Loud Mouths, be Quiet!

This article is dedicated to one of my most despised social groups, verbally loud people. It has been inspired by an incident this week that has reinforced my utter distain for these people. I was in a high (well high-ish) end restaurant in Bath, where a large table of men and their partners were also sharing a meal. Sadly, they also shared their conversation with the rest of restaurant, and frankly the conversation was not up to much. What was distressing about this particular scene was that the people involved clearly felt like they were somehow enlightening the rest of the diners with their anecdote and stupidly overly boisterous shouts and comments. In reality they were drunk, witless and borderline repellent. The irony really being that if they had also been quiet I wouldn’t be bad-mouthing them, however their insistence that everyone listened to their verbal excrement has instead prompted me to write this.

What this incident highlighted was that some people just want to talk crap, loudly. If my post-eighteen year old life has taught me one thing it’s that there is a forum for airing conversational rubbish of this type and it’s called the pub. Getting pissed up and spouting bollocks is fairly common, but why go to a quiet place to do it? There is a frankly idiotic mentality to acting stupid and then enforcing your stupidity on those around you. That is unless of course, you’re an idiot. Now, I’m not saying all loud people are idiots. I have many very audible friend and colleagues who are oodles smarter than me. However, when they’re in a quiet restaurant, they talk quieter. They have a magical quality called ‘self-awareness’ and somehow know, that in certain places, they don’t need to yell at the top of their voices. I for one feel genuinely self-conscious when, for instance, I take a phone call on a bus or train. I don’t want to be that person who everyone is listening to discussing whatever it is I am discussing. This doesn’t make me a prude! I am not alone in my feeling. In fact I’m pretty sure I represent the softer-spoken majority. Loud mouths aren’t hard to spot; they tend to be the people with zero discretion, but masses of ill-informed opinion.

Now this may seem a little bit harsh. I don’t care. I, like most people, have at one time or another talked utter shit, however, I do this to my friends (and quietly). The difference you ask? Simply this, my friends choose to be my friends and can stop me, or stop being a friend, at any time. Loud mouths shove their conversation down the throats of any geographically unfortunately bystanders.   

An old work colleague said to me once that he didn’t believe in raising his voice. When I asked why, he said that if I needed to raise my voice then, either my argument was poor, or the person I was talking to wasn’t worth bothering with. Not a ridiculous sentiment I thought and for some people, possibly something to think about.