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'The death of the telephone call'

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Sep 26, 2016.

  1. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    You're more than welcome to the call screenings and busy signals. A fucking busy signal - in 2016.
     
  2. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    As an aside, whatever happened to the Do Not Call list?

    A few years ago, all those annoying motherfuckers came out of the woodwork again, and now I get calls almost daily again. To my cell phone.

    I can only tell people to go fuck themselves so many times.
     
  3. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    I bought my 72YO mother an older iphone last year because I wanted to make it easier to communicate with her about stuff that really doesn't require a phone call. We talk multiple times a week, but for lots of things a simple text or two would be far, far easier for both of us. But she will NOT use it that way.

    A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday night, I started getting texts from my older kids that my mother's Facebook account had been hacked (they were starting to get new friend requests from her, a sure sign). I knew my mother would have already gone to bed by then, so a call was out of the question. So I simply logged in has her, notified Facebook security, reset her password and then texted her with all the relevant information. Plus, I told her I'd be out the next morning and that I'd call her in the afternoon.

    Did she bother to read her texts? Noooooooo ...
     
  4. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    My MiL is 92 and pretty deaf. I figure telemarketers who ignore the no-call list deserve what they get when they do get her on the phone.
     
    poindexter and doctorquant like this.
  5. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    As a dyed-in-the-wool luddite (along with, apparently, Mr. C's brother), allow me a few observations:

    1. Texting is a perfect metaphor for what our society has become. Ultra-efficient, disposable and heartless. The Slate article touches on this a bit. But even though I have not seen my parents naked (thank God!), I can't imagine our half-hour weekly conversation being replaced by texts.

    2. I've been lambasted hundreds of times on here (and thousands of times by family and friends) about not having a cell phone, let alone a smart phone. You know what? It's a luxury to not have the constant interruption of texts, emails or random telemarketing calls at any moment. And not needing a cell phone to do my job is one of its few benefits. I'm not a doctor or someone with life-or-death job duties. I'm a copy editor and a page designer. There's a phone on my desk at work, and I keep my email open.

    3. If people need to reach me, the old methods still work. One thing I'll never understand is why things that work perfectly well are discarded. Yes, we have a landline (bundled with Internet service, which of course allows me to type this on my iMac). My teenage kids and wife have iPhones, so if I'm out with them, I am still "connected" for those rare times I wish I had a computer with me. But by and large I am happy to experience the world as it happens, rather than filtered through social media.
     
  6. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    You can turn off your cellphone or set it to silent and telemarketers aren't allowed to call cellphones. Your complaints are misplaced.

    Also, if that is your attitude, I don't think your friends and acquaintances are going to bombard you with texts and calls.
     
  7. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    Well, a lot of them break the law, then.
     
  8. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    1. If that's true, how are telemarketing firms still in business, since apparently everyone has ditched their landlines.

    2. The one reason I would consider carrying a cell phone is for emergency purposes. But many of the places I would have an emergency situation (hiking in the woods, mountain driving) have spotty signal reception.
     
  9. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    Never had a telemarketer call. Who calls you?
     
  10. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    My mother lives with my sister (couple of years younger than me) in a pretty big house out in the middle of nowhere. She's almost never near a phone -- she's either somewhere else in or around the house, or she's driving somewhere. So if I call and she's not handy -- which is almost a certainty -- when she gets near the phone she encounters the caller ID box and immediately tries to call me back. Trouble is, if I've called and not gotten an answer, I don't know whether she's going to be calling back in a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours. And since I'm not going to sit around waiting, there's a good chance I'm going to miss her call to me. And this can go on for two or three (or more) iterations.

    I'm not remotely interested in replacing our twice-weekly (or more) conversations with texts. I'm very interested in replacing our 15-times-a-week game of phone tag with texts, especially when those games center on such lofty matters as "What's so-and-so's phone number?"
     
  11. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    The most relentless telemarketers that attack my phone number are ... those for my local newspaper.
     
  12. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    I understand the appeal of texting: Why should I talk to people if I don't have to :).

    Certainly, it has its uses and conveniences, but its prevalence also is part of the problem with today's society.

    I have a smart phone, but hardly use it, except as a camera. I'm not one of those people constantly looking down at the phone in their hands, and I'm glad of that. I get annoyed at people who simply cannot be without their phones, and am just waiting for the day I see a pedestrian get run down in a crosswalk because they were busy looking at their phone, or the driver of a car was.

    People think they couldn't be without only because they haven't tried it lately. But I couldn't believe how easily I unplugged last month, while traveling. Went a full month -- easily -- without signing on to any computer or using my phone for anything other than photos. I didn't miss it a bit and didn't miss out on a thing.

    It might be different if I were still in journalism and keeping a lot of contacts and needing to reach sources, but I'm glad I don't "need" my phone, and that certainly, I can be without it, quite easily and very happily.
     
    I Should Coco likes this.
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