As someone who lives in NY for 10 years, I don't know how I wasn't so aware before but I've lately become acutely conscious of how we are surrounded by near constant extreme noise pollution levels. Maybe most people just exist in this the way I used to, not thinking about it, it's so normalised that people can't imagine how it could be any different.

The worst to me is that people have internalised this so far that they don't see any problem in contributing to this pollution themselves. Just a few weeks ago, someone on my block wanted to move their car at 4 am on like a Wednesday for whatever reason. Unfortunately for this person, someone else had double parked next to their car overnight (a chronically common issue in Brooklyn where I live for some reason). This neighbour somehow thought it would be perfectly reasonable to start honking constantly to alert the person who should move their car to let them out. At 4 am. When they would obviously be waking up many other people nearby that had nothing to do with the issue. In my 10 years here, that level of inconsideration was still pretty shocking to me.

I lived in NY for about 4 years, and I'm still amazed by the similar things I saw. For example, one day my upstairs neighbour didn't feel like pulling up the drive way, so she just parked her car in the middle of our cramped, busy one way street so she could run upstairs and grab some things.

Of course all the people stuck trying to drive down the street started honking and yelling. She got back to the car, yelled back at them and drove off.

I wouldn't consider doing something like that in a million years, but for native New Yorkers, it's par for the course.