That wasn't very insightful since the answer is pretty much caller ID and having the names of the people you want to talk to pop up when they call I don't know where I was or who said it. Some woman at an AA meeting probably. She said she thinks it's rude to call her. For her friends to call her on the telephone instead of sending a text first to ask if she can talk. That was weird to me and I wonder if it's common now among people who don't remember the era when you had to answer
I feel like the idea of a phone call being rude might come from all the spam calls. They've set the stage for phone calls being a thing to ignore. For me, if someone calls me it better either be important or prearranged. To call out of the blue assumes that their desire for immediate gratification is more important than my time, sort of like the spam calls. I'm happy to see phone culture die.
This is so interesting to me. For a time, I used to think Text Messaging was rude for the same reason. Times have changed, times are changing... people don't even bother with voicemail anymore.To call out of the blue assumes that their desire for immediate gratification is more important than my time, sort of like the spam calls.
I don't see text messages the same way because I can see the content before replying. With a call, I don't know if its value exceeds my time until I answer, and then decorum doesn't let me hang up.
I used to see texts in this way... I don't now. back in the 90s (maybe earlier), Covey taught in one of his books about this matrix... if I remember right, Covey-ites wouldn't answer the phone because it fell into Q4 because it was not urgent (to the receiver) and of unknown importance. Now, I just ignore my phone a lot.
Seriously though, the Covey chart is so simple and effective, I only wish that others around me would abide by it better. I can remember hanging out with a friend, as we were just starting our careers, that felt compelled to answer his phone no matter what was going on. We’d be driving somewhere, he’d have his phone on vibrate, we’re in the middle of a conversation and he’d pick up his phone and start talking. Didn’t even give me a, “Hey man, I’ve gotta call coming in and I’ve gotta take it...” Man, that ticked me off. I done see this phone etiquette stuff as the root issue. More of a basic consideration of other people thing. Something that I find myself continually reinforcing to my kids. I can see that I’ll use the chart with them at some point as the learn to prioritize their connections with other people. Thanks for sharing.
I honestly just think it's the normal evolution of etiquette and societal norms. My grandmother? She answered every call always... that trickled to my mother and me... now? Tech has completely changed in my lifetime, and yah - I screen the crap out of whoever is calling. My kids and their friends don't actually use their phones to speak - they only answer my calls because I'm old fashioned and I ask them to do so.
After some thought, I will make sure someone wants to talk with a text first but it depends on context. If it's a girl I've been chatting with through text and we haven't met, I definitely will prearrange to speak on the phone. If I wanted to talk to a friend of mine right now I wouldn't hesitate to just call. Texting is nice for certain things but it can be incredibly bad when you need to convey information that might require some actual real time interaction for one reason or another. My mom is like sixty and if I need to tell her something and have to rely on texts it's painful if I can't have her immediately respond to ask questions or whatever other benefits there are to speech. Texts can be misinterpreted too if the reader projects a tone onto the words that wasn't intended. I can be really terse and it's efficient for typing on a tiny keyboard with my thumbs but people sometimes think I'm being a pithy asshole. Both have their place. I prefer texting friends as a general rule but I wouldn't say it's rude to make your phone ring. I'm a big boy. You can hit the fuck you button if you want
It's funny to me how angry Alexis Madrigal makes me. I have insightful things to say, based in my knowledge of telecommunications, registers, human contact and the evolution of technology but I'm going to pause briefly from eating my sandwich to say ALEXIS MADRIGAL IS SUCH A FUCKING IDIOT and then return to this later.
'K. So. That was delicious. The "disappearance" of "telephone culture" is a direct consequence of place and decorum in that telephones used to be for places. You had a home phone and an office phone and if you needed to be reached at the office you had a number. If you needed to be reached at home it was presumed it was someone who knew you personally, wanted to know you personally, or had something important to communicate. A phone was not an obligation - a phone was a tool for communicating within certain settings. And because phones were controlled by large monopolies with ridiculous build cost and tremendous vertical integration it was exceedingly difficult to sidestep the decorum associated with calling a phone number. And if you didn't connect, you didn't connect. If it was important, you'd call back. Answering machines, which are older than Alexis Madrigal, allowed people to leave messages. This allowed people to screen calls, which has been happening since before Alexis Madrigal was born. Where things got messed up for the phone company, however, was when they went digital. Because they couldn't do it all at once. Your digital system had to be backwards-compatible with your analog system, and your analog system had to be backwards-compatible with the first phone systems installed back in nineteen diggity-two. Which meant, effectively, that the controls on digital technology were adequate for nineteen diggity-two. The same technology that allowed the phone company to give you voicemail allow VoIP pirates to phonebank the shit out of everyone from a call center in Bangalore. Once it's become data you can do anything with it. The original PCS transport protocol is literally 10BaseT. You're on a computer now, bubba. So they made them smaller and they put one in everyone's pocket and phones were no longer about place. I fought them for years using this very argument: "I am not a place. If you need to reach me, you can reach me AT home. You can reach me AT work." For a while cell phones were things you called in an emergency because they were expensive. Texts, despite being free sideband metadata, were equally expensive. And then things were deregulated such that texts were free and calling was cheap and suddenly you could not escape. And that's the thing Madrigal doesn't get (because he's a fucktard). "Telephone culture" has vanished because there's no goddamn freedom from it. There's no longer any unreachability because the number everyone has (and it's on Facebook and it's everywhere and VoIP is so cheap that you can literally dial every number sequentially) is in your back pocket. Which means if someone is calling you, they're fuckin' interrupting you. You can't get away from that thing. So yeah. People text first because it's polite and asymmetrical. If you're the kind of person who responds to texts too quickly, people email you. You likely chat with your friends on the phone, but rarely... but when you do, it's important. I work freelance. We're hired on the phone. Random-ass number calls you, you pick up because it is likely a producer who got your name from a friend or coworker and they don't want to waste time. They want to take your pulse and answer any questions. I once almost got fired off a job because I cracked a joke (wish I had in retrospect). Voice communication is more important now, not less. My wife delivers babies. She's got a client portal in her EHR. She answers texts from patients all the time. But every single one of them - ALL OF THEM - call when it's time for the baby. That most reclusive of species, the early-20s woman, who never talks to anyone on the phone anymore, CALLS my wife in the middle of the night to say the baby is coming. Telephone culture isn't dead. It's just been elevated. And if you don't get that, you deserve to get hung up on.