People who conduct their personal conversations in public places, loud enough for others to hear are attention whores.
I know it. You know it. Everyone in earshot knows it.
Not that we are not humbled to know that you — Have A Cell Phone! Wow, neato, almost as exciting as a jetpack. Get over yourselves already. You are not that interesting, nor is your conversation.
When you see that guy in your town, (there’s always one!), walking around with an exotic bird on his shoulder, think of public cell phone users. They are kind of the same in my opinion. He’s not doing anything illegal, lord knows, and if it works for him, I say, “have at it!”
Let’s not kid ourselves though, when we see that guy we all know he has some issues and is a tad needy in the attention department.
Most people grow out of being overly loud in public, to attract attention, round about 11th grade. Cell phones have just given a outlet to the closet attention whores of the world.
People willing to behave in this way are revealing something very unattractive about themselves. Of course they can’t see it that way, it’s everyone else’s problem, if they don’t like it, too bad. (Are you smelling the immaturity now?)
Seeing someone behave this way, is sort of like someone reaming out a service worker. It’s not illegal, but it reveals more about the reamer than the one being reamed.
Just consider it a litmus test for immaturity and attention whorish neediness. While I’m less than delighted that this particular subset of society has a public outlet, and are not afraid to use it, I’m happy to be able to more easily identify inconsiderate, immature jerks, so I can avoid them.