I’ve been reading this thread on payphones becoming obsolete with interest, especially the number of replies from people who point out they don’t have a cellphone and like it that way.
I see this sentiment a lot on the boards- that cellphones are inherently a bad thing (like Fast Food and Tobacco) and that anyone who doesn’t have one is somehow superior to those that do.
This attitude baffles me. I’ve never seen a cellphone as anything but a useful communications tool, much as my car is a useful transportation tool.
Around here, not having a cellphone means you’re a cranky old man/woman that hates change and says unkind things about kittens. It’s not something to be proud of by any stretch of the imagination; at best it’s a tool you have no need of, in which case you don’t need to get one. But you don’t need to feel all smug and superior because you don’t have a phone.
So why, exactly, do so many people on the boards take this very approach? OK, cellphones in movie theatres or libraries etc are extremely annoying and people who use them in those places should be summarily wedgied, but I just can’t understand not having a cellphone as being a “Lifestyle Choice”.
Paraphrasing a Tibetan Monk when asked why he had no telephone in his home:
Why on Earth should I carry around a bell that anyone in the world can ring?
That it may be, but I’m glad I don’t have or need one. I wouldn’t say that I feel smug and superior about that, rather I feel fortunate that I live in a city where most of my regular needs are within a few blocks and work is accessible via public transportation.
They’re losers that people don’t call that often. Hence, they think being in constant communication is “stupid” and dismiss it. It’s a classic defense.
I wish I could remember where this prophecy came from:
“Grandad, is it true that when you were young, you had to phone a building and hope that the person you wanted was there?”
I suppose that some people are allow themselves to be snared by the illusion that hearing one side of a private conversation of no consequence, carried out in a public domain makes that speaker stupid, shallow, or otherwise ‘less’ than the hearer.
I think it initially had an association with yuppies and teenagers. People were turned off by being on the hook at any time. Early adopters were annoying and rude.
After about 2002 or so, that doesn’t really hold. They’re cheaper than landlines and infinitely more convenient. Don’t want to answer the phone? Send it to voicemail. No big deal. Not only is it annoying to hear the smug “I don’t have a cellphone” line, it’s a pain in the ass for everyone that knows them to get in touch, meet somewhere, go to a movie, or get directions. At least that’s my experience with twenty somethings.
I now use a cell phone exclusively, because to share the house phone with one of my housemates would be a special kind of torture. But I put it off for as long as possible. I can’t say there’s a clear answer why but here’s some possibilities:
I’m already very slightly hard of hearing, and for the most part, cell phone reception is spotty and the speaker is nowhere near as loud as a regular phone. It annoys the hell out of me to try and have a conversation where I can’t understand the other person clearly.
Other people with cellphones are often annoying, with their talking much louder than needed in public and having super obnoxious ring tones.
More often than not, the average phone call to me is more likely to cause me annoyance than joy. Tie that with the fact that the annoying calls can now reach me anywhere and…
I don’t like phones in general. A lot of people in my life have various annoying speech habits and I’d rather just communicate through IM and email for the most part, and if having a verbal conversation prefer it to be in person.
That pretty much sums it up for me. To me, a cell phone is a tether, and I don’t want to be tethered. It’s like a Pavlovian response kicks in to the annoying buzzing thing on my hip or in my pocket. My time is my time. When I’m out and about I don’t want to be bothered.
I don’t get all smug or whatever like mentioned in the OP. I just don’t want to carry a phone. *Carry * being the operative word. I actually pay for two cell phones. My wife carries one, as does her stepson.
Touche’. I inherited my wife’s “old” (3 years?) phone.
Last time I was out I got in shit for not having it turned on and was unavailable: so I turned it on. Then I got in shit because I left it on, the battery had died and I was still unavailable. :smack:
I functioned perfectly well in “the old days” without one, and I detest having to be available no matter where I am, or what I’m doing. I want to go out and be left the fuck alone.
I don’t really like or dislike cellphones; I have one so my husband can get in touch with me if I’m not home. What I dislike is rude/ignorant users of cellphones. Last night at dinner I was treated to a very vivid discription of an old lady’s colonoscopy.
The cellphone enables people to talk out loud in public…people who don’t give a sh*t if it bothers anyone else. I suppose you could say "cellphones don’t piss people off, people piss people off".
While I recognise their usefulness, there are several aspects of mobile phones that I dislike:
the tendency of users to shout into them. They speak much more loudly than they would if they were having a normal conversation;
the rudeness of users who make and/or receive calls on them in situations where it’s just bloody inconsiderate to everyone else e.g in cinemas, or during the opera, or during a church service;
the effect they have on people’s punctuality. I’m quite certain that they’re causing people to make less of an effort to be on time for things because they can always ring up and say they’re running late.
I’ve never had a cellphone – or “mobile,” as they’re called here, after the British fashion – because honestly, I see how rude people are with them over here. Sounds like it’s not all that different over there. The wife finally got one years ago, but she knows keeping it on in the cinema and such is practically a divorceable offense! If I need to get ahold of someone, I’ll use a payphone.
Basically, I have nothing against cell phones themselves; I just don’t like the people that use cell phones in annoying way. Driving and dialling, having an inane cell conversation in a movie theater (this happens A LOT in China), and shouting into the blasted mic… these all make me angry.
I have a cell phone, but I don’t feel tethered to it now. I often have it on silent, and just call back whoever called at my leisure. People used to get annoyed with me for not answering, but now they’re used to it; I also tell them that I wouldn’t be upset if they did the same. Nowadays, most of my friends just message me, and it works great. If we really need to talk, a message saying so suffices, as I will then call them and/or put my cell phone to ring. Also, if someone has called me 3+ times, I’ll also attempt to be reachable.
No, sorry, it’s not my responsibility to make other people’s lives more convenient because they’re poor planners. Especially if that responsibility is a tremendous inconvenience to me. My personal feelings towards cell phone users is that far too many are rude and unthinking when it comes to usage, and are pretty darn close to addicts when it comes to their phone. I really only see massive smugness on the part of cell phone users, interestingly…showing off their latest function…reacting with shock if someone admits to not owning a phone…believing in a God-given right to talk whenever and wherever they want…
I’ll first mention that for many years I had a bit of a phobia about phones (of any type) from one of my first jobs, as railway clerk, that had me answering phones 80 or 90 times a shift. I’ve mostly gotten over that, though.
Today I have a cellphone exclusively, with no land line. I don’t like it all that much, but not because I’m an anti-tech Luddite or anything like that, it’s mostly the crappy etiquette that seems to go with it.
Aside from all the annoyances mentioned by other posters, there’s the thing where the phone is somehow always supposed to be more important than whatever else you’re doing at the time. Bugs me.
I get majorly cheesed over someone messaging me repeatedly about a subject that can have no clear resolution until later; just wait until the time I said things would be worked out and call me just the one time then, fer cryin’ out loud.
There’s SMS texting, which I confess I loathe. For me it’s like trying to use a typewriter by bashing the keys with a sledghammer. I’ve got a friend who I dearly love and she likes to text, so I’ll put up with it for her sake, but when my boss is supposed to accompany me for a meeting, and ends up being late for it, and texts me demanding to send him the names of the people we’re meeting with, right now, while I’m actually having the damn meeting, that gets up my snout a bit.
Then there are the Borg, who, when one is trying to get their full attention, instead insist on communicating with the Mothership via their Blackberries.
To directly address the OP’s premise, I don’t look down on anyone for having a cellphone. I do sometimes look down on people who behave like jerks when using 'em.
It’s not the phone that tethers you - it’s the expectations people put on you once they know you have the ability to be reached. If you know people who want to intrude on your life, this gives them a hell of a way to do it.
These are the people who will contact you over the most trivial things, or to make demands on you, or just to find out where you are and what you are doing. If you turn off your cell phone, you’re ‘rejecting’ them or ‘ignoring’ them, and that itself becomes a problem.
I’m lucky in that I don’t currently have any relationships like that. But for those who do, I can well imagine that they wish the damned things had never been invented.
If society had developed a convention that it is incredibly rude to phone someone on a personal phone unless it’s really important (like we developed the convention that you don’t show up at people’s houses unannounced unless you have a very close relationship), cell phones would be more tolerable for those people.
I think there’s a strong anti-intellectual or anti-yuppie attitude here. Or at least a vocal minority who show contempt at people who have legitimate use for frequent cell phone use, or choose a busy lifestyle.
Just an impression, not really thinking about any posters or threads in particular.
I don’t have a cellphone because I hate people. I don’t want to be contactable. I don’t want to be available. I want everyone to leave me alone unless I actually attempt to make contact.
I don’t answer my landline either. Everyone I might want to talk to knows to leave a voicemail.
It’s not that I consider myself to be superior. It’s that I consider myself to be a misanthrope.
The ironic thing is that I’m a switchboard operator…