I’d like to know how being antipathetic toward cellphones is the same as being anti-intellectual. Is the cellphone the new hornrim glasses and nobody told me?
That’s the beauty of a cellphone. It’s not tremendously inconvenient. Keep the damn thing off 24/7. Block your number and give it to no one. Just keep it in the car for emergencies. You don’t even have to look at it. It would also be nice if you’d call when you’re going to be late. Or maybe, just maybe, leave it on when you’re expecting company. You don’t even have to talk, just listen to a voicemail every now and then. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to talk loudly in inappropriate places with a goddawful ringtone on your luxury cell phone. Tons of people are considerate users, they’re just not noticeable.
It seems like the cellphone haters just hate rude people. By the same rationale, they shouldn’t drive, drink, use the Internet, or talk. Most people doing those things are inconsiderate assholes.
My wife and I each have one…I’m not particularly sociable, so I never turn mine on. No one knows the number, anyway. My wife makes a trip every year to visit friends on the other side of the State…about 300 miles. She uses hers for that trip, and while she’s gone, she knows I check for voicemails often. Works for us.
You can not answer a cellphone just like you can not answer a landline. In fact, you can just turn your phone off and check your voicemail whenever and wherever you want. You can even leave it at your house the whole time and just marvel at how much further into your yard it goes than your cordless. It’s just like a landline with more features.
When I think of cell phones, the first things that come to mind are the incredibly impolite cell phone users who:
[ul]
[li]continue talking right through interactions with cashiers, sending a none-too-subtle message that the cashiers are not worthy of any attention[/li][li]wait until they get to the counter at a fast food restaurant, and then call their friends/families to START talking about what to buy[/li][li]initiate or receive a call in an elevator and start a loud conversation in a cramped metal box with strangers[/li][li]INITIATE telephone calls while standing at a urinal or in a bathroom stall[/li][li]make calls in theaters (duh)[/li][li]swerve their cars in into my path while cluelessly talking, leaving me dying in a flaming wreck… Hmmm. Maybe that’s my biggest complaint.[/li][/ul]
However, this might be a situation where the jerks make themselves very visible, while the vast majority of cell phone users use their phones safely and discreetly, and no one notices them, so it seems like “every” cell phone user is a jerk.
I’m also of the opinion that in an effort to get as much phone service out to as many people as possible, they didn’t sit down and make sure that each person’s phone call would have acceptable sound quality. My cell phone is way more useful than my land line, but I keep my land line for phoning people I want to talk with for more than five minutes. I also tend to hesitate to call friends because I don’t want to subject them to the crappy sound quality of my phone. It’s a new technology that has a serious flaw in quality relative to the product it’s replacing. But it’s so cheap and provides so many other benefits that it’ll drive the land lines out of existence.
Though I love my new cell phone & all its cool internet capabilities, I have always had a problem using cell phones while driving. It seems impolite to initiate a call while driving, and when I receive calls, I basically have to pull over and park to carry on a conversation; otherwise, I’m just too nervous about not being able to devote all my attention to driving. And then, given that I do that, I resent the other drivers who don’t do likewise.
Why would you want to know such people anyway?
Speaking as a retail assistant who often does the cashier thing, it’s not even the rudeness of essentially ignoring the person serving you (I do realise it’s my job to make the customer feel valued, not the other way around), it’s the inconvenience to the cashier and the other people in the queue when you have to compete with their telephone call to get their attention to ask them the questions you need answered to ring up their purchases. You can see the looks of frustration on the other customer’s faces while you’re trying to catch Sally Vitally-Important’s attention to tell her the total and ask if she’s paying by cash, cheque or card… she finally indicates card and you’re trying to get her to choose the type of account she’s withdrawing from… then does she want cash out?.. or please sign the credit card slip… does she have a store loyalty card? Does she require a plastic bag today? Sure, you can try to predict her responses, but you should see the angry look Sally will give you if you start putting her stuff in a plastic bag and she didn’t want one. I’ve also had people snatch things from my hand and put them back on the counter, glaring at me, because they were too involved in their phone call to acknowledge me and say “No” when I repeatedly asked “Are these things yours too?”.
Equally frustrating: customers who ask you to explain the difference between various computer systems to them and recommend something to them, part way in their phone rings and they gesture you to pause while they take the call… so you’re standing there, waiting, unable to do anything and listening to one side of a conversation that was clearly vitally important. “Can you ask Mark to take the roast out of the freezer for dinner? What do you mean ‘He went out’? Where’d he go? Oh, I thought she’d gone away with her parents for the weekend. Oh, next weekend. Yeah, that makes more sense because of the long weekend. Well can you get it out then? No, the roast lamb. The lamb, not the chicken. The lamb! It’s in the back next to the frozen pizzas. And can you check to see if Dad got the clothes off the line when it started to rain before? Go and check now. I’ll wait.” I resent that they can’t excuse themselves while they take the call, or tell the caller that they’ll ring back as soon as they’ve finished what they were doing before their phone rang. Tying up the sales assistant’s time while you gabble on about your family dinner plans is rude and ignorant. Often any attempt to move away - either to help another customer, to resume doing what I was doing before I started serving them or simply to give them the space and privacy to complete their call - provokes a reaction of hand and facial gestures indicating “I’ll only be a moment! :rolleyes: Kids!” and something else thrust into my hands that they clearly want explained to them once they get off the phone, but only rarely do they seem embarrassed to be keeping me waiting while they have a trivial conversation.
However, I don’t blame mobile phones for this. I blame a lack of manners. I’d love to see mobile phone etiquette taught in school, since the cretins are raising a new generation of cretins who will increasingly see nothing wrong with holding a private conversation anywhere, at any time, and without regard to the people around them who are held hostage to their phone calls.
That’s my take on it too. If you don’t want people ringing you, don’t give them your phone number.
I have no problem at all with people saying “Look, a cellphone isn’t for me” (although, in Australia, that’s a very, very small group of people), But trying to take the Moral High Ground™ about it just strikes me as being silly.
Like Cazzle, I get customers on cellphones being rude to me at work. I just ignore them and go and serve other people until they get off the phone, but to very fair almost everyone of our customers who gets a call mid-transaction will excuse themselves and let the person behind them go instead- I can only think of two or three customers in the last 18 months that have decided to take an Important Call™ in the store and that I’ve had to excuse myself from the sale to serve someone else.
Given that cellphones are increasingly crossing the line into “PDA” (and some of the newer ones even have GPS units in them), I would have thought more people on the boards here would be interested in them- but I’m told the phone system is structured differently in the US, unlike Australia where cellphones are really, really cheap- or even free- and the call costs are very low too.
That’s funny – for the most part, I see cell phones as promoting an anti-intellectual attitude. (Note that mere use of technology does not make one intellectual.)
What I personally dislike about cell phones – and, yes, this is a general impression, not an inescapable universal – is the “distraction factor”. Sort of an ooh, shiny! rather than engagement with one’s surroundings. The volume of inanity, rudeness, and self-importance that accompanies their use lends support to Douglas Adams’ idea that Earthlings are descended from middle managers, telephone sanitisers, and hairdressers.
ETA: Not that I personally have a problem with middle managers, telephone sanitisers, or hairdressers. 
Wow. This one I hadn’t even heard of. If this ever happened in my vicinity, I might feel obligated to remove the asshole’s kidneys.
I have a cellphone. I like having one. It’s convenient. I hate the way most people use them, and the way most people are chained to them. If I ever reach the point when I feel “if I hear the phone ringing one more time”, I’ll turn it off. Hasn’t happened yet.
People are constantly amazed by the fact that when I get a text message, I don’t immediately rip my phone out of my pocket to read it and respond. I’ll wait until it’s convenient.
In recent years, cell phone users who talk inappropriately loudly have become much more rare, IME. But it’s kinda funny when one of the exceptions is former Sen. Rick Santorum.
First, I don’t hate mobile phones. They’re useful tools that made my part-time job (which involved traveling all over creation) far easier, and make meeting up with people on the spur of the moment a lot more convenient. The calls I get are few and usually essential, so it’s hardly a tether.
However, they also give rude and inconsiderate people a brand new way to be rude and inconsiderate to everyone in a 20-foot radius. The ones that don’t realize (or simply don’t care) that they’re talking loudly enough for people at the far end of the train to make out every word, the ones who barge into you because they’re too preoccupied reading (or writing) email, the ones who leave their phones behind at their desks and the ringers at full volume, the ones who sit there on the train playing every single ringtone at full volume over and over again, and the ones who suddenly cut off the person they’re talking with face-to-face in order to take a call and chatter away for ten minutes.
IMO, these people deserve every bit of scorn they get. I don’t dislike phones, I dislike assholes. When I say “I’m going to shove that phone up his nose and out his ear, then floss his goddamn head!” it’s not the phone I’m angry at.
ya know, that’s a great sound byte. I spent a lot of time in Tibet backpacking in the 1980’s. 3 months ago I had the chance to go back to Jiuzhaigou National Park in the Aba Tibetan Nationality Autonomous Region. On the way to the airport, we stopped at a monastary, and I had to use the facilities if you know what I mean. Little concrete shack with a trough for urination and a couple of holes seperated by 2 foot high walls for the other stuff. There was a monk in the far little “cubicle” squatting down and minding his own business while talking on his cell phone :eek:
I don’t hate mobile phones or any other phones for that matter, but I used to be considered “strange” for not answering my home phone if there was no-one I wanted to talk to at the moment. That categorization has expanded with my mobile - if it rings at work I pull it out, see who is calling, if they aren’t identified I don’t answer, if they are identified and I don’t want to talk to them I don’t answer.
I have voicemail and SMS and both are perfect for my type of telephony. I think a 2 minute phone call is usually a minute too long.
I had a mobile phone once…for 2 weeks.
Every time I was out the fucking thing would ring and it really got on my tit because whoever was phoning me really had sod all to say of importance
I threw the bloody thing in canal and I aint missed it at all
This is a rather simple answer to some of the common objections. You can choose just how available you wish to be. Sure, there will be folks who feel it’s your duty to answer on the first ring 24/7, but you simply decline to do so. If they let you know you’re falling short of their expectation or “rejecting” them, you sheepishly explain that you’re forgetful - sometimes you leave your phone muted, or off; sometimes the battery goes flat.
Like everyone in the UK, I have a mobile, but I don’t tend to carry it very often.
Anti-intellectual?!?
It strikes me that few heavy users of mobile phones are what I would call intellectuals.
And the fact that most TV ads related to phones are about downloading crazy frog, or finding out what letter of the alphabet my future husband’s name will begin with (only £1.50 per name), seems to support this.
Also, in addition to many of the gripes mentioned already, pedestrians with mobile phones really piss me off. Sounds like a weird one, I know, but about 15% (serious estimate) of London’s pedestrians are on the phone at any time, slowly meandering along the busy streets, looking down at their feet because the conversation is that interesting.
I think some of the dislike is a reaction of precisely this attitude. If you’re going to denigrate me for not having a cell phone, I’m going to get defensive and denigrate you for having one.
But mainly I thing it’s a reaction against all the jerkish behavior that cellphones enable. Not that everyone who has a cellphone engages in such behavior, by any means, but it’s prevalent.
Hey, don’t leave your house if you can’t bear the conversations of others around you! I can talk about anything I want in public.
Why does one have to couch it like this? I’m not “forgetful” and I’m not “ashamed” that I don’t want to be on-call 24-7 just because I carry a phone for my own convenience. 90% of the time, I let the thing ring, go right to voicemail, and I return calls when I feel like it. Little by little, friends of mine have realized that they can’t expect me to pick up my phone. And still, it’s hard to shake the widespread assumption that you’ll drop all to pick up the phone if it rings. I’ve been with people, in the middle of a conversation, when the phone rings and they have to pick it up just to say, “Hey, I haven’t talked to you in so long! I’m at dinner, can I call you back in 15 minutes?” This, to me, is infuriating. A large portion of the population seems to be unable to ignore even the most banal of calls. There’s nothing evil about voicemail- only the type of people who can only leave voicemails that say, “call me back as soon as you get this!”. Since when is every conversational need an emergency? Pishposh.
I guess “intellectual” was the wrong word to use, perhaps ‘white collor’ is a better fit here. What I mean is that there’s a strong sentiment that nobody should be dependent on cell phones; this seems to show disdain towards people who make productive use of cell phone in their work.