The Tyranny of Tinny TikToks

The Quiet Carriage is turning up the volume

This article was first published in The Telegraph. Everything I publish elsewhere is shared here, as a gift to the nation. But if you want the full picture, become a paid subscriber. It’s just a few quid a month; such is the price genius is reduced to.

There’s a certain frisson of excitement for any writer when you think you’ve got the chance to say something new and original. And today, this is my gift; I am confident that this is the first time such a sentence has ever been written in this most august organ in its’ near-200 year history; the Lib Dems have come up with a good policy. One so good the wise readers of The Telegraph may even agree with it.

Earlier this year, the Lib Dems put forward a policy change to specifically ban playing music or videos out loud on phones while on trains and buses in England, and impose fine of up to £1,000 for anyone still subjecting their passengers to tinny tiktoks. Finally, a policy to support the ‘we just want silence’ majority.

This week they reiterated their calls to tackle disruptive behaviour on public transport following the introduction of a new set of guidelines in the Republic of Ireland, imposed by Irish Rail, the largest rail operator in the country, in response to growing complaints about "nuisance behaviour".

Satre was very nearly right; hell is other’s people’s music. And more of us using public transport are experiencing it; Savanta polling revealed that 38% of train and bus passengers have encountered others playing music aloud either frequently or occasionally.

But noise pollution is only part of the problem. The problem is not so much broadcasting what you’re watching to your fellow passengers, but broadcasting that you don’t care about them. Noise pollution is a signal of something much deeper; it signals a disregard for the social contract and for the shared norms that make public spaces tolerable.

It irks us so much because once one person shrugs off the implicit rules that keep shared spaces civil, it invites others to do the same. The peace of our public spaces is loosely woven; a tug or two is all it takes to unravel, and the shared privacy that makes being collected in public spaces tolerable will be replaced by the imposition of one will upon all.

On public transport, we are bound not by choice but by circumstance. The people we share a carriage or service with are not our friends, and rarely do we attempt to make them so. Yet that very absence of intimacy makes courtesy essential; strangers in a public place owe each other – and, by extension, us - even the smallest measure of respect.

That these people do not respect us suggests that they are not governed by the social norms that we are. The same Savanta poll suggests that deep down, we know this; 54% said they wouldn’t feel comfortable asking the person to lower the volume. We are probably wise to follow our guts; instinct warns us that those who flout the smallest courtesies will not hesitate to discard larger obligations, and that someone who doesn’t respect us enough to turn down their phone in the first place isn’t likely to be held back by norms governing good behaviour when interacting with our perfectly reasonable request, either.

And so I urge the Lib Dems further. £1,000 is not enough; stick another 0 on there, and strike back at the creeping tyranny – a tyranny not of law but of presence, where the loudest, crudest, and least considerate set the terms for everyone else. The quiet carriage is turning up the volume.

---

Following this piece, the Tories announced that they backed the policy too, and would seek to extend the ban on playing music to buses, whilst also ensuring that railway operators should make sure they are actively enforcing the rule with on-the-spot fines.

I went on GB News to talk about the inhumanity of people who played music without earphones on public transport, and they asked me if I thought this was a good use of police time;

I am absolutely confident in declaring this a good use of police time.

Engaging in overtly antisocial behaviour in public spaces, even an act as small as playing music out loud, makes our shared spaces worse. If you look at who is doing it, it is not confined to particular demographics; I believe it’s the result of developmental changes in youth caused by lockdown, the ageing process of society and the increasing prevalence of non-western privacy norms.

Given all this - and that nearly 40% of us report having experienced it on public transport alone, it seems this horse has very much bolted. The unravelling process has already begun. The small discourtesies metastasise into an atmosphere where the loudest and least restrained dictate the terms of coexistence, and the rest of us shrink back, weighing the cost of objecting.

Engaging in overtly antisocial behaviour in public spaces, even an act as small as playing music out loud, is for many merely inconsiderate. But for a minority it is a calculated assertion of dominance, often underwritten by the implicit threat of violence. It’s a no-lose scenario for the perpetrator. Stay silent, and your deference affirms their self-image as untouchable; speak up, and you risk provoking the aggression their behaviour is designed to invite.

To argue that such conduct should go unpoliced is to invite the slow degradation of our shared civic spaces. We must not cede our trains, buses, or streets to those who treat public life as a stage for intimidation. The right to move through the world unharassed is not a luxury, it is the foundation of any functioning society. Stick another 0 on the fine, before Labour suggest a programme of national headphone provision.