.
And among the second group, there may even be people who experience restraining themselves as a form of submission to someone else.
Are some unpleasant noises also a way of broadcasting presence?
There is one other thing I sometimes notice.
A loud sigh. Talking to oneself. Putting objects down forcefully. The long “aaahhh” after taking a drink.
Some of these noises can look less like simple habit and more like an unconscious broadcast of personal presence.
Almost as if they are saying:
“I’m here.”
I am not suggesting that every unpleasant sound should be explained this way. Many can probably be explained by physical factors or long-standing habits alone.
But in some people, there may be a relationship between difficulty sitting quietly by oneself and the tendency to broadcast one’s presence through sound.
That is simply one of my observations about human behavior.
Someone who can sit quietly alone knows that making no sound does not cause him to disappear.
How should we deal with people who make unpleasant noises?
Changing someone who constantly makes unpleasant noises is difficult.
Often, the person does not recognize his behavior as a problem. And when the problem is pointed out, the response may be:
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Why do you care about something so trivial?”
“Nobody complained about this in the old days.”
The person ends up treating the listener’s sensitivity as the real problem.
If something genuinely needs to be said—for example, at work—it is usually safer to point to a specific behavior rather than criticize the person.
Instead of saying, “You’re a noisy person,” it is better to say something like:
“Your throat-clearing is getting picked up in the meeting recording. Could you try to keep it down a little?”
But if there is no obligation to correct the person, distance may be the better solution.
Respond politely. Do not get too involved. Give a small nod and quietly move away.
In theory, one could try to make the person understand, “You are not the dominant individual here.”
But the difficulty is high, and the cost of failure is usually not worth it.
It is probably better to think:
“Ah. That is the kind of hierarchy-based OS this person is running.”
Then the behavior can be treated as something to observe rather than something that must personally be defeated.
Every unpleasant sound does not need to be experienced as a personal attack.
It may simply be an uncorrected behavioral pattern leaking out of someone’s internal system.
I am part of this status-conscious monkey troop too
So far I have been writing about other people.
But the most important point is that I am not exempt.
I am a middle-aged man. I am not standing outside the group I have been observing.
I am part of this status-conscious monkey troop too—the same little hierarchy in which rank, dominance, and the question of who must accommodate whom can quietly shape behavior.
What I try to do, however, is observe myself and the group I belong to as if I were temporarily standing outside it.
That, to me, is metacognition.
The sounds we make ourselves are difficult for us to notice. We become accustomed to our own sniffing. Our own sighs feel natural. Our own muttering makes sense to us, so it does not sound like noise. We may be surprisingly unaware of our own footsteps or eating noises.
Human beings are structurally insensitive to the unpleasant stimuli they themselves produce.
That is why it is safer to think:
“I probably have at least one noise I make without realizing it.”
rather than:
“I never do anything like that.”
Middle-aged people who remain pleasant to be around are not simply behaving exactly as they did when they were young.
As opportunities for external correction decrease, they begin to observe and correct themselves.
People who remain quiet, clean, and composed as they age are not people who have somehow avoided change. They have noticed their own changes and continued updating themselves.
I think maturity may mean:
being able to regulate one’s own output voluntarily even after there is no longer any need to submit to anyone.
Not doing whatever one likes simply because nobody can scold him.
Regulating oneself even when nobody is watching.
That is not obedience.
It is autonomy.
Conclusion
Unpleasant noise may be more than a simple habit.
It may reveal whom a person considers worthy of consideration in a shared space.
Changing the other person is difficult. Instead of becoming angry every time it starts again, it may be healthier to step back mentally and think:
“Ah. Another fine day for observing the monkey troop.”
But I am part of that troop too.
So every now and then, I should listen to myself as carefully as I listen to other people.
When nobody is correcting me.
When I believe nobody is evaluating me.
What sounds am I making? How am I walking? How am I putting things down? How am I eating?
I can remain inside the monkey troop while trying, for a moment, to look at myself from somewhere just outside it.
Observe other people, but quietly keep adjusting myself as well.
That seems to me about the right way to live with this particular form of human noise.
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