We recently moved. The four movers that showed up each had their Airpods in. They kept them in for the entirety of the move.

There was no shared context across the four movers. There was little conversation going on except for the intermittent comment about the work at hand.

When I grew up, movers listened to the radio together. Howard Stern was on and everyone shared a common experience. It created shared moments and collective understanding.

Today's individualized audio consumption, amplified by the ubiquity of wireless earbuds, fragments our common reality. Rather than experiencing shared content that sparks mutual interaction, people increasingly inhabit isolated informational bubbles.

Social media already fragments our worldviews. Personal audio devices intensify this phenomenon. AirPods and similar technology act as a multiplier on existing societal divisions, pushing the fragmentation of collective experience to unprecedented levels.

We're all living in different worlds now.