A few more things about answering the phone or not answering the phone
[NOTE: This builds on yesterday’s post.]
One reason I don’t mind answering the phone is that I can almost always tell what’s a robocall, and avoid those. They ordinarily have an area code that matches mine (their designers are clever that way) and yet the number corresponds to no one on my cell phone’s list of contacts. They makes it very simple, because I put everyone – my insurance agent, my doctors, my dentist, the car repair place – on my contact list. So anyone I want to talk to will be on it, and all the other phone calls I can ignore.
If I do end up ignoring something important, I can count on the person to leave a message. Robocalls sometimes do, but most of the time they don’t.
But for the other calls, especially the ones from people I know and love, I prefer listening to the sound of a voice. Most of my friends and loved ones don’t live nearby. Many live very far away. I see them very seldom, and the distance is painful for me. So although I try not to be a pest, and call and call and call, I much prefer talking to texting or email although I’ll do texting or email in a pinch (or if they prefer it).
You can tell so much more from a human voice! Unless a person is a great actor – and I mean a great actor – you can perceive mood and even health. The entire interaction is so much warmer. It’s almost like a visit with that person, which a text never is.
I’m always surprised at people who say they don’t like to talk on the phone, either to receive calls or to make them. I know such people exist, and I even think I know some reasons why they don’t like it, or at least why they say they don’t like it. They don’t have time and talking on the phone takes time. They consider a phone call some sort of intrusion or invasion. Some people are just naturally shy. Some people don’t like to talk to someone they can’t see. Some people prefer to keep others at an emotional distance, and the distance of texting serves them well.
There are very few people in my life about whom I feel that need to be distant. Of course, I don’t always feel like talking at the very moment friends or loved ones might call. But I often will drop what I’m doing to talk. And if not, I’m usually happy to call them back and have a real (and a long) conversation. Fortunately, most of them will still pick up their own phones when they ring.
I started writing a lengthy post in the other thread but never got around to finishing it.
There’s basically two separate topics here: avoidance of talking to actual people and avoidance of unwanted sales calls (which, by the way, are epidemic on cell phones, so don’t think by getting rid of a landline, you’re heading to a paradise of no robocalls and sales calls). The latter is why we, as a group, don’t pick up the phone when it rings like we would have 30 years ago, and it’s a big reason why calling someone is less effective as a means of having a conversation _now_ than it once was.
The former is why the younger crowd uses their precious cell phone for everything in the world except as a phone. Generally speaking, the generation after mine has issues dealing with face-to-face interaction with actual people and have really weird and warped definitions of “talking to” people and “meeting” people. These are people who sit at a table and text each other rather than speaking words – and not just in circumstances when they’re speaking privately to each other while other people are sitting right there, though that’s a (selfish and rude) thing, too. It’s no surprise to me that, as a group, these are people who have serious problems forming normal relationships with other, actual people and with seeing themselves as a real person.
I can text if I have to, but unless I’m asking for an address or phone number, or just checking in with an update that needs no reply, I don’t if I can avoid it. I see texting as a poor substitute to speaking to a person for at least some of the reasons neo mentions, but not the least of which, because most people I know ignore texts.
I am especially irked at the loss of the phone as a reliable means of instant communication and both factors are a cause. I am even starting to run into smaller businesses where phone calls go unanswered. “Text me,” they say, so you do; and when you wait, and wait, and wait for a reply, you wonder, are they busy? Are they ignoring me? Back in the phone days, you could have this 20-second conversation: “Hey, man, I’m really busy.” “Just a quick question – are we still on for Thursday?” “Yeah, Thursday should be good.” “Thanks, bye, see you then.” And everyone gets what they need. Now in the wonderful days of texting, that hypothetical Thursday looms and you wonder if indeed, it’s still on.
I was one of the people who commented yesterday about the fact that I do not like to talk on the phone. I am not sure why. I sometimes attribute it to once having been a receptionist many years ago, but I think that only made me realize how much I hated it.
My husband sort of marvels at this attitude because he says, “You’re so good on the phone!” And I am. I can sense a lot from tone of voice, even over the phone and am good picking up on cues and also making myself understood. The only thing I can grasp as being a reason is the absence of visual and physical cues.
Oddly, despite being introverted, I have no problem talking to strangers or speaking to groups. It’s just the phone I hate. Go figure.
I have to admit, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like talking on the phone, although I love talking to people in person. Not sure why, maybe as you said, it’s because I don’t like talking to people I can’t see. Could it be a guy thing? My wife loves to talk on the phone and marvels at how short my phone conversations are with my brothers and male friends.
You wrote “They consider a phone call some sort of intrusion or invasion. Some people are just naturally shy. Some people don’t like to talk to someone they can’t see. Some people prefer to keep others at an emotional distance, and the distance of texting serves them well.”
That person (me) is not shy. I hit all those marks. Welcome to the world of an introvert.
BTW, introversion is a description, not a psychological flaw. At least that’s what my shrink tells me. No meds for that!
Thanks for joining in, fellow introverts. Yes, it’s not a psychological flaw. I often thought it was until I read “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. Up until then, I thought some of my tendencies were pathological.
What’s interesting is that most introverts understand extroverts because they dominate our society. Conversely, extroverts rarely understand introverts and think we must secretly want to engage with people.
The difference in a nutshell: extroverts are energized by interactions with other people while introverts are exhausted by them.
My gradual dislike of answering the phone stems from two totally different situations. One of my good friends would call me and relate enormously complicated work/life/ stories, ones involving people I didn’t know with details too tedious for me to care about. These conversations would last waaaaay too long and, although I cared for her and realized that she needed to talk to someone, I was tired of being her listening post. I had to invent reasons to cut the phone calls short and I was left with guilt at doing so.
The other was when my mother was suffering from health problems. I began to dread the sound of the phone ringing, especially early in the morning or late at night. Too often it meant a health issue that needed my attention.
Now it is the robocalls. No rest for the wicked.
I’m an introvert. But a slightly extraverted introvert.
Neo – an extraverted introvert is not that unusual.
We (AesopSpouse and I and 3 out of 5 kids) are just that way, as are some of our closer friends.
Being with people is important, and so we have a tendency to “lurk” at social events without being as outgoing as true extraverts, but it is an effort to maintain our contacts, because — in reality — we really get our energy from privately studying and pondering.
Which is why I love blog commenting – it feeds both ends of the spectrum.
Paradoxically, perhaps, we have all been active in theater and scouting, where the interactions are defined and to some extent finite, so we have decided to call ourselves “performing introverts.”
As for the phone polling:
We only answer if the caller ID is known, or if an unknown number is expected (I’ve been surprised sometimes that a call I was waiting for came from a non-local area code, but people no longer change their mobile numbers when they move).
Fortunately, the landline mailbox sends an email to both of us with voice transcription if someone does leave a message (we get some very strange ones from time to time, which I sometimes forward to the caller with some gentle hints about elocution).
Robocalls on cell phones are a pain; they used to be illegal because the receiver was the one paying for the minutes, but now everyone is on unlimited plans.
I used to block numbers, but the memory allotted for that function on my landline phone ran out, so now I don’t bother. Sometimes I save them under “scam” but mostly I just ignore them.
Scammers who prey on elderly people with “great deals if you sign up now” or “the IRS is going to put you in jail if you don’t call back” and so forth are prime targets for a new circle in Dante’s Inferno. They can all sit around calling each other for eternity.
I have grown to like texting for quick messages that don’t really need discussion, because people (including me) aren’t interrupted with those as much as with voice calls.
I shall now proceed to relate a true story about a phone call, demonstrating the perils of voice communication.
One summer when I was home from college, the phone rang at around 2 or 3 in the morning. Being an old-style Ma Bell rotary, it sat in the built-in niche in the hall outside my parents bedroom. My somewhat irate father summoned me to the instrument, and stood forebodingly nearby as I exchanged somewhat noncommittal pleasantries with an obviously inebriated female caller.
After I hung up, he asked roughly, “Who … was that?” (my Dad did not swear in our presence, but I could fill it in from his tone).
I replied gently, “Your sister.”
He turned and went back into his room without further remark.
(She was a dear and devoted auntie, but at that time a bit of a lush. She and her second husband dried out together later in life.)
Isn’t it interesting that back in the day we watched SF movies full of Video Phones and pretty much that was how it was going to be.
Now, apart from teleconferencing – which is an imposition I’d better be getting paid to participate in – and talking to one’s nephews/nieces or later in life grandchildren, what’s the use case for video calling (apart from, of course, Porn)?
Video is just too much of an intrusion into our private lives. When we go out to meet people face-to-face, we instinctively ‘put on our faces’ and gird up for it. At home and the Kubrickian Videophone beeps, it’s a mild existential terror.
What’s happening now with voice calls vs. text is at least partly an evolution of this — at least for us introverts.
Who knows what the eventual steady state condition will become? At least until The Machine Stops.
T Migratorius is correct about personality types, btw.
You can read about one prominent model in any Myers-Briggs Type Indicator article, or David Keirsey’s Temperament Sorter.
We “typed” our family when the kids were in middle- and high-school, and were able to defuse a lot of interpersonal conflicts once we knew where everyone fell on the spectra.
MBTI is more theoretically Jungian, and DKTS (although based on the MBTI) is more heuristic.
Wikipedia is pretty good with both of them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator
There are 16 major variants (4 factors each with 2 opposite poles), and oodles of grey areas, so sometimes typing approaches astrology, but people who are solidly in one of the cells are really unmistakable for any other major type.
To Zaphod – I appreciate your dislike for video calls in general, but we “hangout” with our kids once a week at a set time, and (although we all look terrible and the rooms are horribly cluttered), we enjoy being able to catch-up as a group.
I have noticed, though, that essentially free video calling using apps has been universally adopted by the Filipino and Indonesian maids working in Hong Kong. It’s a godsend to mothers forced by economic circumstances to work far from their young children.
The area I live in has more or less unlimited free WiFi so that they can walk around all doing their jobs and voice chatting even when they’re not video calling.
Another anthropological observation: In Mainland China ‘push to talk’ type chat is very popular. People go about their business holding back and forth voice conversations in WeChat. In other words they send a recorded message in that particular chat window and other person(s) respond similarly. Point being that you’re busy you don’t need to listen to a message snippet immediately. This probably took off initially due to Chinese Text Input being a bit more difficult than (say) English, but these days is possible to blast out written Chinese very quickly if one makes the effort to learn the more efficient input methods or even just uses text-to-speech.
Still, this back and forth with recorded voice snippets seems baked into the Mainland Chinese tech genome now and here to stay for a while.
So, I guess habits differ. For sure Westerners are much more privacy-oriented and individualistic than East Asians… and South-East Asians practically wither and die if ‘alone’ for any length of time.
Funny Old World.
Another blessing of the cell phone revolution is that third-world countries only have to invest in cell towers, not subterranean or pole-borne wires (or whatever they make these days).
AesopFan: Precisely. I believe that Video Calling is precisely for family and loved ones and pretty much nothing else.
Of course given the Fallen State of Man, Corporate Cultural Tyranny and Porn exist and account for nearly all of the remaining use of this technology.