Why are people's voices getting higher/weaker?

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Arm&Hammer Extra Strength

Arm&Hammer Extra Strength

kiwifarms.net
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Dec 12, 2022
Lately I've been on a kick of watching old videos. One of the things that struck me, besides how much healthier everyone looked, was that the farther back you go the deeper and stronger people's voices were. The effect exists for men and women but is especially pronounced among men. I can now tell how old something is simply by listening to the register and projection of the voices. (Hold's true regardless of audio quality, a lot of older material actually has better audio quality than new stuff) So what's causing this phenomenon? Hormones fucked up? People not speaking as much?
 
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Testosterone has been declining among men over time. Since testosterone deepens a person's voice, this has something to do with it.

(My schizophrenic tinfoil hat says it's part of a long plan to make people docile, calm, and servile, since testosterone is also associated with aggression and a desire for independence.)
 
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Sexy Senior Citizen said:
Testosterone has been declining among men over time. Since testosterone deepens a person's voice, this has something to do with it.

(My schizophrenic tinfoil hat says it's part of a long plan to make people docile, calm, and servile, since testosterone is also associated with aggression and a desire for independence.)
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I think some of the substances that lower testosterone levels like plastics were probably accidents, but all of the food additives make me agree with the schizo take, there's no benefit to it and it's not even cheaper for the producer. I would also be interested to see if testosterone among women has declined over time. Women's voices are higher as well, which I personally find more attractive, but I would guess artificially lower testosterone wouldn't be good for women's health either.
Naes said:
Would it have anything to do with men trooning out and doing voice exercises? You know, to make their voices sound higher?
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I don't think so. It seems like a lot of zoomers are trying to make their voices sound deeper if they're straight but it's painfully obvious and sounds dumb.
 
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Arm&Hammer Extra Strength said:
I think some of the substances that lower testosterone levels like plastics were probably accidents, but all of the food additives make me agree with the schizo take, there's no benefit to it and it's not even cheaper for the producer. I would also be interested to see if testosterone among women has declined over time. Women's voices are higher as well, which I personally find more attractive, but I would guess artificially lower testosterone wouldn't be good for women's health either.

I don't think so. It seems like a lot of zoomers are trying to make their voices sound deeper if they're straight but it's painfully obvious and sounds dumb.
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Honestly, it's hard for me to tell, I only hear them when they are screeching.
 
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Recording is cheap now. It's so quick and easy to produce a recording now that few people put much thought into what kind of presence they're putting on the camera or microphone. Unless you can find a bunch of old candid clips of people who didn't even know they were being recorded there's nothing there to compare to a bunch of zoomer tiktok videos. I think you would find that people were just as squeaky in decades prior than they are today , they just didn't talk like that when they knew a camera was rolling. Low testosterone is an easily digestible solution for the modern reactionary but it's attributing the intricate phenomena of human speech patterns to a simple physiological factor. It's a woefully simplistic explanation that doesn't account for the myriad ways that culture and psychology affect the way we speak.
 
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Un Platano said:
Recording is cheap now. It's so quick and easy to produce a recording now that few people put much thought into what kind of presence they're putting on the camera or microphone. Unless you can find a bunch of old candid clips of people who didn't even know they were being recorded there's nothing there to compare to a bunch of zoomer tiktok videos. I think you would find that people were just as squeaky in decades prior than they are today , they just didn't talk like that when they knew a camera was rolling. Low testosterone is an easily digestible solution for the modern reactionary but it's attributing the intricate phenomena of human speech patterns to a simple physiological factor. It's a woefully simplistic explanation that doesn't account for the myriad ways that culture and psychology affect the way we speak.
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I should have specified more in my original post. I was comparing old news broadcasts and interviews, to current news broadcasts and interviews. All people who were professional speakers of some degree. I'm not a doctor, but it seems like it would be easy to measure the factors. 1. Are people's testosterone levels actually lower now than they used to be? 2. Do testosterone levels affect vocal pitch? I just kinda always assumed the latter is true which is why pre pubescent girls and boys sound the same and then it changes during puberty. I also wasn't attempting to discuss speech patterns, purely vocal pitch.
 
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Arm&Hammer Extra Strength said:
I should have specified more in my original post. I was comparing old news broadcasts and interviews, to current news broadcasts and interviews. All people who were professional speakers of some degree. I'm not a doctor, but it seems like it would be easy to measure the factors. 1. Are people's testosterone levels actually lower now than they used to be? 2. Do testosterone levels affect vocal pitch? I just kinda always assumed the latter is true which is why pre pubescent girls and boys sound the same and then it changes during puberty. I also wasn't attempting to discuss speech patterns, purely vocal pitch.
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Vocal pitch is a speech pattern though. It's not something you can attribute to the anatomy of the speaker's body. Any human can produce a wide variety of pitches and at some level they have to make a choice of what pitch they deliver at. Even if you could show that speakers well and truly do speak higher than they did in the past, that doesn't say anything about the range of voices they were physically capable of producing. There could very well be a cultural shift towards high voices. To do what you want show here you would need to do a study of the entire range of people's voices over time which you are not going to find in broadcast archives. Scripted news recordings of people who have undergone professional training in public speaking are not representative of the way people talked at any point in history.

There's a cautionary tale in the ubiquitous narrator voice that you've heard in every single informative video made in the 50s. You know the one. A lot of people think that voice sounds much better than anyone alive today, but in reality no one has ever actually sounded like that. That manner of speaking arose as a combination of the recording technology of the time and the vocal training that people went through to do acting and voiceovers. The methods they were taught were as much about being heard clearly as they were a cultural expectation about what the 'proper' way to speak is. You're not considering that cultural context here.
 
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Because it's still Current Year.

(it needs to end already)

Sexy Senior Citizen said:
(My schizophrenic tinfoil hat says it's part of a long plan to make people docile, calm, and servile, since testosterone is also associated with aggression and a desire for independence.)
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So a more realistic Borg would have an androgynous soy-sounding voice?
 
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Ops just schizo. Voices are unique and like someone said there’s been a transition in the culture from “broadcast voice” to natural speaking. Now that we have universal video it’s harder to separate your image from your voice. If you had seen the guy that made that booming voice in the 50s you’d realize it was fake. Now authenticity is more important so more people use a natural voice. Deep voice still exist as well and you have an entire subset of women that use vocal fry to get a low bassy tone to their speaking. It’s not natural. Also a lot less smokers as well.
 
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I've noticed this too, and I've noticed it in my own voice.

In my opinion, it has to do with masculinity being demonized. I've worked with mostly women just by chance and over the years I've noticed that one male voice doesn't really fit in a meeting of all women, you can tell how jarring it is for them to hear a male voice after only hearing women for hours that day. It's almost like having your headphones on during a zoom meeting and hearing a coworker's dog bark into the microphone unexpectedly.

So I soften my voice, I try to not sound masculine just to try to fit in.

I always fail.
 
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It's really just microphone technology getting better. Also, since people are using phones as recording equipment, you are effectively hearing "over the phone" voices. I am assuming microphone quality is part of the reason why Mister Metokur continues to use cheap gaming headsets instead of dedicated microphones like Null, Ralph, or basically anyone who streams these days. The bass boost of cheap mics really make you sound different, and in Jim's case, it's a part of his brand. When you do hear a naturally deep voice, though, it really hits different. Comments about people's voices are always so fucking gay.



 
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