> What adults mean is something different; "Don't leave me alone with myself, exposed to the existential chasm in my soul, and my abject learned helplessness".

> What adults mean is something different; "Don't leave me alone with myself, exposed to the existential chasm in my soul, and my abject learned helplessness". I've come to accept and adopt my late father's idea about the purpose of portable music players, which he formulated shortly after the Sony Walkman had got competition from other brands of cassette players, and which now, after an (in retrospect rather short) interlude of dedicated MP3 players, applies to the music player apps in smartphones: That's why everybody[1] nowadays walks around constantly marinating their brains in a drizzle of background music[2]: To drown out their own thoughts -- or to cover the lack thereof. ___ [1]: i.e. more or less "everybody", at the time of writing, under the age of... Idunno, ~50? [2]: Or muzak, as Dad may have put it.