I was working in my local café yesterday, the kind of place where “coffee” has evolved into a giant bucket of syrupy milk with just enough caffeine to justify the name.
Everything was lovely. There was soft chatter, the faint hum of the espresso machine, and the comforting illusion that humanity still had some manners left.
Then he arrived.
A man in his late fifties, well-dressed, the sort of chap who probably irons his socks. He strolled in, ordered something complicated that almost certainly didn’t involve actual coffee, and sat down on the corner sofa about four feet away from me.
Then, without hesitation and with the sort of casual confidence usually reserved for people who think “quiet zones” are a suggestion, he pulled out his phone and started watching a YouTube video. Out loud.
At first, I tried to ignore it. I told myself, Jamie, maybe it’s just a short clip. Maybe it’s an emergency tutorial on how to tie a Windsor knot. Ten minutes later, as a man’s voice continued narrating something about car restoration at full volume, my inner dialogue had started quoting medieval punishment laws.
Finally, I leaned over politely, as politely as one can while suppressing the urge to throw a biscotti, and said,
“I’m really sorry, but could you turn that off or put on some headphones?”
He looked at me as though I’d just asked him to surrender his human rights.
He got indignant.
He got cross.
He said no.
I said it was really anti-social.
He said I was anti-social.
We had, in other words, reached the point in the debate where reason had packed up and gone home.
Now, I don’t claim to understand how anyone could think it’s even remotely acceptable to play videos in public without headphones. This isn’t a moral grey area like pineapple on pizza.
This is a clear-cut case of wrong.
In a sensible society, it would be punishable by public flogging, or at the very least, forced attendance at a two-hour seminar titled “Why You’re Not the Main Character.”
But here’s the thing: I suspect some of you reading this are quietly thinking, Well, maybe he had a point.
You are, of course, 100% wrong.
But there you go.
Because this moment, this tiny, latte-scented standoff, feels like a metaphor for where we’re heading as a civilization. And it’s not good. We are increasingly living inside our own little bubbles.
We can’t see outside them.
A few weeks ago, I read a brilliant article called “The Great Introspection.” It argued that we’ve collectively stopped going out and socializing.
We stay home, in our curated digital worlds, ordering groceries we don’t need, watching shows we’ll forget by Tuesday.
And I see it in my own town. Drive through on a Thursday or Friday night after 9 p.m., and it’s like a post-apocalyptic movie, minus the zombies, unless you count the Deliveroo riders.
In summer, my wife and I sometimes sit outside with a glass of wine, waiting for the world to join us. No one does. It’s just us, the cats, and the faint glow of TVs flickering behind curtains.
The trouble with bubbles is that once you’re inside one, it’s nearly impossible to see out, a bit like the event horizon in a black hole. And that blindness is everywhere.
We saw it in the UK, where remainers couldn’t imagine why anyone would vote for Brexit.
We saw it in the US, where Democrats couldn’t comprehend the country’s mood.
We see it in brands that run marketing campaigns so tone-deaf they practically sing in a different key.
We see it in tech circles, where developers can’t imagine a world that doesn’t run on their preferred framework.
And it’s getting worse. The algorithms we live by don’t encourage understanding or curiosity. They reward outrage, tribalism, and the digital equivalent of hurling bread rolls at strangers.
But here’s the hopeful part: the skill of the future might simply be the ability to step outside your own bubble. To question. To be curious. To listen, even, and this is advanced stuff, when someone is wrong on the internet.
So yes, the man in the café had a viewpoint.
He was, of course, spectacularly wrong.
But he had a viewpoint.
And maybe that’s the first step: learning to see other people’s perspectives, even while plotting, quietly, to confiscate their phones.
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