> but most of the passengers are just weirdos who enjoy wasting their time taking the train cross-country in 2018 (like me).

If you waste time while you're travelling with public transport you're doing it wrong. For example, something like an e-reader is pretty thin and weights a few hundred grams and can hold thousands of books. Noisy? I bought half decent earplugs the other day for just 12 EUR. All you gotta do is take them with you. But you'd do that in an airplane as well. Add to that, airplanes are terrible for the environment; trains are less bad.