If you’re looking for peace and quiet, the London Underground shouldn’t be your first port of call. You’d think that would be obvious. It’s public transport, for starters; the guarantee that other people will be there is in the name. And travelling with other people comes with a few other guarantees, like idle chatter, wafts of body odour and, if you’re British, the acute discomfort that comes from sitting inches away from someone while pretending they don’t exist.
Then there’s the noise. The rattle of the carriage when it starts to speed up. The screech of wheels as they spin on tired tracks, and through even more tired tunnels. In a fairly new development, there are also the sounds of TikTok, Spotify, Netflix and Instagram, all rolled into one chaotic cacophony. Now, thanks to its ubiquity, that latter component has a name, “bare beating”, and Sadiq Khan is trying to put an end to it.
On Tuesday, the mayor of London launched a new campaign encouraging people on public transport to wear headphones to prevent them from disturbing other passengers with noise from their phones. Posters will be rolled out across Tube stations and bus stops throughout the autumn, with messaging reminding people to keep their sounds to themselves.
“The vast majority of Londoners use headphones when travelling on public transport in the capital, but the small minority who play music or videos out loud can be a real nuisance to other passengers and directly disturb their journeys,” said Seb Dance, deputy mayor of London for transport. “TfL’s new campaign will remind and encourage Londoners to always be considerate of other passengers.”
A lot of people are happy about this development. Commuters have a long history of complaining about noise on social media, calling people out for blaring music, podcasts, and even sometimes TV shows from their phones with no apparent care for other people’s listening preferences. The outrage is such that the Liberal Democrats have gone so far as to try to impose a legal ban across English public transport. A Savanta poll conducted by the party earlier this year found that more than a third of Brits have experienced people playing noises from their phones “often” or “sometimes”, while half of respondents wouldn’t feel comfortable asking somebody to turn down their music on public transport.
Look, I get it. Loud noises on the Tube are annoying, especially when they aren’t your own. There’s also a degree of superiority to it all; a brazen disregard of other people’s presence in favour of listening to whatever you want, however loud you want. It’s obnoxious. And how hard is it, really, to put on a pair of headphones?
But I think the degree of outrage is somewhat misplaced, speaking less to an underlying irritation and more to an overwhelming obsession with silence in public spaces. We might’ve normalised it, but there’s something inherently strange about the fact that so many of us move around a city with headphones glued to our ears. I do it, too. And mine are Apple AirPods, which have a particularly strong noise-cancelling feature that essentially means I’m walking around with earplugs. If someone were to call out my name, I wouldn’t hear them. Likewise, if a stranger asked me for the time or help with directions, I’d be none the wiser. Unless they literally stood in front of me and waved their hands around, I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea anyone had tried to speak to me.
I can’t help but feel a sense of sadness about this. It’s not that I want to necessarily hear other people’s TikTok videos. But by encouraging everyone to wear headphones all of the time, we’re arguably removing the opportunity for all sorts of incidental human interactions – and ones that help us feel connected to each other, however fleeting those interactions may be. Everyone becomes plugged into their own playlists and algorithms. We ignore anyone and anything around us. We delve ever deeper into our own digital silos.
Sure, it might be more practical and less irritating – it’s definitely more efficient, at the very least. But is that really how human life is supposed to be? All of us squashed up alongside one another, sometimes inches away from someone else’s body, in total silence so as not to dare alert anyone to our presence? Wouldn’t it be nicer if we had the opportunity to exchange the odd pleasantry? A complaint about the weather here, a joke about the Northern line’s perennial delays there? These minor exchanges might seem innocuous and unnecessary, but they also serve as small reminders that you’re not alone, inspiring feelings of community and unity, things that feel all too rare these days. To some, they can be a lifeline.
We live in a society where loneliness is rife – according to the Campaign to End Loneliness, 49 per cent of adults in the UK reported feeling lonely occasionally, sometimes or always, with seven per cent experiencing chronic loneliness. Screentime plays a major part in that – and that’s still the case regardless of whether you’re speaking to people online, as countless studies have shown.
How did we get to a point where we’re all so intolerant of one another? A few years ago, I wrote a piece about speaking to strangers on the Tube to see if I could strike up a meaningful conversation with someone. Not one person actually spoke to me, at least not with any friendliness or enthusiasm. In fact, most people looked at me like I had lost my mind. That was a few years ago, and I’m reminded of it every time I step onto a Tube carriage, look around at an eclectic group of strangers, and wonder why we’re all so scared to interact with one another.
That said, there are fleeting moments of hope that this might one day change. Just last week, I was on the overground heading home from a night at the pub with friends. It was 11.30pm; the mood was jovial in the way it often is after a warm summer night. A group of women were dancing in the carriage; they’d tied a blue feather boa from one end to the other and were wriggling underneath, encouraging others to join. One of them was playing Outkast on their phone. At first, people looked on in dismay, while others pretended to ignore it. The woman next to me was smiling as she watched them. Just as we pulled into Highbury & Islington, she bounded up, bent herself backwards, and shuffled underneath the boa. The women cheered her on – and so did I.
Yes, it was a little noisy. But if it was between that and spending a journey sitting in silence, listening to music on headphones, I know which one I’d choose.
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