Is 5G the worst thing that's happened to London?

Now there’s no respite, anywhere, from a melange of reels and videos

- Maddy Mussen

Try, if you can possibly bear it, to cast your mind back to London in summertime. Dappled sunlight filters through trees. Londoners spill on to the streets outside pubs holding amber-golden pints, the arms of their work shirts rolled to the elbow. Armies of Lime bikes litter the streets. The foxes have abandoned their relentless, deafening winter shagging and started raising sweet, summer cubs. Dry January has long been forgotten. It's beautiful, really.

And then there are the obligatory day festivals; All Points East being the mothership.

I love that festival because of what happens the moment everyone gets inside the gates of Victoria Park. Each year, at that exact moment, you get to witness some of the most chronically online individuals in London see their phone buckle in real-time under the pressure of 50,000 other people trying to do the exact same thing. Find their friends. Post an Instagram story. Forget about it, mate, signal's gone. And it won't come back again until you're at least one mile from the festival site, probably lost, undoubtedly spangled and often forced to navigate yourself from memory on a long, winding walk home across the capital.

This is one of the sacred few remaining moments of forced offlineness left in the city since the rollout of 4G and 5G on the Underground commenced in December 2022.

It is, I believe, one of the worst developments in London's history.

There is not a single day now when I am not assaulted auditorily by someone else's phone.