Meanwhile, boomers will spend hours talking to a ChatGPT script that has convinced them its the real Oprah Winfrey.
hahahahaha im dying idk why youre getting downvoted
Well obvs the bots got offended
I literally don’t set up my voicemail, and I typically don’t listen to recorded audio that gets messaged to me. Texting is functional and doesn’t leave me some anxiety-provoking message that I have to sit through and digest without saying anything. If a conversation needs to happen in voice, text to say that and see if it’s a good time.
Wild that people just ring a personal phone number unprompted in 2024 without that being an established routine.
That said, I also remember when it wasn’t at all weird to show up to someone’s house and knock on their door. Things have really changed.
I am Gen X (1970 give or take a couple of years) and I don’t answer shit. I look up numbers and rarely listen to Voicemails. If you know me and I want to talk to you, you will know how to reach me. Everyone else can get fucked.
I think it’s less generational and more fuck all this spam and scams.
in my voicemail greeting i tell people to text or email me.
I read your message in Fred Durst’s voice
I’m the same generation. My flowchart is: known contact, answer. Unknown contact, voicemail. Automatic VM transcriptions are great.
Gen X’er. Same here. I don’t even leave the ringer turned on on my phone. Fuck that shit. If you know me too know how to find me.
Texting is also damn convenient, I can deal with several conversations at once without having to pause the movie I’m watching.
Speaking on the phone doesn’t just tie your line, it ties your whole life too.
Sure works wonders if you’re busy with a chore. Laundry? Dishwashing (for the unfortunate souls without easy access to a dishwasher)? That’s the best time to call any yakker you know!
Another advantage of text, for me at least, is that I can read much faster than I can listen. This is why I prefer text articles to news videos, even though video can often offer extra visual information over what photographs can offer.
That said, I do somewhat agree with the article’s concern that live conversation is an independent skill and potentially has its own unique side-benefits that might be becoming rarer.
honestly i think this is due to unplanned voice calls essentially being broken technology now.
imagine we had 2020s email spammers while mail servers had 1990s spam filters, that’s basically where we’re at now with unplanned voice.
If you call me and don’t leave a voice mail message or text… Your effectively spam.
You’re* effectively spam
I always answer the phone.
Because if you’re not in my contacts my phone doesn’t even ring.
This. I just set my phone to Do not disturb and only the calls from my contacts list are exempted.
in ios the phone app has a setting to silence unknown callers.
People answer phones?
It’s a meme among people that know me that you pretty much have to leave a message if a text won’t do. I genuinely can’t remember the last phone call I answered. Thinking back, it was when my dad was having surgery, and they give calls with updates. That was maybe three years ago?
But I’ve been doing that since I got my first answering machine back in the nineties. I fucking hate talking on the phone. Even as a teenager, if it wasn’t someone I was having sex with, it wasn’t going to be a long call. The only exceptions were my two best friends, and my grandmother. One grandmother just didn’t call to chat. The other only called rarely, and you don’t fucking ignore your grandmother. Neither grandfather was going to call either. My mom’s dad would drive over if he wanted to talk about something with one of us. The other was dead.
There are two people I would answer a call from, my wife and my best friend. But they’d never call outside of an emergency because they know I hate phones for talking. I probably would for my dad, but he hates phones almost as much as I do.
“It’s the anxiety associated with real-time conversations, potential awkwardness, not having the answers and the pressure to respond immediately” - this hits the nail on the head for me about not wanting to be on the phone/teams call in the work place. Being pulled into a call with no context is my biggest nightmare.
This is soo me! Declining the call would pull more attention. I play dead.
Let it ring. Robocall centers only work when they maximize volume, the more time they spend not getting an answer the more money they’re not making. If you wanna get real saucy, wait as long as you can, accept the call, say nothing or mute your mic. They wont spend more than 5-10 seconds before they hang up on you though because they know it too.
Letting it ring has no impact. They have autodiallers that call, and when someone picks up, only then is that call assigned to someone in the call centre.
You can often tell this because there is a marked delay in the response to your initial “Hello?”. Long enough that you can reliably just hang up if you don’t hear a response in two seconds.
If it’s a real person who actually wants to call you and they you call again straight away, you can just shrug off your hang-up as a network issue.
Press the volume down button. This will immediately silence the call without hanging up.
This is part of the problem for me. I can’t dismiss the popup unless I hang up, and I don’t want to do that in case my number gets marked as “active”.
So I sit there and wait till I can use it again.
Also I appreciate the detailed alt text :)
at least on iphone you can swipe away the notification without hanging up.
Press the volume down button. This will immediately silence the call without hanging up.
Yet Another Call Blocker solves that problem.
I send all calls other than contacts directly to voice mail, and my phone never even rings.
That’s why I just block all calls and send them to voicemail.
If we need a phone call, we’ll schedule it, and we’ll be using an app.
I mean, maybe a hot take, maybe not … casual/social voice conversations at a distance were never a good idea in the first place.
Not absolutely at least. A disconnected voice that can summon your attention at any time wherever you are is a weird, uncomfortable, unpleasant and maybe unhealthy thing.
Textual communication at a distance odd much more natural, as it matches the disconnected communication with a more formal and abstract medium.
If: you’re a starred contact and call twice within 10 minutes and I happen to have the phone at hand and I’m pretty sure you have something important to say I’ll probably pick it up.
That happens about once or twice a year. We invented voicemail so we can speak when it works well for both parties.
Everyone I need to talk to is in my contacts. If you’re not in my contacts, my phone doesn’t even ring. You go straight to voicemail.
I was fine with phone calls when I was younger. Now it’s mostly spam robocalls or scammers or both. Nobody seems interested in solving those problems.
I am interested in solving them. Here’s how: if you get any phone call that makes you even the slightest bit irritated, you hit a button and receive a quarter paid by the caller. This is traced through carriers. If the trace cannot continue for any reason or exits US jurisdiction, the most recent carrier foots the bill. I guarantee that spam calls will suddenly cease to exist overnight.
I like the way you think.
This kind of approach solves so many problems, as the vendors have a vested interest
I don’t mind a ‘phone call’ so long as it isn’t actually using a phone number where ISPs can spy, but using some encrypted service.
There is a setting in iphone that i enabled to silence unknown caller. Havent turn it off since i enable it. I usually ignore anyone who isnt in my contacts.
I have kids and sometimes it’s important thing from a doctor/school/whatever that I want to get.
However, I’m lucky that my cell phone area code is nowhere near where I live, so if I see an area code near my phones area code, I know it’s almost certainly spam. If I get a call from near where I live, its almost certainly legitimate.
Its a great feature but I’ll do you one better (or orthogonal):
There are apps that let you set block ranges so when you get a million calls from variations of something like 1-876-543-2109, you can block all of them with basically whatever granularity you need 1+ digits) It should be built in but you have to buy it for like $3-4, but absolutely worth it
