3 months ago
22
November 24, 2025 — 5:00am
Emily Post, the 20th-century authority on etiquette said: “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners.”
Sensitive awareness? What a quaint idea. Manners? So last century.
This is what I’m thinking during a recent flight. The young man across the aisle from me is watching YouTube videos with the sound blaring from his device.
I give him a few minutes. I mean, don’t we all have the sudden urge, at times, to watch an influencer hula-hoop to Taylor Swift on TikTok, or Joe Rogan talk politics on the podcast platform of our choosing? A need too urgent to, say, put a pair of earbuds in, thus keeping said urge private and not annoying the people around us?
This young man’s TikTok peccadillo of the moment goes on for more than the few minutes I grant him.
I don’t mean to be too dramatic about it, but this behaviour is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the world today.
I lean over. “Got your earbuds there, buddy?” I add the “buddy” for hopefully friendly comic effect.
He looks at me like my whole existence is offensive, not just the noise emanating from my mouth.
“The videos. I can hear them. We all can.”
At last the earbuds are produced – disdainfully – and inserted, reluctantly.
But it’s not just young men doing this. It’s kids watching Bluey on iPads in cafes (and the kids aren’t the culprits here, the oblivious parents are). It’s grandparents talking to the family back home on FaceTime at the departure gate.
“Can you see us, Charlotte and Oliver? It’s grandpa and grandma! We’re getting on a plane!”
It’s middle-aged solo travellers playing Candy Crush on the train with the sound way up.
Or it’s that self-important dude in the airline lounge having an on-speaker business call as if no one else is listening. (No one wants to listen – but we’re forced to.)
I don’t mean to be too dramatic about it, but this behaviour is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the world today.
We are living in an era of selfishness. There’s an epidemic of “main-character syndrome”, whereby it is all about “me”, and the rest of the world is just a backdrop, the humans in it merely bit players in “my” movie.
And apart from the noise being genuinely irritating – there’s just something tinny about the way the phone speaker transmits across a wider area – it’s this diminishing of the existence of others that makes the act offensive.
A little bit of altruism would really go a long way. And manners. Emily Post didn’t sell millions of books (and inspire probably billions of memes) for nothing. She knew what was what.
There is, however, one TikTok I am considering playing out loud, sans earbuds. And I’ll do it next time I encounter one of these speaker-phone serenity-stealers.
It’s called “Headphones – grow a pair” by the American comedian, Chelsea Handler who gripes about the same thing.
“I’m talking to you,” she says in the video. “You are in a communal space. None of us want to hear your conversations on FaceTime. None of us want to hear you watch a TV show and none of us want to hear you scroll through social media.”
I’ll play it loud enough to drown out the Candy Crush before popping in my earbuds pointedly.
Sign up for the Traveller newsletter
The latest travel news, tips and inspiration delivered to your inbox. Sign up now.
