Eh. Gen-x here. I still have an hour long phonecall over signal with my best friend over signal two times a week or so.
In my teens I wasn’t too happy about making phonecalls either, but working on a helpdesk for a while sure cured that.
On the other hand, I live in a country with consumer protection, so robocalls are not a thing. And I’d strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger (and GDPR) those companies who attempt to poison and destroy my personal attention.
The US has a do not call list. The vast majority of robocalls are illegal scams which originate from outside of the country.
Even worse, many of those scammy companies use the Do Not Call list as a list of known active numbers. Since the DNC is an opt-in thing, the call centers know that people have proactively added their numbers to the list.
So those calls are not for the benefit of US companies?
The majority of them are run from scam call centers in India, but also in Southeast Asia.
Like I said, they’re mostly scams. Warranty scams. Posing as “your bank” (which they, of course, don’t name). Etc. Legitimate companies follow the do not call list, since there are heavy penalties if they don’t.
Gotcha. That sucks.
Who knows?
We know the call center is not US-based, as those can be fined.
I’d venture most are scams too.
Canada as well.
This is soo me! Declining the call would pull more attention. I play dead.
Press the volume down button. This will immediately silence the call without hanging up.
Let it ring. Robocall centers only work when they maximize volume, the more time they spend not getting ab 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.
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.
A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone - respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text or search the number online if they don’t recognise it.
As they should.
Spam has destroyed the phonecall. I screen everything and people know to text me first.
Besides its rude to think you can just interrupt someone in the middle of what they are doing without asking via text first anyway.
I view phoning someone like popping over to their house and knocking on the door to chat with no prior warning. No one likes that.
I’ve been nervous of phoning people since long before cellphones were invented, precisely because it always seemed rude to make someone’s phone ring and demand a conversation when they’re in the middle of whatever they’re doing. It’s interesting to see more people coming to see it like this.
I would flat out ignore the pony express rider when he came galloping up with all that noise and dust. Who does he think he is?
Is that not what the post office is for? Were pony express riders stopping at every individual farm and cabin?
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I can’t speak for others but as an older millennial, I grew up liking spending time on the phone with friends and loved ones. However in my adult life, I spent being anxious waiting for phone calls regarding job interviews and outcomes of them, and even being interviewed on some of them, including those without much notice. I also had to make calls to follow up things urgently or if I’m in trouble. As a result, I started to equate phone calls as mostly negative experiences.
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.
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.
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.
in my voicemail greeting i tell people to text or email me.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
