Sounds made up

> It can adversely affect the ability to achieve life goals and enjoy social situations. It was first recognized in 2001 though it is still not in the DSM-5 or any similar manual.

It’s just a term for describing disliking hearing people smack their lips. I’m not claiming it’s a disease or disability.

It is different than just a simple “dislike”. I can’t really explain it, but hearing mouth noises (chewing, swallowing, lip smacking) invokes deep, almost instinctual anger within me. I can’t explain it, but it is certainly different.

This is a very real thing. I dated someone who went through the roof when she could hear any mouth sounds, even dogs licking their coats.

"I haven't heard of this thing before so it sounds made up"

Oof, as someone that suffers from moderate misophonia, I can assure you it is real and how lucky you are to have not heard of it. It can be torturous, and I don't even have it that bad.

There's a subreddit with 62k members if you're curious https://www.reddit.com/r/misophonia

If it "sounds made up" to you, then you won't mind if I come and stand behind you when you're trying to work and squeak a block of polystyrene up and down the window.

The reality is that it's just a fancy name for people/things that sound annoying, and if you're forced to hear it for long periods of time, one day you might find it extremely more annoying to the point where you have to say something or walk away, usually coinciding with some other stress.

Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer's nose whistling was what finally made Flanders snap?

Whether it's a serious AND common AND acute disorder is up for debate. In the early/mid-2000's a fire started smoldering on the Internet regarding wanting to find a clinical jargony label for every aspect of life, and Wikipedia turned it into a wildfire.

I loved Carl Kassel but towards the end of his run on NPR it got very hard to listen to him for this reason. RIP Carl.

Depending on what station you listen to, it may not have much content produced by NPR. This would apply to All Things Considered and Morning Edition mostly.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/not-npr

It bugs me sometimes too, but I'd rather listen to a thousand wet tongues and smacking lips than a single sentence from Ayesha Rascoe. I don't have a voice for radio either, but (with rare exception) I've been kind enough to stay off of it.

Thank god it's not just me. Once you focus on Mary Louise Kelly's saliva smacking you can't ignore it. Then I have to tune to something else.

Whenever I hear her, I can't help but visualize her as that nerdy girl who appeared in a few Portlandia episodes:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CA-heIfsJ0g/maxresdefault.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTc2NDg5ODAzNl5BMl5B...

That style of speech is deeply engraved to match that personality type in my mind.

I don't think it's really about their audio engineering. NPR just selects for voices that are quirky to signal that they're outside more mainstream journalism.

I don't think that's fair to Ms Kelly, I don't really have a problem with her conversational style but I think however NPR processes her speech creates that problem. Or, probably more significantly, doesn't process her speech by not removing crackles and breathing. I'm curious how much real-time processing is done by other radio stations.

Another way to put it is that the more mainstream news personalities have developed their speech to be extremely artificial. NPR deliberately aims for more natural voices, and expect that listeners will make certain assumptions about personality from those voices.