Somehow it has entered popular culture that people (normal adults, not undergoing torture or otherwise in pain) should want to
scream as loud they can, and indeed should pay for the opportunity to do in a crowd. See these images from the downtown Minneapolis Skyway:

I find the idea of being in such environments to be absolutely terrifying. Every time I see one of these posters I get this urge to run off to a library, or maybe a monastery.

This seems to be part of a trend. Recall this story, which I linked to last summer (h/t jeff_duntemann).

I was going to add some dark musings about what this means for communication, society, and humanity, but I will leave these as exercises for the reader.