'Sodcasting' - a new term for being annoying.

Margaret Thatcher, in one of her many annoying moments, said that any man who travels on a bus after the age of 30 must consider himself to be a failure!  It's a remarkable sentence when you think about it: sexist, snobbish, environmentally incorrect, and insulting,  all in a few words - she truly was a remarkable piece of work in her heyday.  Having said that, I don't often go on buses - I am over 30 after all - but I recently did.  Travelling through south London I was amazed at the noise on the bus, much of it from what I now know is referred to as 'sodcasting'.



Sodcasting is when you decide that you really have to share your taste in music with those around you, whether they like it or not.  There was an interview on Radio 4 the other day with a sodcaster who, when asked whether anyone ever asked him to turn his music down said "No, this is Hackney, bad things can happen round here, know what I mean?"

The phrase originated in Pascal Wyse's Wyse Words column in the Guardian's Weekend magazine back in 2007: "Sodcast [noun]: Music, on a crowded bus, coming from the speaker on a mobile phone. Sodcasters are terrified of not being noticed, so they spray their audio wee around the place like tomcats."  It's probably showing my age, but I agree with every word of that.

If you'd like to read a defence of sodcasting, and, incidentally, one of the most pretentious bits of writing I've ever read (even by Guardian standards), try this attempt by Dan Hancox:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/aug/12/sodcasting-music-in-public-mobile-phones

Almost as annoying is the habit beloved of my daughter's friends of listening through one headphone - not because there isn't a second one, but simply so that some other noise - conversation, television, whatever - can also be heard.  The result is that the spare headphone emits a tinny, irritating squeak that is deeply intrusive. 

The key question is, of course, why?  Hancox offers two possibilities in his article: "To some, sodcasting might seem like a bloody-minded imposition, a two-fingers from those who don't care what others think of them. To the teenagers, though they probably wouldn't put it quite like this, it's a resocialisation of public life through the collective enjoyment of music; it's friends doing the most natural thing imaginable – sharing what makes them happy."  I told you it was pretentious twaddle!

So there we have it: whatever makes teenagers happy has to be fine with the rest of us.  It's surely partly about freedom of choice, and that cuts both ways: the sodcasters freedom to play their music in public, versus the right of others not to have it inflicted upon them - that's probably why headphones were invented!  Grumpy old man moment over for another day...back to Teeline.