Headphone News

In San Francisco a skateboarder is hit by a trolley. Elsewhere a jogger is run over by a train. Someone out for a walk is hit by a helicopter. The average reader who is wrong about everything, might think these stories are innocuous, unrelated incidents. Astute, handsome readers will notice these stories are linked by a singular thread—a thread that stitches these seemingly disparate events together into a horrifying tapestry of inescapable truth: headphones are dangerous. As we've long said here on HeadphoneInfo.com, "Headphones are a loaded gun, pointed directly at your childrens' faces." You can and should quote us on that, because it'll drive up our page views.

While we fully acknowledge headphones are a literal death trap, we do think it's a bit excessive to claim, "the primary function of headphones is murder." We believe there are times where an informed, cautious citizen can utilize headphones—and survive.

As a website with "headphone" in its URL, we felt obligated to help. Here is the first part in our extensive, multi-part headphone safety guide. Hopefully this safety guide will you, our beloved readers, survive to click on our ads well into the future.

Today we'll talk about using headphones while exercising. Headphones can be useful for providing users with invigorating music while they work out. Unfortunately, if you're not careful, exercising with headphones can quickly turn into a deadly game of single-player Russian roulette.

This graph illustrates how headphones can help boost exercise efficiency.

Question: what's wrong with working out in silence?
Answer: nothing, as long as you enjoy being stupidly inefficient.

According to a clinical exercise physiologist who was quoted in an article: ''playing music that is inspirational to the listener can actually make someone exercise harder than they would without music.''

For those of you without a PHD in techno babble, allow us to translate these findings: music is literally sorcery that will give you super powers. It's like a real life Konami code, only instead of feeling ashamed for cheating you just get gigantic muscles that people find attractive.

Of course, these findings aren't necessarily new. Music's magical properties are precisely why the best marathon runners lug around boom boxes, or why Captain America lifts weights while a live orchestra plays in the background. Some people even combine their cardio and weight routine with a music regimine by giving a piggy-back ride to Pete Townshend while he plays the entirety of Tommy.

When you get down to brass tacks, however, these methods are cumbersome and expensive. If you wish to reap the legendary benefits of music during your workout, headphones are a necessary evil (much to Pete Townshend's chagrin).
 

Though fearsome, the reverse bear trap from the movie Saw didn't actually kill anyone. The same cannot be said for headphones.

Picture yourself on a bus. The driver announces the bus is about to explode, so you get off and the next stop and wait for another, safer bus. Only you have to keep waiting forever because you were wearing headphones and didn't hear the announcement and died in the explosion and now you're in Purgatory. Scenarios like this happen every day and they're the reason headphones are the most dangerous head accessory since the reverse bear trap.

Like a deadly neurotoxin, headphones limit your ability to perceive the world around you. This is especially worrisome if you're exercising, since it's easy to forget you should constantly be on the lookout for plummeting helicopters. Here's a quick experiment to see how headphones and exercise can sometimes lead to trouble: do 30 pushups without wearing headphones while a murderer sneaks up on you. You likely heard him approach and escaped to safety. Now perform the same experiment, only you're wearing headphones that obfuscate the murderer's footsteps and menacing whispers. How about now? Were you able to hear him, or were you murdered?

Unfortunately, experts are divided on how to mitigate the risks of headphone use. Some sources say you should only use in-ear headphones, some sources say you should never use in-ear headphones, and some sources say using more than half your headphones will multiply your risk. The fact is, exercise is a dangerous activity that injures 50,000 people annually and headphones injure 173,000 people annually. Go ahead and add those figures together. Oh, and don't forget to carry the one—to a graveyard.

While wearing headphones, you might feel omnipotent. You aren't.

Surprisingly, yes. While there is no true guarantee that you can safely wear headphones and avoid getting hit by a train or eventually succumbing to the crippling effect of tinnitus, it is possible. Memorize the following tips and you may just be able to exercise, wear headphones, and survive.
 

Understand music doesn't make you invincible.
Although music is a powerful exercising tool, it can also create cognitive dissonance. Many people have felt the god-like enhancement of headphone music and immediately tried to bench press an oncoming train. Even though you might have the exercising ability of Nike, the Greek goddess of athletic strength, you will still have the not-getting-hit-by-a-bus ability of Nick, a cashier at the convenience store below our office who was recently hit by a bus.
 

Trains mean business.

Stay away from trains.
Most headphone-related accidents involve trains, although not a single scientist in the entire world knows why. Trains are gigantic, noisy, bound to a predictable trajectory, and bear no ill will towards the world of man. If you think about it, trains are incredibly safe for something their size and mass. It's not like they can sneak up on you.

Oh wait, yeah they can: you're wearing headphones. Now you can't hear the train at all and its steam engine heart burns with hate. You're probably even closing your eyes to lose yourself in aural euphoria. The next thing you know, you've got train on your face. Only you probably don't even know it because you basically just exploded and are dead.

Seriously. We just want to help.

Read HeadphoneInfo.com frequently.
This isn't just a shameless plug. If you want to live, you should stay tuned to this web site for our continuing coverage in how to survive in the headphone-saturated deathzone we call Earth.

In the meantime, if you want some headphone health tips above and beyond the common sense garbage in the news (who doesn't know that loud noises can hurt your hearing?) , read this HeadWize article. Did you know that, while exercising, blood is diverted from your ears to major muscle groups, meaning your ears are more susceptible to damage from loud music playback? No? Read the article.

Also, if you have any questions, or have your own tips or stories about surviving an encounter with a headphone (or headphones), feel free to send us an email.