Why I Silence Calls Even When I'm Free

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-i-silence-your-call-even-when-im-free.html?src=rechp

by bglenn09 • 13 years ago

42 47 13 years ago

nytimes.com

aaronbrethorst• 13 years ago

"This is [because] I am always on offense and never defense."

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/my-phone/2013/03/dave-mori...

autotravis2• 13 years ago

“I have two iPhones, one for day and one for the night. When the day phone runs out, the night phone takes over. I never have to worry.”

talk about wasteful...

nyarlathotep• 13 years ago

I found that portion a little shocking. Is that at all common?

bcoates• 13 years ago

At launch, an unsubsidized 32GB iPhone 4 cost $599, let's be pessimistic and say you get two years of use out of it and are unable to sell it for anything, that's $25/month. Not exactly an extravagant business expense.

brymaster2• 13 years ago

Ah thanks for the good laugh. "It’s a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind bespoke app."

Think I'll side with Gruber's thoughts: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/29/dave-morin

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/...

brymaster2• 13 years ago

Great tumblr. This could be contender for the "Fucked Company" of Web 2.0 if it was frequently updated.

gfodor• 13 years ago

They need to re-make American Psycho but base it in SV, just so I can hear Christian Bale's inner monologue again saying ridiculous things like this (and everything else in that interview, for that matter.)

WalterSear5• 13 years ago

I was going to take issue with your unfair characterization of silicon valley and then I followed the link to that interview.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

The poor guy's just so insecure that he thinks every phone call is an attack that he's too weak to defend against.

a3voices2• 13 years ago

I have a habit of doing this too, actually. Talking on the phone just feels too much like work.

RDeckard2• 13 years ago

Even when a relative calls?

a3voices2• 13 years ago

When my mom calls, I always pick up. :)

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

Even more so...

mmahemoff2• 13 years ago

"And yet, I watched the call come in without touching my phone."

Pro tip: Hit the volume rocker to mute the ringer without cancelling the call. Works on at least iOS and most Androids.

keyle• 13 years ago

The top button on iphone will mute the ringing and let it "ring out" as if you're away.

I feel sneaky using it as opposed to declining the call, but Italy's best rule for warfare as always been "the best defense is to not be there".

mmahemoff2• 13 years ago

It can be sneaky or considerate, depends when you use it. The problem with the abrupt "hanging up" button is it's binary like a car horn - there's no way to do it nicely. If you're in a meeting where you can't take the call, it's a gentle way to let the caller down.

gotrecruit• 13 years ago

on many android phones, you can also simply flip the phone over to face down and it will stop ringing.

yoyar• 13 years ago

I have unplugged my work phone. No one has noticed or mentioned it. Most messages are emails and texts on my cell. I don't answer the cell unless I know who is calling.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

This kind of sickens me, who treats their family like that?

RDeckard2• 13 years ago

She's a horrible excuse for a relative. Yea, I get the point that "nobody picks up the phone these days", but it was her own sister calling.

FireBeyond• 13 years ago

You forgot “and then wasn’t even bothered to listen to the voicemail”.

Why would you even want to talk to her, with that monumental level of disdain?

colmvp• 13 years ago

Cousin, not sister.

WalterSear5• 13 years ago

The self-absorbed.

That was just a wordy introspection by someone marveling at her discovery of a new way to be inconsiderate to others.

john_w_t_b• 13 years ago

I think this is a side effect of the Internet. Smartphones give you unlimited information at your fingertips. With all the distractions online, it's easy to become detached from your friends and family. I have the same problem.

WalterSear5• 13 years ago

It's a side effect of being an inconsiderate person.

ngoel362• 13 years ago

It's funny, I'm often exactly the opposite. Sometimes I'll just call people up...without warning, without scheduling. It'll catch them off guard at first, but I find it hands-down more efficient. Often times five minutes on the phone can garner a resolution easier than eight hours on an email chain (only to end up scheduling a call for the next day).

I really wish that people were more open to this; it's strange because it's how most of the world operated 10 years ago, but the thought of just calling someone up is almost ludicrous now...

LogicX• 13 years ago

Wish they understood that in the USA South. Just recently moved here.. In the north, yes -- people understood not to call. I get so annoyed as everyone calls me for the most silly reasons in the south! NEVER is there a text first.

ngoel362• 13 years ago

I'm from Alabama...this might explain it :)

LordHumungous• 13 years ago

I always pick up because I'm excited that someone wants to talk to me.

MartinCron• 13 years ago

I remember feeling like that. Sigh.

read• 13 years ago

the new rules of engagement: Call only if truly necessary. Text first.

These new rules of engagement are also old rules of engagement. In older times people called only if truly necessary. They hand-wrote letters otherwise.

I wish people started writing letters again. There could be a startup idea waiting to be discovered around this.

johncagula• 13 years ago

email?

hawkharris• 13 years ago

We should all turn off our phones until a Bruce Springsteen song makes us burst out crying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

I'm joking, of course, but Louis makes some insightful points that go along with the author's argument.

wordplay• 13 years ago

I think this is more about the control you lose with a phone conversation vs. a text conversation.

adamconroy• 13 years ago

It is only proper that I refuse to read the article.

TruthElixirX• 13 years ago

Sounds like a developing anxiety complex. I know three people who started out like this and justified it in different ways, then going straight to no pretense, just hating the phone, then eventually a full blown anxiety disorder.

This was the first of a few symptoms.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

Hmmmmm. A rant....

This might be culture, or just the people I know, but...

There seems to be an expectation that I'm supposed to respond immediately to any call or text, and if I don't, some how I'm an arse. I have a mobile, there for apparently I'm never possibly parted form it, have the instant ability to stop anything I might already be doing, and its damn rude not to answer with in 3 rings, or reply to a text the second I receive it.

As such, I have come to view my mobile as some sort of pocket Nazi, who insists I will do as told.

Well, no.

I didn't get a mobile phone so that others can dictate my life and it's schedule. So, no, I don't immediately pick up ever call or immediately respond to texts. I do so as and then I see fit. Obviously Im selective about it based on context, but there is no way Im going to allow that little pocket Nazi rule my life.

It really gets to me how I might be in the middle of something with another person, and any time their phone rings, what ever we are doing must be paused so they can take the call or respond to a text. Its like the phone has a priority over an actual person one might be with. Its just plain rude. I see it all over the place, and it appalls me.

Ahhhhhhhhhh HN therapy. :)

hackula12• 13 years ago

Get new friends and/or coworkers. Seriously, reasonable people do not expect an immediate response.

WalterSear5• 13 years ago

There's a wide, wide gap between not being at everyone's beck and call and being so wound up in your own distractable, techno-depersonalized self as to be annoyed by pesky human contact.

Zecc• 13 years ago

Last Download: Mailbox.
“I use [it] to keep things at ‘inbox zero.’

Well, only 129 to go.

Why I Silence Calls Even When I'm Free

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