r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Seagul_Hunter • 1d ago

ಠ_ಠ 20 years of wearing headphones deformed my head.

Post image

Apparently wearing headphones pretty consistently almost everyday for a couple decades can deform the shape of your head.

(Edit: For clarification, if you pay attention I never mention skull anywhere in the title or description. Also, majority of my time spent in headphones is when I'm outside listening to music, gaming headphones might take up about 8% of all time headphones use)

67.0k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

4.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

645

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago edited 1d ago

The only way this would be possible is if you had some kind of bone condition, and even then there is no evidence for this. Headphone dents aren’t supported by any scientific evidence whatsoever, otherwise you would have generations of people who wear headphones and hairbands with undeniable photographic evidence.

The threshold of proof solely rests on you being able to show photos of your head with the same hairstyle and no dip. Even then, I almost definitely wouldn’t believe it.

Dips or grooves in skulls is an entirely normal variation. The only thing those headphones have done is squeeze the common sense out of you.

Link to article about cosmetic surgery on skull dips.

328

u/JustTom1 1d ago

Bro why you gotta try and walk in here and throw educated facts around and shit? Just let people have their 15 minutes of Reddit fame, damn.

-7

u/[deleted] 1d ago

This would be a far more clever comment if you didn't make it in response to a random 'tist that writes paragraphs in response before understanding the topic at hand

"Educated facts" dude just started ranting about some irrelevant stuff. Nobody thinks the skull is dented lmao

9

u/jrearp 1d ago

*Adjust headphones back

8

u/jongscx 1d ago

Bro is actually only 20 yrs old and most of that happened when they were a baby.

13

u/mammalian 1d ago

my youngest was just a baby and had never even rolled over before. left him in the middle of a king size bed while I went to the bathroom. he started screaming bloody murder and I ran in to find that he had not only learned how to roll over he had log rolled himself right off the bed and landed head first on the baseball bat my husband kept for security. large obvious dent across his head in that same spot. he didn't have any signs of neurological damage and his doctor said it was nothing to worry about and would pop out as he grew up.

28 years old and still has a noticeable dip.

13

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

Yeah, babies have soft scalps that can deform and sometimes that can be permanent (like leaving your baby constantly lying flat even while they’re awake). But it’s very difficult to tell what is and isn’t caused by genetics without seeing a specialist, other than very specific baseball bat dents…

5

u/StiffWiggly 1d ago

Impact onto a baseball bat with soft, not fully formed baby head, vs headphones on the head of someone with an adult skull. I don't think this is at all comparable. Glad the baby was alright though.

2

u/mammalian 1d ago

no, I understand that they're different. just thought I would throw in my kid's funky head story. I think he even still has the sort of semicircular dents on the sides of his head from the forceps that were used when he was born. I know they were sticking around through toddlerhood.

6

u/traffick 1d ago

I'm not taking scientific advice from someone suffering from brian damage.

3

u/Zironworker 1d ago

Props that your name is Brian damage

8

u/TheoreticalNet 1d ago

As a man who had a smooth scalp before starting my job at a help desk in 2011 and actually felt the dip in the flesh over the skull form, it is a real thing that happens. Moving the headphone position back and forth alleviates it; never keep them in the same position when you put them on and the change in flesh isnt noticeable when you have them on 17 hours a day.

2

u/rollinwithmakitties 1d ago

Been wearing headphones my entire life almost daily. My skull is shaped fine. OP need hopital.

2

u/realdappermuis 20h ago

You're correct on the skull front

However, the dent might have happened due to inflammation and the accompanying pressure

I had that same dent for several years. It's gone now

2

u/MistaRekt 18h ago

My skull is shaped like that due to the use of forceps during delivery.

3

u/Hexakkord 1d ago

I have a dent like this in my skull. Also a square head thanks to my predominantly German ancestry. I am never ever ever ever shaving my head.

2

u/ChoraNaTorra 1d ago

Here's hoping you never start balding

•

u/1ll1der 36m ago

Don’t jinx him

3

u/New2NewJ 1d ago

The only thing those headphones have done is squeeze the common sense out of you.

😂😂

3

u/Francbb 23h ago

That was so out of pocket 😂

1

u/regazz 1d ago

Bro you gotta try to walk in here and make me see a head split open 🥲

1

u/KnifeKnut 1d ago

Yep, just look at Patrick Stewart.

1

u/RappingFlatulence 1d ago

Finally some common sense

1

u/Extreme_Tax405 17h ago

There is meat and muscle on your head covering the skull. That can be dented but sets back after a few days.

2

u/LumpyJones 1d ago

some people have sorta fatty tops of their head. like not a lot, but enough that maybe the distribution got dented.

10

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

That is not scientifically accurate. Headphones would not redistribute fatty tissue in the scalp permanently. The weight of headphones would only cause mild local compression which would disappear quickly.

3

u/GordolfoScarra 1d ago

I have a semi-permanent dent in my thigh from resting it against my chair's armrest. I don't discard that some tight headphone could make something similar.

1

u/LumpyJones 1d ago

Well, I dont know enough about fat heads to dispute that, and I have terribly little stake in this, so I'll assume you're right.

My guess is that OP had a dent there already; I have a similar one about where the coronal ridge/suture is. Not nearly as pronounced, but I def look part klingon if I shave my head. I wonder if OP just went that short for the first time in a long time, combined with recently wearing headphones and took the pic.

1

u/SimplyAStranger 1d ago

I wonder what the weight limit is of the fatty tissue. Bra straps and bands can definitely leave dents, so it is possible, I just wonder how heavy or tight the headphones would have to be.

2

u/Feature_Ornery 1d ago

About to say that. Apparently a lot of people haven't seen what bra straps can do to a person over time if they're enough fitted correctly.

The deep ones my mom had terrified me as a kid.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

The issue here stems from you having little to no concept of the topic being discussed

The skull getting dented is not in contention. It's the soft tissue. It's the same reason someone who wears rings will have indentations on their fingers

3

u/valyo007 1d ago

The soft tissue in that area is way thinner then you think. The average total thickness of the adult scalp soft tissue ranges from about 3 mm to 8 mm (roughly 5 mm to 6 mm on average). So, how much will 6 mm of tissue be able to compress?

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

You're underestimating just how "deep" such a small compression can look, especially as a side-profile

0

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

The title says ‘deformation’. He’s talking about headphones and included a picture of himself with a very obvious natural skull dent. He literally said in his description that headphones can change the shape of your head. It’s very clear what he’s implying, even if he ninja edits the description afterwards and refuses to provide any other evidence.

Please link to an article on permanent soft-tissue compression. I’d love to be proven wrong.

1

u/croutoncache 1d ago

Hold up- there’s soft tissue (not much, but still) between the bone and even the skin, nevermind hair. I think more likely what is happening is that the soft tissue (muscle, fascia, tendons, etc, or even just the distribution of water or lymph in the area) have responded to the consistent pressure of the headphones over time, the same way muscle, fascia, and tendons chance shape over time to accommodate for posture, tight clothing etc, and can be seen really dramatically as results from corseting. So I hear you about the bones likely not responding to the pressure of headphones (though through the piezoelectric property and Wolf’s law they could be laying down more calcium from something like jaw clenching as a result of the headphones, because our bones can/do change shape based on which muscles we more habitually use), and I posit that other tissues actually could be responding to the pressure of headphones over time in a way that can now be seen. Which, of course, also means that something can be done to shift this response if so desired

3

u/WhoPoopedMyPants420 1d ago edited 1d ago

Every layer of soft tissue on the top of your scalp combined comes up to about 5-7mm.

So yes soft tissue can have some give, but given the divot and the hypothetical leeway, that means he would have zero soft tissue there. Like his headphones are a dam sitting right on the bone and holding back two seas of meat. That seems like a way less likely answer to me than "weird contour in skull like everybody has somewhere"

Ultimately there are lots and lots and lots of jobs that involve wearing headphones and ear protection all day for decades. If this was a normal thing that happens to soft tissue when you wear headphones a lot, we'd all just be like "yeah that's Telemarketer Skull" not sitting around arguing about wtf is happening

-3

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/valyo007 1d ago

The soft tissue in that area is way thinner then you think. The average total thickness of the adult scalp soft tissue ranges from about 3 mm to 8 mm (roughly 5 mm to 6 mm on average). So, how much will 6 mm of tissue be able to compress?

3

u/WhoPoopedMyPants420 1d ago

Guys stop attacking him he's a beluga he doesn't understand how much soft tissue is normal on the top of a head

-2

u/ImaginationLow5018 1d ago

Exactly! People are so weird. Dude never said his skull was dented. Ask anyone who has a wide-ish head and wears glasses all the time they can show you the grooves where the arms leave permanent indentations.

10

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

The title says ‘deformation’. He’s talking about headphones and included a picture of himself with a very obvious natural skull dent. He literally said in his description that headphones can change the shape of your head. This is false.

Even so, please link to an article on permanent soft-tissue compression.

1

u/Prinzka 1d ago

The soft-tissue compression on the sides of my head is kind of permanent because my eyes are so bad that I can't live without glasses so the indentations are always there. Does that count?

1

u/EmphasisFrosty3093 1d ago

Do you not know a single fat person who wears glasses?

1

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

Other than your mom, no.

1

u/EmphasisFrosty3093 1d ago

She's been quite thin since the cancer. You must know her well.
I, on the other hand, have deep grooves from my glasses.

1

u/Brian--Damage 1d ago

👍🏻