The following photos were taken during the bottom of the seventh inning of last night’s Mets-Rockies game at Citi Field. They represent some, but not even close to all, of the stadium’s noise meter graphics.

If it’s a dull moment in the game—and at Citi, they’ll show a noise meter when the Mets have two outs and nobody on—fans aren’t going to respond. And if things are getting exciting, fans will naturally get loud and don’t really care for a falsified decibel reading. In other words, noise meters are useless.

I used to scream my head off in an admittedly silly attempt to affect the meter’s reading. My friend Seth told me that had I tried that last night, I would have lost my voice in the seventh.

Whatever happened to letting fans enjoy the sounds of the game? In the Mets’ three-run seventh last night, there was audio played before nearly every pitch. I never heard a sustained “Let’s go Mets!” chant partly because the stadium speakers are constantly blaring something else.

I don’t hate noise, I just prefer it be more organic. You know what was more fun than any of the noise meters during the game? The brief “Yankees suck!” chant on the way out of the stadium.