Has the World Gotten Louder, or Am I Just Hearing the Noise More Clearly?

Those who know me know that for a while, I had to keep my social life much more limited. I'm doing better now, and I've been trying to spend more time among people again.

For the first time in nearly three years, I've started sitting around crowded tables more regularly. This week alone, I spent two different evenings with two very different groups of friends.

The first was with a group of shopkeeper friends I've been meeting almost every Thursday at Develi in Florya for roughly seventeen years. Just the men, around a table made comfortable by years of familiarity.

The other included our spouses and was more cosmopolitan, more white-collar, more professionally oriented.

The tables were different, but after a while I noticed exactly the same thing at both:

Everyone had something to say about almost everything.

Economics, politics, health, world affairs, sports, food…

The subject changed. The experts rarely did.

I have a not particularly elegant term for people like this:

Herbokolog.

Someone who knows every damn thing and always has a comment to make about it.

At the all-male table, everyone was a herbokolog toward everyone else. At the other table, perhaps because of white-collar manners, the men exercised a little more restraint. The women were herbokologs toward all of us. :)

After a while, though, I realized that what bothered me wasn't simply everyone having an opinion about everything.

There seemed to be another sentence underneath the conversation:

"I know more than you do."

The conversation was beginning to feel less like an exchange of ideas and more like a small contest for status.

Who knows more?
Who answers faster?
Who gets the last word?

Then the voices rise.

You interrupt the person across from you. You don't let them finish their sentence. You repeat the same point, only a little louder.

What you are saying does not become more accurate.

But the amount of space you occupy at the table grows.

Sometimes an argument is won not by the person with the best sentence, but by the person who leaves everyone else no room to form one.

At one point, a friend I've known for thirty years turned to me.

"Why aren't you talking, Doctor?"

Doctor is a nickname that has followed me since university.

"I talked so much in my time that over the last three years I realized it didn't do much good," I said.

The table kept talking.

I kept listening.

After a while, I stopped listening only to them and began listening to myself.

My memory isn't much help on this point either.

Were we always like this?

Did we always interrupt one another this much? Were we always this certain about everything? Was sitting at a table partly a competition over who could prove they knew more?

Or had all of this always been there, and I was the one who had changed?

The Table in Our Pockets

Then I thought: the issue isn't really limited to those two tables.

We all carry a much larger table in our pockets.

The moment we pull out our phones and open a screen, we join another table occupied by millions of people.

A war begins and geopolitical experts appear within minutes. Markets move and everyone becomes an economist. A health story breaks and everyone is a doctor. The match ends and everyone is a coach. A restaurant opens and everyone is a food critic. A film comes out and everyone is a movie reviewer.

Access to information may never have been easier.

But access to information is not the same as knowing, just as being able to speak is not the same as having something worth saying.

And in the digital world, loudness is no longer measured in decibels.

It is measured in repetition, followers, likes, shares and outrage.

A sentence does not become true because it is repeated often enough.

But after a while, it can begin to look true.

What we do around a table by raising our voices, the algorithm can now do for us on a screen.

Being Quiet Long Enough to Look

While I was thinking about all this, I remembered an exhibition I visited in Istanbul that closes this weekend.

Edward Burtynsky's Shifting Topography at Borusan Contemporary.

For more than four decades, Burtynsky has looked at the marks civilization and industrial activity leave on the natural world. Shifting Topography brings together photographs made in Turkey and elsewhere, placing humanity's imprint on the earth before us with a strange combination of beauty and unease.

What interests me is that the photographs do not shout instructions about what you are supposed to think.

You have to stand in front of them for a while.

Look.

Sometimes it takes time to notice that what seemed beautiful at first glance also contains profound damage.

Perhaps some things can only be understood if we resist the urge to comment immediately and simply look first.

What if, while someone is speaking, we listened instead of preparing our answer?

What if we didn't have to leave a comment under everything we saw?

What if we didn't need a position on every subject?

What if "I don't know" became an ordinary sentence again?

A Restaurant That Isn't Viral

Then I read about David Chang's new food and travel series.

The idea behind it moves deliberately in the opposite direction: leave rankings, viral lists and online hype behind, and listen instead to local recommendations, accidents, detours and the people you encounter along the road.

The idea is simple:

Not everything good has to go viral.

Maybe part of the pleasure of finding a good restaurant lies precisely there.

Sitting down somewhere without first looking through a hundred photographs, reading two hundred reviews or being told what you are supposed to order.

The food arrives.

You take the first bite.

And your own palate gets to decide before someone else declares it "amazing," "overrated" or "a must."

I think I miss rakı. Maybe not the taste itself, but the old sense of ease that used to come with it.

Perhaps what once felt like lively conversation after a few glasses now simply sounds like noise.

Maybe the taste of rakı used to soften the sound of the table too. :)

Were We Always Like This?

It is easy to say, "The world has changed."

It is even easier to say, "Social media ruined people."

But I cannot remove myself from the picture that easily.

I used to talk a lot too. I stated my opinions, defended them and tried to persuade the person across from me.

Perhaps I was noise at somebody else's table.

I don't know whether the last three years taught me to understand the world any better.

But they certainly taught me to talk a little less.

Looking back on those two evenings, I barely remember most of what people said.

I remember their voices.

Maybe the world really has gotten louder.

Maybe I simply hear the noise more clearly now.

Maybe both are true.

I don't know.

But this is the question that stayed with me this week:

If everyone at the table can speak, are we actually hearing one another?

Editorial and Intellectual Property Note

This essay is an original work based on Orkun Akçasarı's personal experiences, observations, reading and cultural reflections.

Artists, exhibitions, institutions, individuals, programs, restaurants and other cultural or commercial references mentioned in the essay are included for criticism, commentary, cultural evaluation and factual context. Their inclusion does not imply sponsorship, endorsement, representation or any official relationship.

The narrative structure, personal scenes, selection and sequencing of subjects, transitions, interpretations, original expressions, title and presentation are the intellectual work of Orkun Akçasarı.

Except for brief quotations permitted by applicable law, unauthorized reproduction, republication, adaptation, translation, narration, attribution to another publication or commercial use is prohibited. Any permitted quotation must identify the author, the full title of the essay and the original publication link.

Sources were checked against information available at the time of publication. Material factual errors supported by reliable evidence will be corrected transparently.

© 2026 Orkun Akçasarı. All rights reserved.

References

1. Borusan Contemporary. "Edward Burtynsky: Shifting Topography." Exhibition dates: September 20, 2025–August 16, 2026. Curator: Marcus Schubert. Accessed August 16, 2026. [Source 1]
2. CNN Press Room. "David Chang to Host CNN Original Series Following the Road to America's Most Unexpected Meals." May 13, 2026. Accessed August 16, 2026. [Source 2]