Loud Exhaust

Mike over at Chicago Boyz writes about Loud Exhaust and Public Space. I had not known about aftermarket additions which can create backfires on your muscle cars that sound like a 12-guage. He talks about research into personality characteristics which did not find correlations with narcissism as expected, but with sociopathy and psychopathy. 

… that the fabric of the world is torn by the small acts of cruelty and unconcern that make everyone else retreat from public space.

This can have an unfortunate resemblance to conquest, if those making a nuisance of themselves recognize one another as like beings, bound up in a common fate, and notice also that the space vacated by those sufficiently annoyed or intimidated is now theirs, collectively.

I may get into the quality and meaning of the study later, as there are immediate questions about definition and representativeness, but for now, it's just a topic of conversation about a well-known phenomenon. 

The loud muscle cars are not unknown here, but in NH that's mostly classic cars, and you want to keep those out of the salt and keep the mileage down. We mostly see those at road rallies or other events. With each added decade they handle them more delicately. And those guys don't tend to go that loud anyway, because the drive for authenticity take them out of the aftermarket add-ons.

It's hard to separate my personal preferences from what I think should be law.  That is only a moderately good guide.

Up here its some motorcycles and some pickup trucks, where the aggressive use of noise is clearly part of the charm to the owners.  You know the ones I mean: the guy tailgating you when you are doing 80 in a 65 zone in the far left lane, while you are passing three cars in the next lane doing 70, and as you switch lane he really jumps it, so that if you accidentally hesitated your switch he might clip you, and revs loudly to show his displeasure.  I am pretty tolerant of big pickups in general.  People need them - and I can construe "need" quite broadly, as it "tows something quite large every couple of years, but that's it." I don't inquire as to the guy's need for power and size. But it is clear that sometimes the noise is not the fun, but the aggressiveness and direct challenge are the fun.

Motorcycles are a bit of an irony. The real scofflaw "networks" are largely into the drug trade, and tend to avoid drawing attention to themselves. For real transport they use pickups, and I suspect not loud ones. But one of my simple pleasures is eating outside in nice weather at a restaurant or friends house and having conversation. During bike week, you might have to interrupt your conversation at regular intervals for over a minute at a time all afternoon.  I find that an unfair imposition on my rights. I can put up with a lot, but some guys are looking for the line where others get offended, because that's the fun part.

It's like the guy in the bar who loudly says "I ain't lookin for a fight...but if some guy wants to mess with me..." Dude, you're looking for a fight.

Because of this I reflected on what sensory offenses get tolerated and which don't. The breakdown is pretty clear. Offensive taste - just don't eat it yourself Jack, leave us alone. Offensive texture - don't touch it.  Offensive smell - well it's harder to get away from that. People might put up with the application of chicken manure for one week every year, but they consider even that to be on sufferance. When the paper mills supported the who city of Berlin, NH, a consistently poor town, people put up with it. But Westford MA, and expensive suburb, no longer has the two abattoirs in the town center it did in my father's day. 

Offensive sights are tricky.  We have argued  lot about such things in my lifetime, and the lines have moved.  It used to be that people didn't want some things, like pornography, to be in the community at all, because children might possible see them. In the politics of sex and violence in particular, we get much more upset about what is required versus what is merely available.

Sound spreads far. Loudon Raceway can be heard for miles. Amplified graduation parties likewise. 

Of course, sometimes it is a matter of perspective.