Fair enough, but I submit that the primary difference between the example I offered and the cell phone situation is the degree to which you (and others) find them annoying on a personal level. As much as we might like to impose our own preferences on the public at large, the responsibility to avoid being annoying rests on the individual. Can’t regulate politeness.
The bit about causing accidents is a separate argument altogether; I’d agree that cellphone use while driving is an unnecessary distraction, but as far as I can tell, that’s not what we’re discussing…and further, to the extent that it’s possible to watch TV while driving, I don’t think that’s a very good idea either.
Obviously, it’s not going to go a long way in pulling one over on people, but hey, you never saw a kid blathering away on a toy cell phone? Or people running around with knockoff Gucci purses that you can tell are fake from a mile away? Those aftermarket spoilers that make the car go faster because you saw Fast and the Furious a few too many times?
TV watchers usually watch TV in private, or with other people who are watching TV, or who live with them. I think the thrust of this thread is that cellphone use is invasive to people who don’t want to be involved in your phone calls in any way, but who are forced to be by inconsiderate and unnecessary cellphone use. I don’t see how that has anything to do with TV, or penicillin.
And my comment about “inaccurate and idiotic analogies” was more directed at MaxtheVool’s snotty little “oh Roland, don’t make comparisons around Rubystreak” than at you, though I didn’t think yours was all that great either.
But we can bitch about it in a Pit thread without a lecture on how cellphones save lives!!1!, right?
I dunno, the title of the thread is “Asshole Cell phone owners.” I’d say driving while talking on your phone counts as being an asshole at the very least.
So, by “:dubious:” you mean "Oh, however did we ever deal without them? Everyone knows that flat tires can only be successfully handled if one has a cellphone! Good thing their invention coincided exactly with the invention of the car.
No one is saying cellphones serve no purpose. They are, however, expanding outside the uses for which they make sense and into the realms of every fucking minute of waking life. If you can’t understand why that’s aggravating, then I’d bet you’re one of the people who goes into anaphylactic shock without one in her ear every second."?
God, why are you being so dense? I’m sick of the kneejerk over-defensive cellphone user rationalizations. Is that clear enough? Or do you have some bone to pick?
The only time I’ve had an issue with someone having half a conversation is when they have those retarded bluetooth headsets on so I can’t tell if they’re talking to themselves, me, or someone else. Maybe it’s just because my dad is hard of hearing, but I’ve never really had a problem with the sounds people make, unless they apply to me directly or are sounds of alarm. I’m more a visual person, IE, I pay attention to where they are as opposed to what they sound like. My boss has noticed this in that I’ll be completely aware of where in the newsroom he is, but unless he gets my attention (by getting me to look at him or making a loud noise) he is unlikely to be able to hold a conversation with me, especially if I’m in the middle of working.
Now, if someone is being unnecessarily loud (why people think they have to SHOUT into cell phones is beyond me) I could understand the complaint, because that’s truly annoying. But this one I just don’t get.
They do this because many cell phones do not provide side tone.
This is a portion of the sound of the speakers own voice, played back into the earpiece of the telephone. This has been provided on land line telephones for decades, and serves as feedback that the phone is picking up the speakers voice. It also causes people to moderate their volume; as the sidetone they hear gets louder they tend to reduce their volume. When they don’t hear any sidetone, the tendency is that most people speak louder.
No landline phone company would dream of not providing sidetone on their phones; people would complain about the poor quality of the line. But cellphone users seem to have been trained to accept much lower quality. (And annoy all those nearby at the same time.)
Okay, tasha, how about this? It annoys ME. Maybe it’s my own problem, being bothered by hearing half-conversations around me, but it does. You’ll have to trust me on this one, though - no cite available.
Why should anyone need to rationalize using a cellphone? Using a cellphone is not a crime. It’s a useful activity that plenty of people engage in in a completely non-intrusive non-assholish fashion. It’s also something that many people find very practical and useful in their everyday lives.
What is being pitted in this thread is neither cellphones nor people who own cellphones, it is people who own cellphones AND ACT LIKE ASSHOLES WHILE USING THEM. As far as I know, no one in this thread is offering a defense for that behavior. And the original comment about kicking the guy who invented cellphones in the ass made about as much sense as going into one of the numerous bad-driver threads and saying you wanted to kick whoever invented the car in the ass. Diosa responded to that comment with a 100% accurate and non-confrontational statement, and one which IN NO WAY implied that she’s some crazy cellphone addict who knows, deep in her heart, that she needs help, but is trying desparately to find some silver lining for her insanely impolite abortion of a social habit. As far as we know, she, like you, has a cell phone only for emergencies. And then you leveled out-of-the-blue personal attacks at her, which bugged me.
Furthermore, I’m sick of the holier-than-thou “oh, well, I only own a cell phone for emergencies… I guess I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel a need to be reachable at any moment, la di da, I’m the 21st-century’s-fucking-Thoreau” attitudes. Not that I insist that people own cell phones or are shocked that they don’t. But not owning a cell phone does not make you special, any more than not owning a car or a computer or an iPod or a TV or a TiVo makes you special.
(And for the record, while I own a cell phone, I average < 1 call a day on it. But I find it VERY VERY VERY useful for logistical things like “let’s all meet at the movie theater”, where if you get there and can’t find people you can call them and they can say “oh, I’m still stuck in traffic” or “I’m already in the theater saving seats” or whatever. And yes, obviously people managed to meet at movie theaters without cell phones. I didn’t say it was NECESSARY in those situations, I said it was USEFUL.)
More obtuseness. No one said it was a crime. People rationalize shit all the time that isn’t a crime but that is ridiculous and annoying.
Which is probably what motivated Subterraneous into saying he wanted to kick the inventor’s ass. All the assholes who use their cellphones in selfish, intrusive ways. Those people get really defensive of their phones and fall back on “but they save lives!!” when you dare suggest you wish they didn’t exist or could go back to emergency use only.
I think she was self-righteous and her comment was an inappropriately over-serious response to a joke. If you think I’m being too harsh, fuck off back to MPSIMS. Really. Talk about…
I implied no such thing. I made a hyperbolic joke in order to express my annoyance at many cellphone users and the culture of convenience in which they thrive. And I never suggested that there are no legitimate uses for a cellphone. Anyone who claims otherwise on either count is probably either dimwitted or simply looking for reasons to be offended.
Again, you’re conflating asshole cellphone users with people who take pro-cell-phoen stances. There may be a correlation one way, but I don’t see why the other way.
As someone said earlier, cell phones are asshole magnifiers. But they didn’t create assholes. If cellphones didn’t exist, just as we’d still be able to fix flat tires and rendezvous places; we’d also still have threads about asshole behavior from people in public places, drivers not paying attention to the road, etc. They’d just be manifesting their assholishness in different ways.
Are you in fact suggesting that, in all seriousness, you think the world would be a better place if cell phones didnt’ exist, or were (somehow) solely for actual life-threatening emergencies? So on Sunday, my friends and I were supposed to meet at a park, which I’d never been to, so I could go hiking with them and their 3-year-old twins. It was a big park with various entrances. When I got there, I used my cell phone to call his cell phone so we could rendez-vous. Then we went hiking out in the wilderness, and, amazingly, did NOT loudly gab on our cell phones and disturb nature. Would society be better off if we had not had that option?
I obviously disagree. And, when reading Subterraneanus’s original joke, it bugged me and I would have made exactly the same type of response that Diosa did. And I’m not some crazy pro-cell-phone fanatic of some sort. I just have little patience for elitist luddite wankfests.
They’re called “mobile phones” over here, after the British fashion, and there’s a real problem with phone etiquette. The Thais, who already think nothing of holding loud conversations with each other in the movie theaters, will also have fun answering their phones and screaming into them during movies, too. My Thai wife also hates that. We always sit WAY down front to get away from all that, and she always makes sure her phone is off while we’re in the theater.
Elitist or Luddite? Pick one or the other. And a terse joke is not a wankfest—or are you conflating my little post with the entire thread? Whatever your answers, I suspect you tend to look for reasons to be offended. Wait a minute … Hello? … yeah … uh huh … no way! … OK, see you after class … bye. Gotta go.
Well sure, because why would you suggest that in the first place? There’s a lot of middle ground between using a cell phone in a selfish, intrusive assholish manner and not having one at all, or only using it in emergency situations. If you think about it, the ratio of “number of people who annoy you with cell phone use” to “number of people you encounter who own a cellphone” is actually a pretty low number. It’s perfectly possible to be a responsible cell phone user.
The suggestion that cell phone usage should be eliminated or confined solely to emergencies is far more ridiculous than the argument that they occasionally save lives, especially considering that the latter is no more than a statement of fact. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer; make a stupid knee-jerk remark in response to being momentarily annoyed, get a canned rebuttal.
If you favor increased public awareness of cell phone etiquette, I’m with you 100%, but there’s a light year’s worth of difference between that and “fucking cell phone users, I wish they’d all just disappear!”. Personally, I like my cell phone, and while I may or may not use it on any given day – and though my continued survival would likely not have been threatened were I not to have it – I find it useful for the occasional NON-emergency situation, and somehow manage to avoid pissing people off with it the rest of the time. I’d imagine I’m not the only one.
Sign language has nothing to do with it though. Mute doesn’t mean that they can’t communicate, it means that they cannot use verbal speech. I guess I am just confused as to why this is pejorative when it is a perfectly serviceable word for which there is not a good substitute… unless you want to use dumb but that word has been seriously co-opted. Do you mean mute has been co-opted and no one told me?
I’m assuming you mean the ringtone thing, so I’ll address it.
Step 1: Go to ebay, search for “USB” and your phone’s make/model. Buy a USB cable for your phone (most of them have them these days)
Step 2: go to http://www.bitpim.org/ and download BitPim (free software) assuming that it supports your phone.
Step 3: use BitPim to upload sound and image files to your phone, as well as back up all of your phone’s data (address book, etc) onto your computer. There may be weird quirks, Google is your friend in this. For example, for ringtones to work on my phone, they have to have the “.mid” extension… even though they are actually mp3 files. Weird, but it works.
Assuming that the “deaf” part is perfectly OK: while “colored” implies a deviation from the norm or ideal, “mute” is a neutral-sounding adjective that simply describes what it sees.
What else would you call someone who understands a language but can’t produce it orally? (She writes poetry and has someone else read it on Open Mic night.) Am I to say “That hard-of-hearing individual who may be suffering from Broca’s aphasia”? (May not actually be Broca’s–it’s been a while since I’ve taken Psych and I don’t remember.) It’s a valid distinction and the fact that this article offers no alternatives raises a red flag to me.
I’ve never in my life heard the term used as an insult. It sounds to me like some ambitious Wiki editor backformed the offensive meaning from the word “dumb” and the Catcher in the Rye–which is the only example it offers. If “deaf mute” were widely understood as an insult, surely there would be some example, somewhere, of an actual person saying it and an actual person taking offense rather than an inventive literary device.
I’m not one to toss around derogatory words knowingly, and I try pretty hard to stay on top of the changing field of acceptable and offensive terms. Why wouldn’t I have heard of this being offensive? I’ve known enough deaf people to have heard about this by now. I mean, if someone can show me evidence that it’s actually considered an offensive term, I’ll be glad to find an alternative.
Why you would take umbrage at my completely innocent use of a term that (apparently) nobody except you and a couple rogue Wikipedia authors think is offensive, is beyond me.
IOW, I call BS on your umbrage. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now and use “deaf” unless/until I’m proven right.
Just because you can make sound doesn’t mean you can speak.
Not in and of themselves, but it’s disturbing that she has so much trouble accepting her lot in life. And it’s just as sad to see a deaf person pretending to have a conversation on her phone to show people she can talk, as it is to see a middle manager pretending to have a conversation on his phone to show people he’s important. The latter is a persistent meme, and there are a number of people here on these Boards who assume or deduce by some imaginary criteria that certain people they ride the bus with, cross paths with on the street, etc. are pretending to have phone conversations. Despite the fact that it doesn’t seem possible to tell the difference between a speaking person who has someone on the other end and one who doesn’t, the whole Board rallies around the contempt directed at these imaginary people.
I believe you, but she can’t talk, if “talk” means “use oral language”.
OK–then I misunderstood and misused the term. Forgive me. Is there an alternative for someone who can make sounds but can’t produce words?
I haven’t asked her, because whenever I’ve tried to talk to her before she pretends she can’t read my lips and refuses to acknowledge my existence. I’ve seen her have conversations with people who were talking to her, so she’s pulling one over on either them or me. If she doesn’t have time to acknowledge my existence, I don’t have time to save her from embarrassing herself. She’s lucky our coffee shop lets her (and a number of other regulars who either can’t afford our products or choose not to buy them) come in every day and lounge around eating handfuls of free samples. It doesn’t bother me–I couldn’t afford to eat there either if I didn’t have an employee discount, so I’m glad people in that financial situation have somewhere to go. But if she doesn’t acknowledge the unusual service we’re doing for her, I think she should.
That’s not how I feel about her, although I can see where it would sound that way, especially to someone who grapples with the subject matter every day in their own personal life.
It grabs your attention as an abnormality, something that to your animal brain just doesn’t seem right at first glance. You have to subconsciously pay more attention to make sense of it. Or what featherlou said.
OK, thanks–but does that mean “cannot communicate at all” or “cannot communicate orally”? Because I’ve seen this particular customer communicate with people through sign language and writing.
