The Headphone Effect

The headphone effect

I have noticed something kind interesting the last couple of days and am wondering if anyone else has had the same experience.

I work in a big office block which has a small park next door in the middle of lots of other office blocks. On my lunch break I head out to the park and practice my juggling and some times a bit of poi. Most of the people in the park are just there to have a smoke or eat their lunch or are walking to their buildings.

Any how I have noticed that if I am juggling away and have my head phones in listening to some music I get about half as many weird looks compared to when people can’t visibly see I am listening to music when I practice.

At first I thought that it was just me being less aware of my surroundings because of the music, but today I did a little experiment where I put in my head phones then just ran the end of the lead in to my pocket rather than my MP3 player, same effect people didn’t seem to look as weirded out by my juggling in the park. I just thought it was kind of interesting.


Any theories as to why this happens, any one? Or is it just me being weird?

Um.. maybe it's just the difference between seeing someone dancing to music.. and just.. dancing.. or singing. We all sing and dance to music, but without is something only *weird* people do.

Aren't we a silly species.

Have you tried going one level further up and juggling with music that they can hear too? If you 'accidentally' left a hat lying upside down in front of you you might even get a little bonus =D

I dance without music :'( But then again, I suppose I am weird =D

to me, any dancing without music (or at least when i can't hear the music) looks weird/odd

Yeah thats the funny thing i'm just juggling not dancing about or any thing just straight up juggling.

Yeah i would love to try the hat angle but i imagin i would be chased away pretty quickly if i did that. I'm try to start up a lunch time juggling club at the park though, mostly beacuse i want sombody to pass with but it should be fun.

Just say "but I can't juggle with my hat on, where else can I put it?" and look innocent.

Ooo I like it, very sneaky.

That is one nice thing about canberra you can actually busk on public propery with out a busking permit. But on private property people get a bit iffy.

You normally need a busking permit? i thought you could just rock up anywhere... :\

Hey... another idea, what if you were juggling hats?? that way it would just looked like you dropped one =D

You'd just have to remember not to throw the one full of money.

I don't know about other countrys but most citys in australia you need to have a busking permit from the council if you want to busk in the street, other wise the will give you the boot or maybe fine you.

I think you need a permit here, but they never bother checking.