You can hear the blood flowing in your ears.

I’ve had T for the better part of 3 decades. It’s really fucking loud.

I go to a metal workplace to work on projects. There's a guy there, he's so "cool", he doesn't wear ear protection even when hitting metal with a hammer or while grinding, and he doesn't wear a welding helmet. "I'm not a pussy". He's actively blinding and deafening himself, because he thinks it's cool. What a dumb idiot.

It did not even occur to me that reacting to the real hearing loss part was ruining the fun, because it isn’t.

Sounds like a real loss.

I’ve worked in eye care. Simply put, wear your fucking goggles.

And if that doesn't scare them enough... Tinnitus

You go do some loud crap, concerts and such, don't really care. One day, you're sitting there and notice a ringing tone. It's not necessarily loud, but constant like someone has a high speed fan running the background. Whatever frequency level your dammage is in, your brain fills in the gaps with a constant sound. Nothing and nowhere are ever quiet again. When you're in a noisy situation where the noise is in the range of what remaining hearing frequencies you can still work with, you can't hear anyone over. and as things progress, you can lose more ranges and the ringing can get louder and in different frequencies.

I'm a lefty in a very red state. Everytime I go to the gun range, there is some idiot without ear pro. Now I took care of my hearing, even going so far as to wear earplugs at concerts(which invited a ton of teasing). Even then I have had short bouts of tinnitus and it fucking sucks!

The one pleasure I draw from this is knowing their unpleasant future.

I bought my wife noise cancelling ear plugs for sleeping because I (in her words) snore like a pig. She has several recordings to back that up. So I bought her these noise cancelling earplugs (Soundcore A20 in case anyone is interested) in the hopes it will allow her to sleep. I will eventually get surgery done for it, because I also have apnea. She hasn't put them to the test yet because it's not always that she can't sleep, but I hope they will serve her well.

You can get custom fitted earplugs for specific decibel ranges now, which is what my construction buddy got. I have a pair myself for raves and concerts

Not just that, but giants of acoustics, like Sennheiser and AKG — don't remember exactly who — make earplugs for musicians or concert-goers. With which one gets good sound, but quieter.

my wife flew with a mild cold. the pressure changes forced the infection up toward her ears and that's how she got her tinnitus

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

WHAT?

noooo....