The phone as a device to avoid talking to people

Last updated on: June 23, 2014 at 5:30 am by Gene Veith

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The phone as a device to avoid talking to people 2014-06-22T17:09:25-04:00 Gene Veith

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Alexandra Petri discusses the decline in people checking their voicemails, the demise of landlines, and how texting is replacing live conversations. Read the whole essay. A sample:

A phone is not for making calls.

Phones are actually devices that you use to avoid talking to people, and anyone who thinks otherwise is surely older than 30.

Look at your smartphone. This slim, elegant screen can transport you instantly to the Internet, show you videos of all kinds, allow you to play complex and time-wasting games, send detailed e-mails and even provide you with robotic companionship. (“Siri, what are you wearing?”) Why on earth would you waste all this bounty on a phone call?

Phone calls are terrible. Either the other party picks up, in which case you have to spend several minutes completely forgetting what it was you had to tell him or her, pausing to allow the other person to speak, then speaking over each other, then pausing, then discovering that you are totally unable to get out of the conversation.

Phone calls are not just awkward. They’re also slow. Whenever I get a call instead of a text, I heave the same silent sigh I heave when I click on what appears to be a news story and it turns out to be a video instead. “I could have gotten this information SO MUCH FASTER,” I murmur to myself.

With texts, you can pretend that you are doing something important and that it is preventing you from responding instantly. But the instant you pick up the phone, you have to admit that the Action-Packed Afternoon you had imagined you were having actually consists of walking in slow circles around your apartment to avoid laundry.

The only time a phone call is merited is when you are on your way to meeting someone and have arrived at the place and time where you texted one another you would be, and the other person does not appear to be there. Then you call to make sure you’re standing on the right side of the plant.

Apart from that, the only people who still use their smartphones to place actual calls to live humans are our parents, to our grandparents’ land lines.

To be frank, a phone is just something I carry around so that if I ever wonder about anything, I can answer my question immediately without having to talk to a person. That is what it is best for: avoiding human contact. At the dinner table, it is what I look at instead of my family. On the bus, it is what I gaze intently at instead of the human beings around me. People on the train who actively use their phones to make calls are frowned upon, subtweeted at and shunned. This is not what a phone is for!

via Alexandra Petri, Millennials are right. Voice mails are terrible. – The Washington Post.

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