I have never minded those plastic horns at sporting events....until now. Every time I have heard them in the past, fans have used them to cheer for or about something rather than as substitutes for the drone pipe on a set of bagpipes. Making noise, all sorts of noise, when cheering seems appropriate at sporting events. For background, see this as just one example, which concludes:
... of course the last laugh belonged to the U.S. fans, who saw their team capitalize on a blunder by England goalie Robert Green, who now joins Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman at the Home for Unfairly Demonized Sports Villains. Mr. Green probably wouldn't mind if someone blew a vuvuzela in his ear. Even the Infamous Plastic Horn of Distraction is less shrill than the panic coming from his homeland.
The constant drone of the vuvuzelas seems pointless other than to say, "See? We can keep up this pointless, annoying sound steadily for nearly two hours!"
I confess it might be fun to be a part of the annoyance if I were in the stadium. But watching a World Cup match on television is far less pleasant with all that noise in the background. And friends tell me that listening to a match on the radio is really unpleasant with all the vuvuzela noise going on.
My solution, however, is not to ban the plastic horns from the stadia. I see two possible alternative options:
- Glass in the announcers' booths so we hear less of the drone over tv and radio.
- I'm not sure this would work, but it might: use similar technology to that of noise-canceling headphones to offset the sound of the vuvuzelas.