Whistling is hard, at least compared with other ways of producing potentially-musical noise such as humming or singing or just opening your mouth and vocalizing. It takes more skill and experience and precision to produce the intended note than it does with humming or singing.
Whistling is also non-intuitive compared with other ways of producing potentially-musical noise. When you see a pre-verbal baby vocalizing, you can see how a person might stumble upon humming or singing, but you can't see whistling just happening by accident.
And yet somehow, someone in human history figured out how to whistle. And thought it was worth the trouble as opposed to humming or singing. And, somehow, the idea caught on and now it's something that everyone is at least aware of if not capable of doing. (Unless it's cultural? A quick google for whether there are any cultures that don't have whistling only turns up cultures where whistling plays a key role.)
And not only does whistling persist on a macro level, it also persists on an individual level. There are people who, when they have a tune in their head that they want to express, opt to whistle it out instead of humming or singing or going "dodo dodo dooo".
I can't fathom why whistling is so normalized or why a person would opt to whistle rather than hum their current earworm, but it is an interesting cultural phenomenon.
4 comments:
As someone with pretty bad misophonia, whistling is my number one trigger for feelings of rage and anxiety. I can't understand why anyone would do it either - especially in, for example, an office. But it happens all the damn time.
I had to google misophonia, and that sounds no fun at all!
I especially can't understand why someone would whistle in an office, but a lot of people who work in offices don't seem to understand that other people also work in the office.
When I saw this post, I was wondering if M@ had commented!
I loathe whistling. I regard it as anti-social behaviour, forcing your sound on everyone around you.
I also had to google misophonia, which is apparently something I have but didn't know there was a name for! Awesome.
I'm surprised we never discussed misophonia before, Laura, although I know we've talked about our shared hatred of whistling. Yes, a lot of things made more sense once I started to understand what the heck was happening in my brain. I haven't been able to do much about it, still, but at least I know I'm not just crazy. (I'm a specific kind of crazy.)
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