The Sound of Silence

Working mostly online you get used to the hum and the hubbub of digital noise. Some of it is real noise in the form of notifications, but it's also the digital clutter that accumulates - mailing lists press people add me to because my email is fairly well-known, chatroom conversations that we use because we all work remotely, verification texts for digital services, requests, links, comment moderation, organisational demands, admin... I cut back on that every so often, unsubscribing or blocking things, using various tools to prise off the digital barnacles when they start to drag.

But there's other noise that I've found myself adding in - a near-constant stream of chatter because I actually like the sound of voices. I don't listen to much of what they're actually saying, but TV shows and podcast and the like are for me what I think white noise is for other people.