Matt Heath: Do we live in the most annoying time in history?

Jared Leto at the Met Gala in New York. Photo / 123f, AP

OPINION

People are annoying. They get in our way, they share opinions we don’t agree with, they make noises, they are overly emotional, they can be illogical, and some of them smell. If you want to experience instant annoyance, just jump on social media, and you’ll find someone irritating within seconds. With so many human interactions so readily accessible to us, have we inadvertently created the most annoying period in human history?

Psychologist Robin Kowalski explains the utility of annoyance in her book Annoying Behaviours: “It is a signal that something needs to be done. It’s a way of communicating that something is interfering with our goals or our preferences.’

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to get annoyed at a mosquito buzzing around the room. That annoyance motivated us to kill the bastards before they gave us malaria. Annoyance at a dirty kitchen might inspire you to clean up and prevent food poisoning. If your dog is misbehaving, annoyance might motivate you to train it.

The problem with many of our contemporary irritations is the lack of resolution. They simmer away and never get resolved. As a result, we spend much of our lives uncomfortably annoyed. Anger might cause us to explode in such a way that the situation comes to a head. Meanwhile, we can spend years annoyed at workmates and never say anything.

Then there’s the irksome scrolling endlessly through social media. You may decide to take an “action” in this realm and reply to a comment. This will not ease your pain. There is an infinite supply of annoyance up the pipe. Then like fools, we jump off our devices and take that pointless manufactured irritation with us. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” If we aren’t careful, we can end up with lives of near-constant dissatisfaction.

Luckily there is an easy fix. You can simply choose not to be annoyed. It’s a power many seemed to have forgotten about. The next time you feel irritated, you could try calling to mind the words Marcus Aurelius used to fight annoyance.

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you.

I employed this technique moments ago. A video of Jared Leto arriving at the Met gala dressed as Karl Lagerfeld’s cat popped up on my screen. I was just about to go into an internal rant about how pretentious Leto is when I remembered, I don’t have to care. We have a very limited supply of time and energy on this planet. Why would I waste any of it on Leto?

This is, of course, a trivial example. Illogical political opinions are arguably harder to brush off. Most of us deal with painful things like annoying partners, family members and friends. But no matter how serious or in-your-face the annoyance is, the same technique can work. Just concentrate on your annoyance, acknowledge that it exists, investigate every feeling attached to it, and then tell yourself to move on.

In his book Chatter, neuroscientist Ethan Kross discusses how best to address ourselves internally. He discovered we are most successful in dealing with emotions when we use our own names in our silent chatter. It’s like giving advice as a friend. If I find myself getting annoyed, I might take a second, acknowledge that I am annoyed, concentrate on the feeling, and then tell myself, “Matty, you don’t have to turn this into a thing. It doesn’t have to upset you.” This method works surprisingly well.

In 2023, it’s not just the people and things around us we have to worry about. We are under attack from algorithms serving us the most annoying things they can find from all around the world. It’s uncomfortable and a waste of our valuable neural resources. Too many nice evenings, holidays and workdays are being ruined by annoyance. If you’re not going to take action, kill the fly, close the door or delete the app, you can always choose not to dwell. As Marcus wrote, ‘”The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts so take control of what you think about.” We live in a time filled with potential annoyance; the good news is, we don’t have to let it bother us.

This article may be a good place to start on your journey to a life less annoying. It was pretentious and unoriginal. The idea has already been covered extensively by Taylor Swift in her 2014 hit, Shake It Off. If this column annoyed you, I suggest letting it go through to the keeper.

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