Almost all of Armen Adamjan‘s videos start with a question that borders on an interrogation: “DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN MAKE A NATURAL CLEANING SPRAY OUT OF ORANGE PEELS AND VINEGAR!?”
The first time the Instagram algorithm served me one of his reels, I was instantly put off by its style – quick cuts, gimmicky edits, and lots of yelling. My crotchety inner critic told me to keep scrolling, but for some reason my fingers didn’t budge. Maybe it was that I genuinely didn’t know the best way to “GROW DIY AVOCADOS OUT OF A LEFTOVER PIT!!!!” and the discovery had me hooked. Maybe something about Adamjan’s demeanor convinced me he really knew what he was talking about. Either way, I stuck around for the whole thing. And then I hit “Follow.”
Adamjan, who now counts me as one of nearly 13 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, has been making videos for the internet for over three years, and has studied the way his fans engage with his content. He tells PS he didn’t start yelling in his videos until five months in, and that the volume uptick came about by accident: He’d just hit 600,000 followers on TikTok and filmed a celebratory clip in the throes of his excitement. “I might have had a few drinks,” he admits now. He filmed and edited the video the same, but his voice was noticeably louder. And, despite several comments from annoyed viewers asking why he was talking so loud, he found it had a “significantly” longer average watch time than his previous videos.
“I realized even if people didn’t enjoy it, it just works for the algorithm,” Adamjan says. “People stayed whenever I was louder.”
Experts Featured in This Article
Nicole Holliday, PhD, is an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Adam Leventhal, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the founding director of the Institute for Addiction Science at the University of Southern California.
The psychology is pretty obvious as to why loud-talking is an attention-getter both on and off-line. “It catches you off-guard,” Adamjan says. “If you’re walking down the street and somebody yells, you’re just gonna turn around. You listen.”
Linguistics professor Nicole Holliday says a technical term for this “non-modal” vocal style is “harsh voice.” It’s “ear-catching,” Holliday explains, because it breaks from the tones of a regular, modulated speaking voice. Also, “people don’t yell things that they’re not committed to,” she says. “If he’s yelling at you about baking soda then he really believes in it.”
But loud-talking doesn’t work the same for everyone, she adds. For men, it signals authority. For women, it’s a different story. “I don’t think women can do this. People really hate it when women yell, even when they’re excited,” Holliday says.
TikTok and Instagram have become black holes of unsolicited advice, a swirl of people who role-play as experts on whatever niche topic comes to mind. Whether it’s a household hack relationship milestone, makeup look, workout routine, or financial goal, there’s someone online posting about the “best” way to achieve it. Not all of those people have the credentials to be considered masters of their craft, and many wouldn’t even call themselves experts. But when they speak at Adamjan’s volume – especially if they are men – they not only rise above the chorus of other online voices, but our brains tell us we have good reason to believe them. “People find this voice to be engaging and authoritative,” Holliday says. “It sounds like you’re committed to the bit with your whole chest.”
At the same time, many TikTokers, particularly women, have adopted “accents” that some are calling “lavender voice,” a soft, ASMR-like lilt. Generations of criticism and consequences leveled at women’s voices, their tones, and their attitudes likely contributed to the subconscious belief that women’s voices should be quieter.
Consequently, the yellers and vocal strainers of the internet seem mostly to be men. Noah Glenn Carter yells about Pokémon. Dougie Sharpe yells random facts. Roy Bualuan and Adam Aleksic yell about etymology. Certain loud women have found immense success on social media, like beauty influencer Mikayla Noguiera, but the genre is overwhelmingly dominated by male voices. And “boy volume” could potentially have an outsized effect on our increasingly overstimulated brains.
Psychologist Adam Leventhal co-authored a 2018 study about the role of digital platforms in the formation of ADHD risk in young people. There was an obvious correlation at the time. But today, with even more digital stimulants at our fingertips – like the endless scroll of reels fed by an algorithm – Leventhal imagines the correlation might be even stronger.
He and Holliday both refer to the “attention economy” in which social media personalities exist. “It’s a race to create content that is more engaging and competes with other posts,” he says. As sex sells for women, volume is currency for men. But that’s not without consequences for the rest of us.
“The brain is not meant to process the type of stimuli that we experience in today’s day and age, and the stimuli are increasingly hyper-engineered to grab our attention and be interesting, even if it’s just a fleeting interest,” he says. “What will undoubtedly happen [is] the stimuli will continue to become more and more addictive.” Will there come a time when our attention spans are so oriented toward boy volume that we don’t hear anything else?
Since 2008, we’ve used the term “mansplaining” to describe men’s tendencies to talk loudly at others, particularly when providing advice or information. Teaching becomes mansplaining when a man starts talking over someone; it turns a conversation into a one-way exchange. Sometimes that’s animated by an assumption that he holds exclusive knowledge only accessible through him. But plenty of times it just means he’s oblivious to the amount of space he’s taking up in the encounter.
Not all mansplaining is created equal, though. I actually really like Adamjan’s videos because there’s nothing pretentious about them. He’s just a guy who’s really excited about growing lemons out of empty toilet paper rolls. He’s also learning as he goes, and his videos are infused with that joy of discovery.
Still, the volume is definitely strategic. He knows it will get and keep people’s attention, regardless of whether or not they like it. When applied in different situations – like, say, a presidential election – a similar line of thinking suddenly takes on a vaguely authoritarian tinge. “Kamala Harris never, ever yells,” Holliday says, because of how it would be stigmatized. Whereas former president Donald Trump‘s default setting is boy volume. Regardless of how many Americans dislike his loud, abrasive talking – swing voters said their biggest concern about Trump is his personality and temperament, according to a recent New York Times poll – he still holds remarkable political influence.
Lately it feels like every day on social media I stumble upon another man with something he urgently needs to explain to me. But even if it’s an effective way of getting attention – babies do it all the time – is shouting really how we want to normalize communicating with other adults? There’s a reason yelling “FIRE” in a movie theater is illegal: Societally, we acknowledge that whipping up a frenzy is a flawed (sometimes fatal) way of communicating information. Plus, think of all that we miss when we’re constantly trying to talk over one another.
As for Adamjan, he claims he’s just naturally a loud guy. But even that has its limits.
“Sometimes I don’t have the energy,” he says from his studio in Denmark. He lives with his fiancée and six-month-old baby in the apartment above, which they bought so that he could make his noisy videos without causing a disturbance. “I get tired, you know? I’m human too.” Sometimes, after all, we just need to shut up.
Emma Glassman-Hughes is the associate editor at PS Balance. Before joining PS, her freelance and staff reporting roles spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, travel for Here Magazine, and food, climate, and agriculture for Ambrook Research.
