WHAT?

I'm a lefty in a very red state. Everytime I go to the gun range, there is some idiot without ear pro. Now I took care of my hearing, even going so far as to wear earplugs at concerts(which invited a ton of teasing). Even then I have had short bouts of tinnitus and it fucking sucks!

The one pleasure I draw from this is knowing their unpleasant future.

I go to a metal workplace to work on projects. There's a guy there, he's so "cool", he doesn't wear ear protection even when hitting metal with a hammer or while grinding, and he doesn't wear a welding helmet. "I'm not a pussy". He's actively blinding and deafening himself, because he thinks it's cool. What a dumb idiot.

I bought my wife noise cancelling ear plugs for sleeping because I (in her words) snore like a pig. She has several recordings to back that up. So I bought her these noise cancelling earplugs (Soundcore A20 in case anyone is interested) in the hopes it will allow her to sleep. I will eventually get surgery done for it, because I also have apnea. She hasn't put them to the test yet because it's not always that she can't sleep, but I hope they will serve her well.

And if that doesn't scare them enough... Tinnitus

You go do some loud crap, concerts and such, don't really care. One day, you're sitting there and notice a ringing tone. It's not necessarily loud, but constant like someone has a high speed fan running the background. Whatever frequency level your dammage is in, your brain fills in the gaps with a constant sound. Nothing and nowhere are ever quiet again. When you're in a noisy situation where the noise is in the range of what remaining hearing frequencies you can still work with, you can't hear anyone over. and as things progress, you can lose more ranges and the ringing can get louder and in different frequencies.

I work is a loud environment, and didn’t take it as seriously as I should've, and just wore regular earbuds because I wanted to be able to listen to music over the noise of the machinery. I don't have it as bad as either of those cases you mentioned, but definitely noticed that I couldn't hear as well by my mid 20s, and it takes very little background noise to prevent me from being able to following a conversation.

Now I am pretty good about wearing earplugs, and have bone conduction headphones that I can use with them, and the sound comes through clear even at low volume with the ear pro in. I would highly recommend them if that is part of anyones hangup around wearing ear pro.

I've gotten good at avoiding being Rick Rolled. But this catches me out way too often.

audible groan

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Yes! For 10 years I was addicted to those fitness classes and YES I eventually started wearing ear plugs because the music volume was ridiculous.