OK, it’s been a bad day at work today…just one of those shitty days that remind you why it is better to be born of generous millionaire parents, than of poor folk who cannot support you in the manner to which you would like to become accustomed.
Boarding the tram on my commute home, I noticed I was surrounded by people yabbering on mobile (cell) phones. There were four of them in my IMMEDIATE vicinity. ONE of them was talking into one phone AND pegging text into another!! And they were all speaking in different languages. And because of the volume of their individual conversations, they decided they needed to yell louder than each other to make themselves heard. And it was deafening. Fucking rude bastards. I don’t care HOW important their messages were, they could’ve waited until they were in the privacy of their own home instead of inflicting the rest of the travellers with their crap.
At the time though, the whole situation was somewhat surreal. Watching people yell into little black boxes instead of talking to other human beings was very weird for me tonight. Partly it was my already shitty mood, and partly the sheer alienating influence of mobiles sent my head to some very strange places indeed. I felt like a character in a Fellini movie, watching humanity unravel before my very eyes, and powerless to do anything about it. Wanting to jump up and yell at everybody to PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONES DOWN, NOW BEFORE I SHOVE THEM DOWN YOUR THROATS, instead I chose to chuckle to myself, fearing the impending “Men in White Coats” being called to cart me away. I very nearly lost the plot. Being of a naturally timid and reticent nature, it scared the life out of me to even feel so strongly about such an apparently trivial thing. I’ll put it down to the bad day at work!!
I don’t know what it is about Australia, but we have the highest rate of mobile usage in the world. And it’s just weird. People carry on very intimate conversations in full-hearing of strangers, oblivious to the moronic way they appear and oblivious to the pain we have to go through to listen to them.
Fucking wake up Australia, and maybe talk to the real person sitting next to you on the train or the tram or the bus. It’s much more civilized than talking into a box of silicone chips ya know!!
On the bus into work this morning, a girl was talking on her cell phone. Her side of the conversation pretty much went like this:
“NO! He comes from a dirt-poor family!, No really, I mean they had dirt floors in their house when he was young!” … “Of course not. No. I can’t do that, because then I would have to adjust. I’m rather accustomed to growing up rich. My family has always been rich. Why do you think I’m going to med school?”
If the bus hadn’t been crowded, I probably would have said something to her but she was a couple of seats back. (This tells you how loud she was being.)
I also feel sorry for whoever “he” is. If it’s her boyfriend, I hope he tells her to take a flying leap.
I HATE fucking morons who talk LOUDLY in public on cell phones. They need to be hit and put in a deep well if they want to talk publicly and loudly. Perhaps even tortured with the cell phones shoved up their a$$es. THAT would be good.
Fucking morons. Stupid.
Gosh…I feel better now. Thanks for posting, kambuckta.
I was sitting in BWI Airport this morning waiting for my flight to Jacksonville. I was surrounded by businessmen doing business on their cells. I watched more people than I cared to count walk along the concourse with phones stuck to their ears. I listened to a woman offer someone a job. I heard a man discussing putting the company logo on hockey pucks to give out as Christmas gifts. I heard another man talking about the seminar he’ll be attending tomorrow and making arrangements to meet someone today. I heard a builder (I assume) arrange for some concrete to be delivered to a job site.
I know more than I want to know about total strangers. Bizarre.
Forgive me kambuckta, but I can’t help finding a rant by a telemarketer about the intrusiveness of other people’s phone usage in public (where none of us reasonably expect to find sanctuary from any sort of loud, private, discussion we’d rather not hear) incredibly ironic.
You do realize that they are talking to another human being don’t you? There is usually someone on the other end of the line.
I don’t talk to the black box. I talk to my mother. And she likes it when I call her in the afternoon. If I don’t do it before I get home then I probably won’t get a chance to. Just think that maybe that person driving you crazy is making their mother very happy!
Some girl on the train the other day was telling someone on the phone about how her TA was staring at her boobs during class. Loudly. If I had more balls, I would have gone up to her after we got off, looked at her chest, and said, “Why?”
So, is the objection to people talking at inappropriate* volumes, or is the objection to people talking on cell phones?
*“Inappropriate” meaning anything from “anything greater than zero” in a movie, lecture, church or other public ceremony, etc. to “louder than an ordinary conversational voice” when on a train, at the grocery store, in a shopping mall, and so on.
Amen, Kambuckta. I share your concern, if not your fervor. People on cell phones are like people on drugs. They’re not there, they’re somewhere else. I think they are both an enabler for NOT thinking for yourself, requiring constant feedback and approval, and as a tool for people who couldn’t keep their mouth shut if a shitstream cannon was pointed straight at it. It’s too bad such a useful device has become such an object of annoyance.
Gee, maybe we need a massive War on Cell Phones, then, complete with a special Federal bureaucracy and annoyingly preachy and misleading public service announcements and lengthy prison terms for “cell phone kingpins” and special even lengthier sentences for the specific cell phone models used by black kids in the inner city.
C’mon people. They’re telephones. That you can carry around with you and talk to people with when you’re not at home without having to bum a quarter off of anybody. And you can clip them to your belt to show what a big dick you’ve got. (If you’re a guy.) (Or if you’re not a guy, for that matter.)
No, you shouldn’t use them while driving. Yes, some people are rude jerks with (for example) no consideration for the right of other people to hear the movie they just bought a ticket for, and some of those rude jerks express their jerkiness with their cell phones. (And others just use their mouths to yak to the person sitting next to them.)
There is no universal ethical imperative or God-given right to be shielded from the awful sight of other people talking on the telephone in public. What do you care if the person on the subway train is “somewhere else”? How dare they be (in a virtual sense) with a friend instead of sitting and glumly staring at the graffiti!
Now, those 10-10-dial-everyone-collect numbers, those are the work of the Devil.
This is the thing that amazes me. Recently in the Detroit airport I noticed the same thing. And all I could think was, "Jeez, do you ever get a break? I’m sitting here with my bag of gummy bears and my crossword puzzle and my book and you’ve got to talk about work-related crap. I’ll bet you make five times as much as I do, but at least I’m not wearing an electronic leash.
I’m sorry that some people have found my ‘rant’ unwarranted, or indeed, ironic.
It was just on the particular night when I found myself in a particularly shitty frame of mind, and then subject to an especially shitty ‘mobile’ crowd on the tram, I felt the need to vent.
MOST mobile phone users are discrete. MOST use them as a means of ‘messaging’, to just pass on quick memos to their work colleagues, friends or lovers about their whereabouts and what is for dinner or what to present in the staff meeting. They are generally a very useful tool in todays frenetic work environment, and I have no objection to their presence.
But SOME people, especially in Australia from what I can gather, are more than happy to share their most intimate details with a bunch of strangers. I don’t want to hear why Jason gave Jessica a love-bite on the thigh, or the sordid mess of how Janice is leaving Jeff for another lover. That’s all.
And yesterday it irked me more than normal. I thought I had explained WHY I was a little more sensitive to such a phenomenon than usual, by virtue of a crap day at work. What normally would have been just digested as a normal part of the normal world, suddenly seemed quite ABNORMAL to me.
And Reprise…love ya and all, but after your comments, you can go get stuffed.
I’m sorry that some people have found my ‘rant’ unwarranted, or indeed, ironic.
It was just on the particular night when I found myself in a particularly shitty frame of mind, and then subject to an especially shitty ‘mobile’ crowd on the tram, I felt the need to vent.
MOST mobile phone users are discrete. MOST use them as a means of ‘messaging’, to just pass on quick memos to their work colleagues, friends or lovers about their whereabouts and what is for dinner or what to present in the staff meeting. They are generally a very useful tool in todays frenetic work environment, and I have no objection to their presence.
But SOME people, especially in Australia from what I can gather, are more than happy to share their most intimate details with a bunch of strangers. I don’t want to hear why Jason gave Jessica a love-bite on the thigh, or the sordid mess of how Janice is leaving Jeff for another lover. That’s all.
And yesterday it irked me more than normal. I thought I had explained WHY I was a little more sensitive to such a phenomenon than usual, by virtue of a crap day at work. What normally would have been just digested as a normal part of the normal world, suddenly seemed quite ABNORMAL to me.
And Reprise…love ya and all, but after your comments, you can go get stuffed.
:rolleyes:
I’ll agree with the OP to the extent that I don’t want to hear people’s personal conversations at the volume they usually use on cell phones. If you have to shout into a cell phone, either make it short or get a new phone, for the love of cheese.
Then again, I also think talking on airplanes should be outlawed. (I use earplugs now so I don’t kill anyone because of it)
And I say unto you, yea my brethren, that also of the devil are the phone card who strt at 3 cents a minute but whack ye five minutes when ye pick up the phone.
Yea, also of Satan is the voice that tells ye, ye must forfeit several of thy phone card minute because ye hath not small change!
And I say unto thee, yea my brethren, that evil is the payphone that giveth thee not thy change.
Rise up, yea my brethren, and surrender not to the temptation of using 10-10-numbers, lest thy family smite thee.
Yea, my brethren for saving money is good, ye must not injure thyself by dialing fifteen numbers so that one may speaketh with thy Cousin, who art in Rhode Island.
The other day a girl was shrieking into her phone on the train while I was trying to read. I got up and politely asked her if she could please talk a bit more quietly. She turned away from me and continued shouting, so I said, loudly, “Well, dear, if you can’t be quiet, could you please be more interesting?”
Got a good laugh from adjacent commuters, and did shame her into hanging up.