Why are people afraid of calls these days?
I’m not afraid of phone calls. I hate phone calls. Same way I hate boiled pizza. Makes me judge your parents for the decisions you make.
Let’s walk through the average phone call, as the technology is currently implemented and people interact with it, because my username checks the fuckout.
Phone might ring. Who fucking knows? There’s one volume rocker on the side of the phone and it controls like nine different and independent volume sliders depending on what app is in control of it this specific nanosecond, so trying to turn Tom Scott down while trying to fall asleep to Something You Mighte Naught Have Knowne, you also turned your ringer off. Shrodinger’s fucking ringtone.
Phone actually rings. It’s a number from your area code you don’t recognize, which means it’s either the local Republican wanting money, or a criminal in India.
Phone actually rings, it’s someone on your contacts list for once, so you pick up the phone. Apple patented the horizontal slide, so real phones can’t use it. Instead sometimes it’s a button and sometimes it’s a touch-here-and-slide-in-any-direction. When the phone was new you set up a “gesture” where an upward motion and placing the screen near your face would automatically answer the call…that feature might have been deprecated. Did you set it up where pushing the power button would answer the call? Nope. That just hung up on them.
Phone rings again, you do the stupid slide gesture. “Hello?” Silence. Silence. Silence. Line goes dead. Okay, this is one in three phone calls that just don’t work.
Phone rings again, stupid slide gesture. It doesn’t recognize it, you try it again, it works. “Hello?” “Hello?” “Hello?” “Ah, can you hear me?” three second pause “Yeah I can year you.” (audio quality that resembles a 90’s McDonald’s drive thru speaker that’s only been pissed in once this week)
I don’t know why I haven’t started answering the phone “what the PITY FUCK did you call me for?” Because I don’t think anything more subtle will get people to get. to. the. POINT!!!
“What’s up, Bob?” “Hey Greg, it’s uh. It’s Bob.” I knew this before I answered the phone because caller ID has been a standard feature on phones since I had my first handjob, but the lead in your synapses has prevented you from internalizing this concept. We’ll try and let it soak in for another 20 years I guess. “What’s. up. Bob?” “Uh, well, nothin much, what about you?” “WHAT’S UP BOB?” “Well uh, me and uh, me and Cindy are gonna go to the uh, the uh Chinese place and get some, like, takeout or whatever? You want anything?”
“No thanks.”
“Uh well, uh, you sure, I mean like, we can get you somethin.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well uh, okay then I guess. You been doing okay?”
“Bob I’ve got something on the stove, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh alright, well, uh, I guess I’ll let you go then, talk to ya later”
take phone away from face, wait for the screen to light up again to see where the end call button is because it’s not a fucking button anymore because the amoeba that ate Steve Jobs’ brain escaped and multiplied to the rest of the tech industry, by the time you find it, the other party hung up.
===
The same exchange via SMS:
“hey wer gettin chinese want some”
“nah. thx.”
“k”
You’re the person who tells the best stories at a party, aren’t you?
And I don’t mean that as a slight against you, I greatly enjoyed reading that.
This was hilarious to read. And so accurate, thank you 😅
That wouldn’t be the same exchange. The same exchange wold be 6 messages, which wold taka a lot longer than a simple call. All of Your argument are bullshit. Avery single one of them is a fault of Your stupidity, Your friends stupidity or being American. I don’t get robocalls, nobody wastes my time when calling and I never had a problem with connection quality. When I need to as somebody something I call. I’m won’t write them a message hoping that he’ll read it and bother to response. I need information now so I call now.
Why are you bothering to lie to me?
That’s a something I find worth mentioning.
When you text, you spend more of your time, but less of the recipient’s.
When you call, you spend less of your time, but interrupt and take up more of their time.
So who’s time do you value more?
The same exchange vie phonecall: “Dude, I’m ordering Chinese, want some? Nah” Would take 4 seconds, would be faster then typing. Where the fuck is the problem?
Did you not read my long and detailed comment explaining exactly where the fuck are the many problems with modern telephones, or do you just like your pizza boiled?
What does my taste in pizza has to do with this?
You removed one of the fifty or so problems by waving your hands and pretending to make everybody on the planet smarter about communicating and said “look I solved it”.
You’re all stupid. Just stupid. I lack the words to express how disappointed I am. Are you all to stupid to process spoken word so you need it written dawn?
Hey uh, are you alright?
I think that’s valid, but you have to take into account that mostly everyone isn’t as efficient on the phone as what you’ve described.
I wouldn’t say we’re afraid. I don’t particularly like speaking on the phone though, but it’s alright, I even worked call center for a while so it doesn’t bother me much these days.
Anyways, essentially texting is just more efficient. I can’t speak for everyone else, but for instance at work, I hate it when I have a question or need assistance on a specific topic, ask on my team chat and have a couple of people saying “quick call?”.
If it’s something really complex, fine… that’s fair. Other than that? It’s just so inefficient. I can be working on something else and just reply during my off time between tasks, same with whoever I ask help from. Also, most of the time I’m listening to music, or I have my TV with ambience sound on the background. So then I have to turn everything off just so I can go for a 5minute call for something that could be done over chat on the same amount of time.
Sorry this comment turned out way longer than I thought it would.
So asynchronous communication can be more efficient for certain types of communication, but in other scenarios synchronous communication will be more efficient. Learning to identify which type of communication fits which type of mode is a valuable skill to have, one I recommend that everyone develops.
I get what you mean. Overall, if it’s not urgent I’d rather not make/receive calls.
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I do miss that magic period of early cheap VoIP where my friends and I would have a call going more or less in the background while all doing our own things. A lower-cost impromptu hangout before we all had cars.
That was never about efficient transfer of information though. Calling with demands is just intrusive.Not that I ever turn my ringer on. Dang robocallers.
Because I’m doing something else and I’m not going to just drop everything to receive information synchronously which could be sent asynchronously.
It’s alright to press the red button, you know.
It’s easier to weigh the relative importance and time sensitivity of the incoming message against the importance of what you’re doing via text rather than a call.
Because anything not important can be sent through a text. Most people call because it’s something important or a big deal and at a lot of the times it’s not a good call. So that’s why people don’t like phone calls because the thing that’s on the other end is most likely non-desirable.
I find that it’s generally more helpful to practice grabbing the metaphorical bull by the horns. The more you avoid it, the less used you are to dealing with it, and the worse it makes you feel.
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I think it’s an American thing. Calling someone isn’t weird here in the civilised world. Maybe it’s their problem with robocalls. Maybe their paying too much for calls.
Nah, it’s a generational thing and an introvert thing.
Gen Z was born after the widespread adoption of cell phones with texting capability making old fashioned phone calls more or less obsolete outside of emergencies and the like and thus don’t like the unnecessary hassle.
Meanwhile, some of us millenials and older are taking a cue from them and realising that we don’t HAVE TO do phone calls all the time if we don’t want to.
I live in Denmark and the only people who regularly call me are my boomer parents. Everyone else only call me if they need to get a hold of me immediately, as it should be.
I’m Gen X. I grew up with a landline and no caller ID, and if the phone rang you mostly just answered it, unless you were screening calls. Could be your best friend asking if you want to go to the mall, could be your least favorite aunt calling to whine at your mom for whatever her latest minor ailment is. In which case you’re stuck making polite small talk until your mom is done drying her hair or whatever.
It sucked a lot.
Now I’ve got a cell and caller ID. Unless I’m expecting a call, I never answer the phone. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. Usually it’s not even a little bit important.
And my boomer mom just loves to call for a long pointless chat. If I see her name on the caller ID, I have to decide whether I have an hour minimum to waste because it’s never shorter than that. 🙄
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I hear you, but no need to feel bad for her. I visit her plenty, and even if I find them a drag, I still do have long phone calls with her. As does my sister, as do my aunts, etc. She just has a pretty limitless appetite for idle phone chats and I don’t always have the time or patience.
Nah, calls only if you can’t put it in a few sentences, is a thing here too.
My family and my girlfriend are basically the only people allowed to do this. Everyone else - if you’re calling me directly I will assume it’s an emergency and will get annoyed if it’s not.
Calls are fine. Unscheduled calls are not. Text me to set up a time to call that works for both. I am okay with giving you my undivided attention - just not necessarily right now.
What about your friends, do they have to schedule their calls?
I have plenty of friends, so that is the only way to keep it sustainable, yes.
Of course, everybody can unschedule call for an emergency or a time-sensitive thing, like “Hey we have decided last minute that we’re hanging at at place X in like 10 minutes, wanna come?” - in those cases, I actually prefer to be called because I don’t want to miss it.
It just to me sounds crazy to schedule calls with my friends
Ok princess.
I still can’t understand what’s wrong with this. I believe we have normalized being constantly reachable and available way too much, and “through mandatory text replies” is already way too much. Calls take this one step further: “I am demanding to have your undivided attention, right now, for as long as it takes, I don’t care what you’re doing”. I just think that’s rude.
Actually, even with my partner we have a “Scheduling calls is vastly preferable to random calls” and I am 100% okay with this. If I am doing something else and it’s not urgent, I’ll get to you later. Let me get my work done and wait until my next break, or let me actually enjoy my friends’ company IRL for a few hours, then I get back to you to chat. Why do I have to be available, at your disposal, immediately and giving you my undivided attention anytime? I’m not a chatbot, I’m a human being with a full and interesting life.
I believe not doing this is only doable if you have few friends. If you have plenty of friends + a full social life, you really have to manage your conversations and find various time windows throughout your day to keep up with multiple texting threads and that is time consuming as it is - before I established my own boundaries, it would seep in all areas of my life and I would get absolutely nothing done at days because it was too dispersive.
I work remotely and one of my favourite things is how people message to ask if you’re free for a call.
What I did to cut that out was to moan and answer like they just woke me up. Talk very slowly, take three seconds of “uuuuhhhhh” to answer every question and be as useless as possible. It isn’t long before they hang up and send me the text they should have sent in the first place.
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“Whomst the fuck?” © Wizord, 2023
I just don’t answer the phone at all if they can’t bother to text (unless it’s someone important to me).
I already blocked the number of my internet provider because they keep calling me for an appointment I had called off via email weeks ago by now.
Because I hate typing on mobile devices I don’t like texting.
If you try to have a conversation with me over text Imma either call you if it’s important or start giving you one word answers to everything.
Thankfully most people know better than to try and communicate with me in general!
Ok
Thing is that you can have a chat protocol and be asynchronous in communicating with text messages. That’s something you can’t have with voice calls.
Ohh, I’m fully aware.
I love messaging even I have a physical keyboard infront of me.
It’s specifically the mobile keyboards I hate.
Oh I can totally relate with that. Mobile touchbased Keyboards are the worst. I loved my blackberry, and earlier Palm Pre, for having physical tacticle keys.
You could try using voice transcription.
Are you able to use voice type?
Text to call. I also really like calls, but scheduled. Calling randomly to chat means you’re taking my undivided attention for however long you want whenever you want and that’s super disrespectful of my time
Then don’t answer?
It’s not like sending the call to voicemail is going to hurt my feelings.
Asking to call seems redundant. The call is the ask.
Just use predictive text and select whatever the most unhinged option that communicates your point. Only exception is that I draw the line are the constant attempts that thing tires to flirt with my mum. Seriously, the amount of 💘 😘 it suggests is concerning. I’m not American.
I need an AI phone agent to whine at CSRs more nicely than I am capable of doing any longer.
That is what I need.
Personally I’ve enjoyed taking calls from friends and family. I used to be scared to death of it.
Not everyone is able to text. Not everyone has access to or can afford a smart phone. Refusing to take a voice call is a clear sign of social ineptitude, imo - if you really can’t be bothered to do that I shudder to think of what you must be like in face-to-face interactions. Toughen up.
…you okay?
There’s a certain level of irony of a message like theirs in the comments of a meme post
I shudder to think of what they must be like in face-to-face interactions
My mom says I’m cool.
Yeah, pretty good. You?
Phone calls are so much worse than face to face conversations. The absolute worst is having to make an important phone call. That ruins my entire day.
Tbh, at least with phone calls I don’t have to force myself to make just the right amount of intermittent eye contact, and then get so distracted by that cognitive process that I lose the conversation.
Voice calls don’t have the same costs for everyone. I’ve worked in tech support, taking calls all day, and that shit wore on me. Dealing with text is just lower cost, at least for me. Pretty ableist to just declare one medium the one true medium, all others are a sign of ineptitude.
Might be worth noting, also, that an earlier generation said the same goddamn thing about phone calls, as compared to F2F interactions.
Somehow, the tune always changes, but the dance steps remain the same.
Yep, I worked five years of Internet tech support - I still do not like taking one-on-one calls with people. I’m usually fine with being in a group call generally, because the focus isn’t on me to drive the whole thing forward all the time, along with a few other reasons.
Not to mention, it’s not even just on a physiological level either - it wasn’t really all that long ago where I was on a pay-as-you-go phone plan where phone calls absolutely would add up if I spoke with everyone over the phone instead of text (which no one in my circle uses regular SMS so texting basically didn’t cost me anything).
I’ve worked on the phone too and it wore on me too. But I guess I just don’t think of calls with friends or family as being on the same level as calls with customers?
Maybe they aren’t for you? For me phone calls are always stressful and there’s some variance to how much but always significantly more than text.
Imagine thinking that a smartphone is required for SMS. I remember back when smartphones were just getting to market in the 1980s, don’t you?
Levels of idiocy to that magnitude are a clear sign of basic technology ineptitude. With that said: who typed this comment for you?
I never said one should refuse texting, I said one shouldn’t refuse calling. And as for my technological aptitude, I think I do quite well. But go off.
I mean, I’m not a programmer or anything like that but I can be comfortable with just about any OS you put in front of me with minimal time to familiarize - though admittedly I’m most comfortable with any of numerous flavours of Linux desktop/Android, and least enthused about using Windows. I 've got a lot of practice problem-solving though nowadays that seems to be less and less frequent.
I’m not great at touch typing as I have a tremor, but thankfully I have friends who know they can text me but I’m likely to call them back if I need to reply in any depth. On a physical keyboard my tremor doesn’t really interfere with my ability to type though; actually I enjoy typing on a physical keyboard and recently upgraded to a Thinkpad so it’s been better than ever.
I do occasionally use scrpy so I can type on my phone from my laptop, but that’s only practical at home obviously.
edit: Also, I’m kind of laughing to myself at the thought anyone could think a friggin trans woman on the fediverse could possibly be inept with technology :P
Lol, I made the comment to highlight your attitude and send it right back at you, and you both 1) criticize something I didn’t say or mention, and 2) totally miss the point of how your initial comment came across, completely missing the fact that I was using your tactic back at you, and try to make me feel bad for taking your approach and spinning it right back at you. That’s… oof.
I’d fall within that category as well (not great at touch typing, or physical for that matter) as I’m a stroke survivor who, among other losses, only has the useful capacity of one hand along with partial blindness. But voice messages (in many popular sms replacement programs) and speech to text are available.
It was a sharp nudge to perhaps reevaluate your initial… tone, I suppose is the best term. Just a pinch (or ten) of your ‘everyone should be exactly like me, and if they aren’t they are inept at being’ isn’t exactly well-received (which, hey, you did understand that). Doubling down certainly is an option, but it’s not what I’d say was anywhere near the correct one.
it has a big red button that says “don’t speak to me” though
if I had to speak to them it wouldn’t have that button
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Old man yells at cloud
