Headphone News Blog

We recently found an article with a promising headline: "'Radioholics' beware! Headphones may cause 'heartache.'"

"Interesting," we mumbled at our computer, readying headphones-attack.jpg for another hilariously sarcastic blog post.

As it turns out, however, the article doesn't really deliver. There is one (1) line in the entire write-up that talks about headphones' effect on our heart. The claim is that, other than causing deafness, listening to really loud music, "may develop psychogenic disorders and hypertension which will end up in cardiac ailments." That's it. The rest of the article continues on to elaborate about why loud music is bad for your ears, but doesn't mention these "cardiac ailments" again in any sort of detail.

We were expecting lots of quotes from "doctors" making outlandish claims! What about errant soudwaves getting lodged in your left ventricle, or perhaps cardiac arrest induced by an overdose of binaural beats (digital drugs)?

Like most insinuated threats, we're guessing this story will soon be picked up by countless other news publications, who plan on interviewing doctors and doing a lot of journalism. We're going to take the high road, however, and offer up some good, old-fashioned hearsay. We write about headphones, so we're just as good as any doctor at guessing how headphones affect the human body. Therefore, we hope to beat mainstream media to the published punch: here are just a few educated guesses as to what horrors can befall your heart when... headphones attack!

Unfortunately, in an effort to conserve valuable blog space, we've been forced to relocate this list to another page (this one).

Man, just when we couldn't imagine headphones getting any worse, it turns out they're a gateway drug. That's right, today littly Suzy is listening to her newfangled Warped Tour '08 compilation CD. Tomorrow, Suzy's gone from a headphone user to a headphone "user." She's an audiojunkie. Just another freq freak in search of another amplitude trip. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the internet: binaural beats.

Don't be fooled by websites claiming binaural beats are some benign meditation aid. Binaural beats are, scientifically speaking, the devil's serenade. Even more scientifically speaking, it's when two close-but-not-identical frequencies play back through your headphones, corrupting your brainwaves with aural LSD. The worst part: anyone can download binaural beats off the internet (this means your children). That's right, your kids are, at the moment, downloading these "digital drugs" and soaring high on their addicting amplitudes.

Want more proof? Read this exposé, which was recently published on USA Today's website by their internet journalists. You'll find out all about how binaural beats can emulate the effects of marajuana, alcohol, heroin, or even HEAVEN OR HELL. That's right, mad science has quantified the experience of being in Hell, figured out a way to emulate the experience using only off-tone soundwaves, and then arranged a demonic cacophany that will corrupt your kids.

The most terrifying part about this story is binaural beat abuse, like the inexorable march of time or music piracy, is virtually impossible to stop. There is literally one (1) way to save your child from the hell of being a high-fi hop-head, and you'll have to click here to see it.

This isn't particularly new, but it's silly nonetheless. While we're not fans of headphone bans, we can understand why sometimes it's the best solution. For example: races. Now, anyone with access to Google and the wherewithall to search for "headphones running bad" can find a ton of runners' complaints. Apparently, people who wear headphones drunkenly swerve around race tracks, slowing down other runners. Also, wearing headphones can lead to runners not hearing important announcements (and there are a few other valid arguments as well).

While we don't necessarily think this is the best reason for banning headphones -- do they ban deaf people, or the act of "drunkenly stumbling into other racers" itself, etc. -- we do understand how a ban is an easy solution. After all, it's their race, so they get to set the rules. I'm sure they also ban the use of shotguns or scooters, especially when both are used in tandem with headphones.

All this being said, is this seriously the best graphic they could come up with?

Read on for some scathing satire!
 

In the past few blog posts, we've joked about the recent media uproar over headphones. At first, it seemed silly to blame headphones for the same kind of human carelessness that's existed for millenia. Story after story hit our inboxes linking headphones to misfortune. Eventually these individual links formed a sobering tapestry of inexcapable truth: headphones are no laughing matter. This being said, we do think the media is being a bit excessive when it claims, "the primary function of headphones is murder." With headlines like this, what's a savvy consumer to do?

We believe there are times where headphone use by an informed, prepared citizen won't lead to death. As a website with "headphone" in its URL, we felt obligated to research the best ways to survive an encounter with a set of headphones and survive to tell future generations. Hopefully this safety guide will help save some of you, or beloved readership, who will survive to click on our ads for at least a few more hours. If they don't save your life, your story will likely entertain others in another stale "Headphones ATTACK!!" article.

This time around we wanted to focus on exercising. Exercising has been clinically proven to be good. Once headphones are added to the equation, however, exercising can quickly turn into a deadly game of single-player Russian roulette.

This guide is gigantic, so rather than clog up our blog, we put the full story here.