u/pleasedonotredeem

I'm on a ferry coming back home at the end of a long day on a construction site. It's pretty full, and the seats are arranged around the perimeter of the cabin in rows of three.
Most rows have 2 people in them, with one empty seat in between. People are having conversations, kids are running around, but overall it's pretty quiet similar to a daytime flight.

I'm lucky, nobody is sitting next to me...until a vacant-eyed old man stumbles up, sits down (no problem, this is a shared space).....

...and pulls out his phone and opens up what seems to be youtube. At full volume. It's AI slop, a combination of that girl's tik-tok voice narrating fake news about Kamala is running for president again, Biden and Obama are behind the high fuel prices, and how the hanta virus is the next COVID and it's spreading through COVID-vaccinated people...

Seriously, all those topics covered in less than a minute, this is like Spalding Grey on meth.

"HI - Excuse me, can you please put some headphones on?"

"Huh?"

"Please put headphones on!"

I'll always be polite and calm, but I'm done asking in situations like these. I'm 40 years old, I tell now.

"But I don't have headphones" he smirks and loads up some more boomer rage-bait brain-rot.

"Then please turn the audio off!"

"Oh, so the sound bothers you, does it?" Somehow still smug, he is speaking with elongated words and pauses the way that these geezers do sometimes. He has raised his voice, but I think it's probably because of his hearing moreso than his temper.

Now the half dozen other people within 10' are all turned around, looking.

He stares at me, I stare back. I have a pleasant smile on my face so if he escalates, it will be obvious to everyone around.

"Well okay then, if it bothers you so much I'll turn it off."

Instead of turning off the sound, he puts the phone in his pocket. After about a minute he gets up and announces to no one in particular that he is going outside for some fresh air.

Everybody clapped (silently, with their minds).

I'm seriously anxious about the day that I know is coming - when I tell some jabroni to turn off his speaker phone in public and the bystanders stick up for him....