Vocal fry

[Idleplum]

Is it just me or are more and more people speaking with a vocal fry? It’s so common, it has to be intentional. I absolutely can’t stand it.

MAFS Australia used to be my guilty pleasure but I had to give it up because I couldn’t take listening to all those guys horrible voices. Now I feel like every video I see online has someone speaking like it and my body does this weird, scrunched up thing because I hate it so much.

Well said. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

It drives me insane. I always start spontaneously clearing my throat. I don’t see it as a uniquely female thing as I’ve heard loads of men doing it too. It’s an equal opportunities affliction😆

It's awful and unnecessary
Makes me cringe, man or woman I don't discriminate

I've said this before on here and I don't think it got much traction because it's so specific and I don't think there's a word for it but I call it juicy mouth . It's when someone talks with their microphone too close to their mouths and I can hear the saliva and the lip smacking 😖.

Many tiktoks and podcasts have been aggressively, immediately scrolled past because it kills me and what's worse, is that it isn't intentional, they can't help it people with full dentures tend to do this 🫣.
But I do know, this is a me problem.

I've just figured out why I hate my male colleague so much.

I had no idea this way of speaking had a name! His voice makes me want to rip my ears off and now I know a vocal fry is exactly why I feel this way.

He also uses it for long, drawn out ehhhh sounds as a sentence 'delay' to bridge the gaps in between words when he's thinking of what to say. It's more painful than scraping my teeth down a blackboard.

Edited for spelling.

I can't stand.

What is the supposed purpose of it? It is meant to sound sexy, intellectual, cute?

Personally, think it makes people sound dumb as a box of rocks.

Wow. Vocal fry explained in one video. Not unique to ends of sentences.

If I tried to speak like that (as in I put it on), my throat would be sore after a day.

How did she start doing this?!

Thank you for drawing my attention to this . I’ve read the book three times and in my head always hear his voice. I bought it on Audible today and spent a lovely day driving through the wonderful landscape of Grand Ridge Road in Victoria, listening to it.

I’m listening to it now (up to the Domesday Book).

I don't notice it - is there something wrong with my hearing?! Watched some YouTube examples and it just sounds like a downward inflection at the end of sentences - I don't hear vibration. Less annoying than upward inflection or glottal stops.

AMSR on the other hand, can turn my ears inside out. Dervla Kirwan's voiceover for M&S Food ("This is not just food...") could curdle earwax.

David Mitchell has a nasal voice which is annoying to some but vocal fry is a different type of annoying voice. Vf isn't just having a low voice, it's affecting a voice which is below your own natural register and so 'cracks' . I think men often get away with it more as their natural range is usually lower so it isn't as obvious.

I suspect that it's a subconscious backlash to the Californian high pitched 'girly' voice which people also complained about being annoying and therefore yes an attempt to be taken more seriously.

Most people have no idea how they sound. That red haired girl, indeed has the worse vf I've ever heard....

It’s been all over Made in Chelsea for well over 10 years! I think that’s where it started in the mainstream media in the uk.

I had to stop listening to an absolutely brilliant podcast because of this! I must not have been the only one, because a while later the (female) presenters put out a message basically saying people had stopped listening because of misogyny, i.e. nobody would accuse a man of 'vocal fry'. It really wasn't because they were women.

Incidentally I also stopped watching a YouTube channel I really enjoyed because of the creator's inflection - I don't know if this is a term, but it was what I can only describe as 'downspeak'. That creator is a man.

Came to say precisely this.

I can understand people who do hear it with David Mitchell - it's slight (compared to his nasality) but there - but it doesn't tend to bother me much, as a SALT I hear so many vocal quirks and foibles I realised very early on that, if I didn't move past them, I'd have nothing to listen to or watch - especially in podcast land.

YA very much NBU.

I was watching a YouTube video the other day about a teen that had been murdered and I couldn’t concentrate properly due to all her friends talking with that ridiculous croak.

Not always. I’ve heard some very articulate, highly qualified people on science/politics/history podcasts who had such extreme vocal fry it was really distracting. They are confident, knowledgeable people but they sound snotty and bored.

Here is the King, another extreme vocal fryer (it's there throughout but you can hear it especially strongly at the ends of sentences eg on "today" at about 1.48). It's one of those things people find a lot more irritating when done by young women.

Yes men do tend to get away with it because it does sound slightly more natural.

Also, Finns all tend to fry but it’s not really an affectation in the same why as it is in English

While there may well be "proper peer reviewed" studies on this, there wasn't a link given to one.
The poster I think you're referring to mentioned Dr Geoff Lindsey's videos on YouTube.
I've looked him up and the info says he has a book out with chapter on vocal fry.
I had a quick look at one of his videos (and it was quick so I definitely could have missed the reference to a properly conducted study) and he talks at length about VF, especially the fact that, in his opinion, it's associated with young, American women (he gives examples of men too).
There's a lot of "to my mind", "in my opinion" and "it seems to me" used, but I couldn't find reference to his proper peer reviewed study.
I couldn't find it anywhere else either.
Since you seem to know of it, could you possibly provide a link please?

Eta I don't like vocal fry myself. But I dislike proper research terms used incorrectly in an attempt to put someone else down even more.

Haha. I love Loudermilk. Yeah that is it. It's like drawing out and slurring almost like you're pretending to be stoned?!

I think people have always done it, the difference is that now we're constantly told to be annoyed by it, especially by women doing it in a kind of misogynistic way IMO.

This video on it from a speech specialist is really interesting

Ah, yes. It could be from her DDs, although I've never noticed them doing it. Mind you, mostly they just grunt.

David Mitchell has vocal fry???

I have no idea what it going on with a certain type of young Australian male but this is driving me insane! On a recent trip I nearly had to leave a restaurant as the chap at the next table droned on and on with the most horrific vocal fry. He was with his mum and I was gobsmacked she didn’t tell him to stop it.

I heard it multiple other places in oz too, yet to witness it in the UK thank god.

He does in his recording of him reading Unruly. Not loads, but it comes in and out.