"Are you really listening... or are you just waiting for your turn to talk?"
— R. Montgomery
This character never listens. Either due to hearing problems, vanity, rudeness, stupidity, inattentiveness or being in a different place as everyone else, they'll barely or never get the message that someone else is trying to tell them.
In the case of someone who's vain, a jerk or off in his own world this sometimes involves actively interrupting other people. Other times they'll have to be repeated to, their responses won't match what they're responding to, or they'll only be paying half-attention and have to be told things that have already been said in the conversation at a previous moment.
This is a bad combination when paired with someone whose Berserk Button is having to repeat themselves. Of course, due to this person having terrible listening skills, they probably won't recognize the pattern.
Husbands and boyfriends in media are often portrayed as not being able to listen to their significant others.
An Absent-Minded Professor and Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! tend to be this. Compare Comically Missing the Point, since this might be the reason, and Stopped Reading Too Soon when it comes to reading something. Related to Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer and One Side of the Story. Not to be confused with Not Listening to Me, Are You?, which is a common reaction to this trope.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Black Butler: Elizabeth isn't a very attentive listener, which often causes problems, much to Ciel's annoyance. In her introductory appearance, she refuses to listen to him when he tries to object to the idea to organize a dance party and inviting him to dance, despite his aversion of dancing. When she complains about using his blue ring the party, Ciel explains it is a heirloom item, but she didn't listen until the end, claiming she was kidding and snatching the ring away. She even refused to give it back when he angrily told her to, not understanding why he would be upset about it, instead she breaks it in a fit, which provokes Ciel's ire.
- Zenitsu Agatsuma from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Despite his enhanced hearing, he is hardly a very attentive listener. He often speaks and screams non-stop even when told to stop. In his jealous state, he completely stops listening to reason. He insists he has any say, while he refuses to let anyone who attract girls or he thinks they are flirting with someone talk, even telling them they are fantasing when he is told the true version of the story, despite being the one who is overthinking. When he saw Nezuko for first time, he didn't listen to Tanjiro trying to tell him she is his younger sister who was turned into a demon the night his family was murdered, trying to kill him, thinking she was his girlfriend. When Tengen tasked the trio to help him infiltrate the Red District, he didn't listen to Tengen telling him he sent certain people (his wives) to infiltrate there to hunt a demon, assuming he asked the trio for help to find a bride, despite being already married, even telling him he is fantasing everything when he told part of the real version of his story, much to Tengen's annoyance.
- Kyoko Hori from Horimiya isn't a very attentive listener, something that brings trouble in numerous occasions. After learning from Souta that Miyamura walked with another girl, she confronts him about it, refusing to listen to his explanation that Chika is Shindo's girlfriend and had twisted her leg. Every time he opens his mouth, she throws books at him before leaving in a huff. Later, during their bad boyfriend charade, she was too astonished over actually being treated harshly by him to listen to his complaints about it creating a bad impression to others.
- In My Hero Academia, Katsuki Bakugo often tunes out anything that isn't related to his interests, something that brings trouble. He doesn't even have the slightest patience to listen until they are finished, telling anyone he comes across to STFU. When Izuku, who he demonizes, tries to have any say and/or swear he isn't anyone who wouldn't look down on there and genuinely wants to help people, he ignores it, accusing him of looking down on him and either tells him to drop dead or go away, rather than hearing him out. When he tells him he got his Quirk from All Might, he turns a deaf ear on his explanation, accusing him of mocking him. In the fifth season opened, he didn't listen to Suneater telling the drill is over, insisting he is a villain he has to defeat.
- In Snow White with the Red Hair, Prince Raji Shenazard responds to Shirayuki returning to Tanburn and requesting the cure to the poison he used to poison someone who had helped her while she fled his attempt to force her to be his concubine by acting like she is deeply in love with him and that he is being magnanimous by letting her become his concubine instead of addressing the fact that he is giving her a Scarpia Ultimatum. She briefly wonders to herself if he's suffering auditory hallucinations, but it seems he has just never been told "no" before in his life.
Comic Books
- A Running Gag throughout the Tintin series is Professor Calculus never hearing correctly what Captain Haddock has to say. To be fair to the Professor, he is hard of hearing, but his deafness seems to become stronger any time Haddock (and only Haddock) says something (even if he's yelling it aloud).
Comic Strips
- The Pointy-Haired Boss from Scott Adams' Dilbert is legendary in-universe for selective hearing. This can either frustrate his underlings, or in some cases, allow them to exploit this flaw.
Fan Works
- Played for Drama in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
- Professor Cerise was largely unaware of Chloe's problems. After she runs away from home and boards the Train, he shows a certain amount of selective hearing — recognizing on some level how he contributed to driving his daughter away, but also looking for others to pin all the blame upon. He also refuses to accept his daughter's more macabre tastes until Parker, his other child, expresses fear of him institutionalizing Chloe, forcing him to realize that BOTH of his children are afraid of him.
- Goh proves to be even worse. As much as he wants to 'save' Chloe and bring her back home, he also wants everything to go back to the way they were before she snapped at him, refusing to recognize that their fight was her Rage-Breaking Point after years of neglect. Even when Chloe tells him directly to leave her alone and stop trying to contact her, he continues insisting that she needs to come back, because he misses her... and takes her refusal very poorly.
- The Karma of Lies: When Marinette warns Adrien that she's on the verge of breaking due to Lila's deception successfully isolating her from the rest of their class, Adrien's response is to smile and 'reassure' her that she's strong enough to handle it. This only serves to drive home that he's not the compassionate boy she'd thought he was, as he completely ignored everything she'd just said.
- Adrien tends to tune out anything that doesn't suit his interests in Leave for Mendeleiev. No matter how many times it's explained to him that they need to keep their identities secret, Adrien still feels entitled to Ladybug's, along with insisting that they're 'destined' to be together regardless of how she feels about it. Every warning about his behavior goes completely ignored, often with him focusing on some other detail and derailing the conversation. (Or trying to, anyway.)
Literature
- Christine in Maskerade is both dimwitted and self-centered, to the point where Agnes tells her that her father is the Emperor of Klatch and her mother is a small tray of raspberry pastries without any of it registering.
Live-Action TV
- On How I Met Your Mother, whenever Barney claims to be Ted's best friend, Ted always corrects him that it's Marshall. Barney always bulldozes this by continuing "and as your best friend..."
- In Survivor: Heroes Vs Villains, Russell Hantz. When his fellow Villains suggested getting rid of Sandra before the merge, he went after Courtney instead. When Parvati insisted Sandra would be more dangerous than Jerri in front of the jury, guess which of the two was the next one to go.
- Triple that for the jury itself. He specifically told Danielle (a former finalist, by the way, so she understands how the process works): "I'm not going to sit here and tell you what you want to hear, I'm going to tell you the truth." Whoops.
- Young Sheldon: In "A New Weather Girl and a Stay-at-Home Coddler", Sheldon asks Drs. Linkletter and Strugis why they, as his advisors, didn't warn him about graduate school being so competitive. Flashbacks show that they tried, but Sheldon arrogantly dismissed them.
Video Games
- Amaterasu, the Sun Goddesss and the playable character in Ōkami, has a very, very short attention span and is prone to napping in the middle of other characters explaining something to her.
Visual Novels
- Comedically exaggerated in Double Homework with Henry, who always seems to get the wrong meaning of what people try to tell him, even when the correct meaning is obvious.
Protagonist: Tell me everything.
Henry: It all started on the day I was born.
Protagonist: No, tell me everything about the email.
Henry: It all started when I got my first email account.
Web Animation
- In Homestar Runner, Homestar is prone to this, being both The Ditz and a Cloud Cuckoolander. For example, in "4 branches", Coach Z tries to warn Homestar about the dangers of exposing a flame "pro-tardant polymascotfoamalate" costume to a campfire. Homestar zones out and imagines a commercial for polymascotfoamalate from the 1930s, then concludes "So I should be perfectly safe!" Then merrily goes on building a campfire inside the costume.
Web Comics
- Middle Manager Kornada in Mark Stanley's Freefall is told by his robots that a raging hurricane necessitates an evacuation in the Friday 24 March 2000 strip. This hopeless Obstructive Bureaucrat won't budge, because "...it's not on the schedule." Florence has to trick him in order to get him to the evacuation point on the roof.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent:
- In the Distant Prologue, the only road in and out of Aksel's remote village being broken means that a man doing a supply run by boat is his only potential means to move his grandmother from a nearby city and keep her relatively safe from an upcoming epidemic. The man doing the supply run wasn't exactly planning to bring passengers back and tries to tell it to Aksel, but Aksel answers as if he had said "Yes, no problem."
- In the main story, Sigrun, the crew's captain, can get like this towards discordant voices, especially Mikkel's. Speechbubbles Interruption is a regular occurrence on her part. She's incidentally Aksel's great-granddaughter.
Western Animation
- Exaggerated in the American Dad! episode "Stan Goes on the Pill", where men can only hear a faint hiss when forced to listen to a woman talk. Stan takes an experimental CIA pill that allows him to bridge the barrier and listen to Francine, but because he couldn't listen to the female scientist's advice about the dosage, he ends up turning into a woman.
- Jason from Home Movies sometimes has this problem. In Season 4 "The Heart Smashers", after Brendon told him and Melissa how he's going to avoid Fenton after firing him and ending their friendship, Jason admits he wasn't listening. When Jason and Melissa are talking to Brendon about rehiring Fenton again, Jason thought they were going to hire Walter and Perry until Melissa corrects him.
Melissa: You have to pay attention better, Jason. Okay?
Jason: Um...what? - Ready Jet Go!: Jet isn't a very attentive listener, something that causes problems in numerous episodes. In "Mindy's Weather Report", he didn't listen to the others about the supposed storm actually being on Saturn, and drove Boxwood Terrace into a frenzy. In "What's Up With Saturn's Rings?", he didn't listen to Sean's lecture on the rings of Saturn, mistaking it for ice cream sundaes, Cincinnati, or sautéed sausages.
- In The Weekenders, "Listen Up", this becomes a problem for Carver when he and his friends sign up to be helpers to help kids get over worrying about middle school and Carver doesn't help his kid by not listening to his problems. He spends the rest of the episode learning how to listen and comes to a realization when people don't listen to his problem. He eventually makes it up to his kid by the end.
