Water running in a toilet tank! That's the closest analog I can think of to the sound. I can see how people who've had hearing damaged by a lot of loud noise wouldn't be sensitive to sound that quiet, but it seems like it's within normal frequencies instead of ultra- or infrasonic.

Yeah, my boss and I were thinking that can't be the actual teenager-only sound.

I think you're right, if I can hear it then that sound is definitely not cool enough for teenagers.

There needs to be more quiet bars.

Sometimes, when I'm in a restaurant where it seems like every freaking flat surface is tiled, I feel like the interior was explicitly designed out of spite for me.

There was an article in the New Yorker about tinnitus recently. Apparently it's a kind of complicated thing.

[link]

That's a link to a file with a sweeping (descending) tone ranging from 22kHz to 12kHz. I can start to hear it at 17.

Have I said, "Fuck John Bolton" before? I believe I have.

John Bolton At CPAC: Jokes About Nuking Chicago

More at Mother Jones:

"The fact is on foreign policy I don't think President Obama thinks it's a priority," said Bolton. "He said during the campaign he thought Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny, tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they are ultimately able to deliver on target. Its, uh, its tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city" – here Bolton shrugged his shoulders impishly – "pick one at random – Chicago – is that a tiny threat?"

Bolton wasn't the only one who thought this was funny. The room erupted in laughter and applause. Was this conservative catharsis, with rightwingers delightfully imagining the destruction of a city that represents Obama? Or perhaps they were venting vengeance with their laughter. (Bolton is no stranger to inflammatory remarks. He once infamously quipped, "There are 38 floors to the UN building in New York. If you lost 10 of them, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.")

Fuck John Bolton.

That's a link to a file with a sweeping (descending) tone ranging from 22kHz to 12kHz. I can start to hear it at 17.

Huh. I hear it right away at 22.

That's a link to a file with a sweeping (descending) tone ranging from 22kHz to 12kHz. I can start to hear it at 17.

That one I heard at 16.

Okay, do I have mutant hearing?

I can hear the teenager sound. To me, it sounded nothing remotely like water running in a toilet tank; it was so unpleasant I had to shut it off after the first couple of seconds. Ugh. If malls are really-truly using that to ward off loitering teens, I am gladder than ever that I generally avoid the damn places.

Ugh. It's giving me the shudders just remembering the sound.