Olga Khazan, writing in The Atlantic, has a great piece that’s superficially about noise-cancelling headphones, but does a bit of a deep dive into some of the reasons why she continually wears headphones. I loved this paragraph:

This auditory selectivity is, in some ways, part of a trend toward bespoke experiences, particularly in upper-middle-class life. Many Americans don’t befriend their neighbors anymore; they befriend people with our same hobbies and interests. We don’t date the girl next door; we date the girl who has been served up by an assortative algorithm. With the help of Facebook, we read the news we want to read, instead of the news we should. Social media connected us, and then the connection grew too close for comfort, so now we “cancel” those we don’t want to hear from.