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For the Psychologists: Is This a Common Thing?

Mark Camp
@MarkCamp
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“AUUURRGHHH!”

I grabbed for the remote and found the Mute button. The muscles of the diaphragm suddenly relaxed, releasing a sigh of relief from my lungs.

”You should just tune out the commercials. That’s what I do…I don’t even hear them,” my life-friend and partner in procreation (yes, @Saint, I admit I was reading your desire book) said.

”I can’t,” I replied.

We’ve just assigned a crisp operational phrase to this deficit: person X “can’t tune it out.”

Mr. C_ presented with symptoms of He Can’t Tune It Out Syndrome, involving commercials; out of tune singing; and grammatical, usage, and logic errors in published writing.

Kate can tune it out or not, and can instinctively tune out non-urgent things. And tune in urgent things, like children making noise and children not making noise.

Not me, I tune everything in. I don’t act on everything. I don’t correct spelling and grammar errors unless they matter, as when checking a kid’s homework. But I’m tuned in to them always.

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Discussion (35)

  • Barfly@Barfly

    I am a muter. Commercial ads on TV, I mute automatically without thinking. Same on YouTube. I'll mute content too, like if a documentary strays into gratuitous climate change propaganda. If I know some stupid line is coming up in a movie, I'll probably mute it, so don't let me handle the remote.

    I bet most of you mute FJB when you watch the news.

  • CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill@CarolJoy
    ReplyingtoBarfly

    Barfly (View Comment):

    I am a muter. Commercial ads on TV, I mute automatically without thinking. Same on YouTube. I’ll mute content too, like if a documentary strays into gratuitous climate change propaganda. If I know some stupid line is coming up in a movie, I’ll probably mute it, so don’t let me handle the remote.

    I bet most of you mute FJB when you watch the news.

    What documentary doesn't go off into the scam world of Global Climate Crisis propaganda? Maybe the ones about child and young adult sex trafficking don't go there, but it seems like all the others do.

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