Is daily life so interminably insufferable that being forced to engage the world without a personal soundtrack is somehow on the same level as leaving the house without your wallet or keys? It’s nonsense. Despite the persistent affirmations of the affluent consumer society around you, an MP3 player is manifestly not a daily accessory.
Even more than simply being an extra half-pound slab of money and metal in your pocket, your MP3 player makes this really awful statement about your relation to your environment, by which I mean your society, by which I mean the rest of humanity. By plugging in your ear-buds you’re effectively turning off one of your senses, which as a statement reads either as being too good for the place you’re in, or too bored, or in any case that you want to separate yourself from your surroundings to the maximum allowable degree. I have those moods too, but when I feel like indulging them I stay at home.