Complaining about an ice cream truck you can hear in the back of your house while wearing noise cancelling headphones isn’t Karen culture.

Parent is perfectly right.

> cultural shift toward being selfish

I enjoy ice cream so damn all other opinions :)

It absolutely is. Gettin an ice cream truck banned from your neighborhood because you heard it drive by is the epitome of Karen behavior.

Blasting sound out of your vehicle into a residential area for hours just because you want to sell something is selfish.

So is defending the behavior and imposing it on everyone around you just because it's sometimes convenient for you to walk 10 meters for some ice cream once a month.

Like TFA says, we have to decide as a society what kind of noise we think is worthwhile. The sound of kids playing seems essential for a culture to stay friendly to family development.

But broadcasting an advertisement jingle to neighborhoods because you want to make money, perhaps not.

You are focusing on the driver, but what about the patrons. Is one selfish person listening to sound for a minute enough to to prevent 10 kids from being happy? 100? 1000?

Yeah, did you even think of the children?

Would the kids not be happy if the truck was not constantly playing music?

Ice cream trucks are awesome. I have stopped wfh zoom meetings due to Mister Softee coming by and wanting to grab an ice cream. The surprise and delight of a treat when totally unexpected is wonderful. No one complained.

I miss Mr Softee too!

So what about the sound of your car going by my house every morning? That's really the irony, everyone is complaining about all sorts of noise, but the worst noise in urban environments, the constant traffic & car noise, is somehow sacrosanct.

No, doing so is the equivalent of using Adblocker.

Isolating yourself from the sound via one of various available methods would be analogous to using Adblock.

Yes it is. No Karen thinks she deserves the title... even tho she does.

It completely is. If you're talking about one parked for dozens of minutes or hours, sure, worth getting annoyed, but if you, living in an urban environment, can't handle a few minutes of some random noise from someone just trying to get their economic sustenance while making a few of your neighbor's kids happy for a bit, you're the problem. The funny thing is how many people try to justify their specific unreasonable intolerance as something completely okay to impose on others with complaints.

I'm not sure about this being a new thing. I also think we've gone too far with the anti-karen whiplash and think everything before that was trendy was perfect. When I was a kid that got up to no good or was just being annoyingly loud, I would hear about it. There's always been an acceptable loud, like kids running around and playfully being loud at a park or playground. Going to the same playground with a loud stereo is not the same thing. You're clearly up to no good as a teen smoking and hanging with your friends. You make it sound like kinds "back in the day" never got into trouble. I can assure you, I, er we, absolutely got in trouble for getting up to no good.

Certainly, there were plenty of "dude, really?" moments when kids would go over on limits. It is hard not to think we haven't pushed the limits down to zero, though.

Granted, using smoking as an example is hilarious to me. I confess near zero sympathy for that going away. If anything, I'm pretty sure I'm more dumbfounded that people still smoke in any real numbers.

Former/recovering smoker. I hear this sentiment a lot (“Why would anyone ever smoke? It’s just dumbfounding”). I can tell you the reason people smoke is because it feels fucking great. It’s a terrible, terrible habit and the number of smokers of any drug should be zero, but I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it wasn’t relaxing and enjoyable.

It's the same thing as why would any shoot a spike into their veins to get high on heroin. The lack of empathy for an addict is telling. The indignity of a righteous ex is insufferable. How someone became an addict is not necessarily relevant, but once they're hooked quitting is not so simple as those unable to empathize while on high horses want to think.

It is however annoying when the addict does their thing in public with zero fucks to give for anyone else around them.

Second this. It's not like us smokers, or at least most of us, are sitting there hating every minute and aspect of having a smoke but unable to stop. We maybe can't stop, sure, but it's also just wonderful while we're doing it.

I've found that I wanted to smoke long after I stopped enjoying smoking.

Dealing with the worst (or is it maybe best?) of both worlds still. I both want to smoke and enjoy it too damn much, even though a little background alarm in my inner brain blares for much of the day reminding me that this is a potential death sentence I just keep playing with so much..

What do you like about smoking? My favorite part was getting to stand outside alone for 5 fucking minutes.

Check out Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking, if you're interested. It helped me think a lot more about what I was doing and feeling, and turned out to be useful in a bunch of other areas in my life. I found the audiobook ripped from cassettes as a torrent.

Oh, I know that that must be the case for a lot of folks. The movie Trainspotting did a pretty good job communicating some of that.

The surprise on my end is usually that new people smoke. Anyone that had already developed the habit, I am not surprised still does it. In that regard, it is not unlike any other drug.

I also realize I should count myself incredibly lucky that smoking does not impact me at all. I literally feel nothing when I try a smoke or cigar. Can barely even taste it. Reminds me of my grandfather who used to smoke to be social. When he found out they were bad for you, he just stopped. Had no withdrawal at all. Yay genetics. :D

There's a difference between the neighbor (whom you've almost certainly met) stepping out and saying "hey stop that" or "keep it down", and karen calling the cops. That's the new thing - this insane insistence that children must be kept hidden, and that the authorities must be involved if they are playing in designated play areas, or walking around the block unsupervised, or (heaven forbid) being loud during reasonable daylight hours.

Sometimes it's also just the individuals.

We have a small playground here and for a number of years there were exactly 3 people being loud and obnoxious. One mom and her two sons. None of the other kids ever bothered me. :P