Wired headphone problems

So lately I’ve been trying to use my headphones to do things like listen to music, take calls, etc…

And I’ve found that when there is no audio output my iPhone XR will show that headphones are connected, but after a few seconds of media playing through the headphones the phone will automatically switch to loud speaker, without pausing the media like it usually would.

I have the apple wired headphones so there’s no cross branding, and everything was fine a couple of days ago.

is there a way to fix this?

is this a problem on apple’s end?

will the world be taken over by toast?

we may never know…