alt Hacker NewsNo. It delends on how you ask.
Did you walk over? Did you say hi? Did you lower yourself to be around their height? Give them a second or two to get used to you? Tell them first that their noise is loud ? Ask them in a respectable tone if they would lower it, just a bit? Did you give the impression that you were asking, not demanding?
Of course I won't ask a drunk or aggressive looking person. But there is a wrong way to ask, and a better one.
I'm all for asking nicely in general but it doesn't work well with entitled people who don't give a shit about the people around them.
The chances, regardless how nice you try to ask, that the person who elected to broadcast their tiktoks or calls to the whole wagon at full volume goes "oh, sorry, I'm so embarrassed, I'll turn this off", are very low.
Last time I tried to ask "can you use headphones?", the guy answered "I don't have headphones" and put the volume even louder.
A person who cared even a tiny bit would not have started to begin with. Asking is almost futile. These people simply seem to be used to get away with inflicting themselves to people around without consequences. The worse part is that if you do nothing, you participate in this.
What can you do.
I think it can only work if it becomes very socially unbearable, or if they got fined for this. Or, indeed, if it brought them nuisance. In that regard, this HN post's solution is interesting (not sure it's good though).