Earlier in the summer I started a social experiment – one you might consider ingenious or insufferable, depending on how much you prioritise a peaceful life. It began with a fragmented journey from north to south London, during which at each section of the journey (bus, overground, bus), someone was playing content on their phone, loudly.

First there was a woman flicking impatiently through TikTok videos: four-second assaults of traditional Chinese medicine tutorials, girls pranking their boyfriends and self-help tips. The woman next to her put in her earbuds, but said nothing. Next, there was a woman listening to a nearly 20-minute long voice note from a friend out loud that all of us could hear. This is the life of the passenger in our new ambient hell.

At the front of the otherwise empty top deck of the final bus, a man sat on the seats adjacent to me – the best in the house. He immediately got out his phone, loaded a podcast on YouTube and sat there, his device blaring. I knew this was my chance to tell him, to practise without an audience and so with little risk of him feeling publicly shamed. Just me and him in the ring, so: “Mate, do you mind listening with headphones on?”

I had thought carefully about the best........

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