Don't Leave Voice Mail.

September 25, 2023 7:18 AM

A guide to modern phone etiquette. (WaPo gift link.) Evidently Apple is bringing old school answering machine "screening" back, although if you're not supposed to use voice mail I don't get the point. Anyway here's a handy guide to the bewilderment that is modern phone use. For those who have a cell phone, anyway.
posted by JanetLand (153 comments total)

Don’t use speakerphone in public

While many people (myself included) love eavesdropping on strangers’ gossip, it’s generally considered bad form to use speakerphone in public.

The other week I had to spend most of a day in a crowded airport, and I was surprised by how many people were having speakerphone calls at full volume. Not so much surprised at them being arguably discourteous, since we are all rude in our own ways, but I was surprised that they just didn't care that everyone within a 20 foot circle could hear every detail of their family or work conversation. I guess I am just a more private person.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:23 AM on September 25, 2023 [50 favorites]

I haven't read the article but "the point" thing in your post caught me. I run a business that relies on the phone (I do not have social media and therefore do not have social media messaging). But this is nearly impossible these days because literally 95% of calls are robocalls or scams. Apple's new voicemail screening will greatly lessen that, I believe, because now I can use that to quickly determine if I should answer. Hopefully the longterm effect of everybody using it who is able is that the robocalls will go away as the scammers realize no one HAS to answer any more.
posted by dobbs at 7:26 AM on September 25, 2023 [16 favorites]

The other week I had to spend most of a day in a crowded airport, and I was surprised by how many people were having speakerphone calls at full volume.

I frequently wonder if this is a byproduct of the cellphones-cause-cancer myths.

But this is nearly impossible these days because literally 95% of calls are robocalls or scams.

This is the thing. Unfiltered phone calls are now as unusable as unfiltered email.
posted by mhoye at 7:34 AM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

as a point of information, Google Pixel phones have had voice-assistant call screening since 2018
posted by glonous keming at 7:36 AM on September 25, 2023 [56 favorites]

Android: I use Do Not Disturb, configured to let calls and texts from people in my contacts go through. My phone is super old though so newer versions have probably nerfed it, because it's so useful.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:36 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

Another vote to say the Android call screening has been working great for me for years.
posted by phunniemee at 7:39 AM on September 25, 2023 [20 favorites]

I frequently wonder if this is a byproduct of the cellphones-cause-cancer myths.

I saw a low-stakes conspiracy post the other day hypothesising that listening to stuff (whether calls or recorded media) on one's phone in public at a volume audible to others is a byproduct of newer cellphones no longer having a standard headphone socket.

I'm not sure if I totally buy that as the only answer, though I do buy it a bit more than most folks still being concerned that their phones might be giving them cancer, given how close most folks keep their phones to their bodies most of the time.

I did not want to hear about how someone should never have asked their sister Charlene to be a bridesmaid because she only thinks about herself for most of my train journey on Saturday, but I did have to hear about that, because so many people have such poor audible-noises-from-their-phones-in-public etiquette (personally I see this as separate from other issues around phone etiquette, like in which situations it's rude to be looking at your phone while eating or socialising with others - those questions count as microsocial phone etiquette, whereas playing a loud noise I can't choose to not hear on one's phone in public counts as macrosocial phone etiquette). While I wish them well with their wedding and family issues, I didn't want to know about any of those issues at all, but I didn't get a choice.

I'm still buying phones with a standard headphone socket myself because that's the only way I can listen to music in my 11-year-old car, and I hope to keep that as an option for as long as I hope to keep the car, so if some manufacturers could retain it as an option into the early 2030s I'd be grateful.

And I hope I die before I ever subject someone to my music, phone conversations or media preferences over phone speakers in public.
posted by terretu at 7:47 AM on September 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

Another vote to say the Android call screening has been working great for me for years.

In that people hang up and text you instead?
Apple’s Live Voicemail is not the same as the Pixel Google Assistant Call Screen- is there a different feature that is more similar?
posted by zamboni at 7:47 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I weirdly got Google-screened by my mom's pixel yesterday. Which isn't supposed to happen bc I'm in her contacts. I acted very mock offended and cursed a lot. But for a retired person, it means she never listens to those car warranty calls.
posted by atomicstone at 7:47 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I frequently wonder if this is a byproduct of the cellphones-cause-cancer myths.

At least in my parents' case, it was.
posted by Selena777 at 7:48 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not a huge fan of phone calls myself. Whenever I see a call I assume the worst and panic/fear/dread sets in.
posted by richardmeyers1987 at 7:48 AM on September 25, 2023 [45 favorites]

...but I was surprised that they just didn't care that everyone within a 20 foot circle could hear every detail of their family or work conversation.

We are all living in our own private Idahos. Unfortunately, as a native of that benighted state, I know how truly horrible that is. And don't even get me started on the also thankfully benighted movement in Idaho to annex all of Oregon and Washington state west of the Cascades.

I have two friends my age with Trumpeteer sons. Cue Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now: The horror, the horror... For me, there are far worse choices for Thanksgiving than staying home alone.

*Talking of speakerphone in public makes no sense to me at all: what is wrong with those people!?*
posted by y2karl at 7:54 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not a huge fan of phone calls myself. Whenever I see a call I assume the worst and panic/fear/dread sets in.


Right? A few times in the last 6 months my stepmom has accidentally butt-dialed me while I'm at work, and, man-oh-live, nothing kicks me in the chest quite as much as seeing that call come in. "This is it," I think. "The world is never going to be the same after you answer this phone..."

And then it's just, like, background noise of her at lunch.
posted by kbanas at 7:56 AM on September 25, 2023 [77 favorites]

In public places, I think it’s very easy to pretend that the masses around you are not people at all. Easy, and maybe psychologically necessary on some level. I wonder whether the people who take speakerphone calls from airports would do it in other settings where the people weren’t strangers — I wonder if it would be more obvious that those people could be listening and judging.
posted by eirias at 7:57 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Once while waiting for a flight, I was sitting next to a man who used Siri to conduct multiple email correspondences over the course of 45 minutes. I heard every single thing he dictated to each recipient; these were clearly work emails, and some even kind of sounded a little sensitive (he spoke with a loud voice, so it was hard not to hear everything he was saying).

I was also struck by how hilarious he sounded as he was dictating to Siri. He sounded so robotic, and it made me realize that I probably sound like that too… which further made me wonder if Siri really is that bad at dictation or if people just started doing the “slow robo talk” out of some kind of assumptive habit?

At any rate, the experience prompted me to be more naturalistic in my speech when using Siri or other modern machine dictation services. This neither lessened nor increased the error rates, but did make using Siri a lot less frustrating for me.

Ha, I even wrote this post using Siri. Happy Monday y’all!
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:10 AM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm not usually one for chicken-little takes about the fragility of "kids these days" but the (to me) bizarre unease and even panic elicited by a ringtone brings me ever close to yelling at clouds.*


*Yeah, yeah, phone calls are more likely to be robo-cals nowadays than 30 years ago, that's an annoyance not some terrible harm.

**I don't chicken-little about it, because people my age, who I know for a fact used to be perfectly happy to spend hours on the phone, now prefer texting, too. So I know it's not just kids these days.
posted by oddman at 8:10 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s a brilliant way to enslave cell phone users to help feed the algorithm on which calls are robo-spam calls. I mean, let’s call a spade a spade.

Never mind that they could have solved the spam call problem years ago with proper solicitor licensing, Caller ID security measures, and mandatory per-call fees for soliciting - but that’s not the business the phone companies, Apple, or anyone else for that matter are in.
posted by WorkshopGuyPNW at 8:19 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I wonder if people use speakerphone because they haven't used a (wired) telephone handset, so speakerphone is more natural to them than putting the phone to your ear.
posted by sfred at 8:21 AM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

I agree that speakerphone in public can be distressing for people overhearing.

Sometimes using speakerphone in public is neccessary, tho, if you're hard of hearing/have auditory processing issues/can't find earpieces that you can tolerate wearing.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:22 AM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

I screen calls by answering any unknown number with a cheerful "Thank you for calling! How can we help you?" Sometimes I'll switch it up with "How may I direct your call?" If it's a solicitor, they almost always hang up.

(I used to use "Hello, caller! You're on the air!" until I realized that people who remember calling in to radio stations and talking to the DJs are vanishingly few.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:25 AM on September 25, 2023 [31 favorites]

I use speaker phone because my ears hurt when I use it normal. I'm trying to learn to speak at a conversational volume.
posted by rebent at 8:25 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

it’s generally considered bad form to use speakerphone in public

I would argue, do not speak into a phone at all in public. The way people pitch their voices into a phone is the most grating thing to me and other noise-sensitives. Text or just fucking wait.

As someone who grew up before these types of phones, I promise you that you do not need to make a call.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:35 AM on September 25, 2023 [27 favorites]

I've definitely drifted over to the "text me instead of calling unless it's an emergency" side of things. I have enabled the feature on my iPhone that just routes unrecognized numbers to my voicemail so I'm not bothered by robo-calls; if it is someone truly trying to reach me, they will leave a message, but it's 99% robo-calls.

I used to LOVE talking on the phone. Now I don't wanna.
posted by Kitteh at 8:36 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Caller ID security measures

It’s been a slow drawn out process, but it’s getting there. In the US, the FCC recently imposed STIR/SHAKEN requirements on small VOIP and gateway providers, the last deadline for domestic networks. Intermediate providers, by which I think they mean networks outside the US that receive calls from domestic providers, have until the end of the year to implement it. The FCC doesn’t currently have a plan for non-IP networks.
posted by zamboni at 8:37 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I would argue, do not speak into a phone at all in public.

Yes, starting the thread with the speakerphone example obscured that people using the phone normally in public places are also very annoying.

I rode a crowded train from Washington DC to Newark behind a guy who was desperately trying to salvage the relationship with the woman he cheated on over the phone. The fact he wasn’t using speakerphone didn’t help.
posted by ejs at 8:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [15 favorites]

> I screen calls by answering any unknown number with a cheerful "Thank you for calling! How can we help you?" Sometimes I'll switch it up with "How may I direct your call?" If it's a solicitor, they almost always hang up.

when i get a call from an unknown number, and if i care, i pick it up and say nothing. call center systems only transfer to workers after the target speaks, so if it's a call center system it'll hang up after a few seconds. if on the other hand it's a person, they'll eventually say "hello?" in a really confused tone of voice, and then i'll say "hi!"

i mention this as part of my campaign to gradually shift the social norms about who speaks first in a phone call. switching from "callee speaks first" to "caller speaks first" nicely undermines most extant phone spam delivery techniques.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [65 favorites]

I saw a low-stakes conspiracy post the other day hypothesising that listening to stuff (whether calls or recorded media) on one's phone in public at a volume audible to others is a byproduct of newer cellphones no longer having a standard headphone socket.

Nah. Listening out-loud has been going on ages before we lost standard headphone jacks.

As for robocalls...Why the fuck the smartest-nerds-in-the-room creators of our modern digital communication age couldn’t be assed to at least try to build-in caller ID? I shouldn’t have to add a number to my contacts just so I know who’s calling. I can’t tell you how many important calls I’ve ignored because, in this age of robo-calls, I just don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize. Luckily, most legit callers will leave voicemail.

And don’t get me started about full-duplexing.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:47 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

If you have to use a speaker phone get a headset or don't talk in public

Speaker phone shouters in indoor public areas are like horn,-leaning honkers in fucking residential streets they pollute the Commons for all of us.....and should be treated as such upon sequential offenses
I) warning on your record
Ii) huge fine proportional to your income
Iii) immediate seizure of car/phone by agents of the state
Iv) summary assassination by drone
posted by lalochezia at 8:49 AM on September 25, 2023 [14 favorites]

Once people started FaceTiming in public, there was really no stopping people putting their calls on speakerphone in public.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:51 AM on September 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

I'm just trying to understand people that conduct speakerphone calls like this. I even see people doing this in the car.

If you're going to hold it like that, just put it up to your ear?
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:52 AM on September 25, 2023 [13 favorites]

I remember these things called "phone booths" which were tiny private spaces where you could speak to someone on the telephone and maintain a semblance of privacy while shutting the door on background noise for a bit. They were everywhere - on street corners, at lonely gas stations in the middle of nowhere, in rows outside supermarkets, clustered at train station platforms, and outside bars. Restaurants and hotels of certain stature - even public buildings - used to have rows of built-in phone booths, elaborate little wooden spaces for a quick private chat. Some even had pull-out shelves for your handbag and perhaps a writing surface.

Wouldn't it be nice if phone booths made a comeback - not as spaces to find a phone in, but as a place to bring your phone to - and maintain a sense of public privacy and momentary calm amidst all this.
posted by niicholas at 8:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [50 favorites]

"As for robocalls...Why the fuck the smartest-nerds-in-the-room creators of our modern digital communication age couldn’t be assed to at least try to build-in caller ID?"

The world's phone system was built entirely on the idea of mutually trustworthy systems that were deployed into affluent people's residences and businesses, long before the idea of a phone scam or "a networked threat model" existed, and even today billing across carriers doesn't support that degree of granularity by long-established design. Phones are older than computers by a very margin, and have been in continuous use since before the transistor existed.

People forget that once upon a time, when you picked up a phone in Toronto or New York and called San Francisco or Bangkok or South Africa or wherever, there was a physical connection made, a wire that went from your head to the head of the person who picked up that call on the far side of the world. It was and remains a miracle that any of this stuff works at all.

And even so, I feel like most of us would simply prefer you send a text.
posted by mhoye at 8:54 AM on September 25, 2023 [28 favorites]

I almost always use my phone on speaker because although it is a flagship Samsung phone, it is well-night inaudible when it isn't on speaker. I don't know what the hell part of this phone I'm supposed to hold up to my ear, exactly, but if I just hold it like, you know a phone, next to my head, I basically can't hear it.

I hate talking on the phone and virtually never do so in public though, so you probably don't need to come for me.

In general, I found that article to be remarkably accurate and on point, which is surprising for a modern etiquette article.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:55 AM on September 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

I wish this sort of thing would work on my mom, who keeps on leaving voice mails I don't want to listen to (and for some reason transcription no longer works on my phone), or the friend who will just call over and over and over and over and over repeatedly until you answer it.

Some people are not going to pay any attention to an article like this, unfortunately.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2023

People who make video work calls in coffeeshops, even using headphones, make me want to scream.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:57 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

i have in one of my less hinged moments — i was on the train back from a punishingly long work shift — responded to someone speakerphoning next to me by playing 100 gecs as loud as possible on my phone's speaker.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2023 [14 favorites]

I agree with everything in the article, but I also work in a professional that skews old, so I get a lot of unsolicited phone calls. So one makes do.

Similarly, I read some good advice recently about work communications that I think is right on, and I will share it with you:

If you have an issue or question, text/IM/Teams/Slack first.
If the issue will take more than three texts to resolve, send an email.
If the issue will take more than three emails to resolve, schedule a phone call/Zoom.
If the issue will take more than three calls to resolve, schedule a meeting.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:01 AM on September 25, 2023 [28 favorites]

My dad died this past January, and he always left me voicemails. Now I have 90 of them to help remember him and his voice. So I'm very much pro voicemail.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:02 AM on September 25, 2023 [63 favorites]

People using speakerphones in public don't bother me at all. Why would it? I don't get upset if two people are in public having a conversation. Why the hell would I want to police people talking on the phone in public? I live in a city, there are people everywhere. If I wanted quiet I'd move out to the country. I don't usually make calls when I'm walking around, but sometimes it is just faster to talk to someone and get a quick answer than futz around with texting back and forth.

We still have a landline and answering machine at home (and even a couple rotary phones still hooked up). I'm not paying for call display, so have no way of screening those calls unless we want to wait for the answering machine. I'm just ruthless about hanging up on unwanted callers. I don't bother engaging, I just hit the hook switch and am done with it.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:06 AM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

When I first graduated from college in the very early 80s I struggled to get a job in my chosen field of Public Relations/Marketing. I ended up working for one of those photocopier supplies scam companies. I worked for them for a week while I figured out just how awful and scammy they were and then I quit after picking up my one-week paycheck. A week later I saw that office getting raided and my former, icky, every bad stereotype of a douchey salesperson boss getting led out in handcuffs.

The set up was very low-tech, we were handed a bunch of yellow page phone books to use to call companies and then given a short script to fake the person answering the phone in to ordering our defective toner and crappy paper for exorbitant prices. A couple of times a day I would reach someone who was onto the scam and before I could hang up my boss would jump on the line and start yelling and swearing at the person. Fun times (no, not fun, just a petty, petty asshole acting out).

I did some other, more legitimate telemarketing jobs (I have a great phone voice and am otherwise not super attractive which is what PR companies in San Diego wanted--so the telephone was my friend). Those couple of years turned me off talking on the phone, but also gave me the skill that I can pick up a phone and call anyone about anything without a problem.

I have my iphone set to ignore calls not in my contacts with a message saying I don't recognize your number, leave a message if you want a call back. I keep my ringer off and even friends/family know I may not answer. So far I've never missed an important call.
posted by agatha_magatha at 9:07 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Normalize using the kazoo everyone carries at all times to ever so subtly make the point that it is better to conduct private conversations privately.
Also: leave a voicemail or I will ignore your call unless you’re someone I expected to hear from and/or actually want to talk to. “If it was important, they’d tell you what their call was for”.
posted by aesop at 9:07 AM on September 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

I do hate voicemail, though. I hate having to call in and type in my access code and whatnot. But hitting "play" on my home answering machine doesn't bother me at all.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:08 AM on September 25, 2023

I miss unscheduled phone calls. I have a newer friend who is about 10 years older than me, and we just... call each other when we feel like chatting, usually about once a week, and it is delightful. The dopamine hit of "this person just... wants to shoot the shit with me" is great. So much better than endless texting back and forth.

I am tired of scheduled calls like I'm trying to get ahold of the president. No one is that busy. I've started just calling people again and it's fine. I've also started leaving voicemails again. It's fun!

I have noticed this is really only a problem with people in a band of about 5 years over and under my age. I had a friend in his 20s and he would just randomly call me, and my friend above also just randomly calls me. Seems like a weird millennial hangup more than anything else.
posted by rhymedirective at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2023 [20 favorites]

I screen calls by answering any unknown number with a cheerful "Thank you for calling! How can we help you?"

I like this, I might have to switch up my practice of answering unknown calls with primal scream therapy.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

because people my age, who I know for a fact used to be perfectly happy to spend hours on the phone, now prefer texting, too

I am an old and I have also noticed this.
posted by JanetLand at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

> People using speakerphones in public don't bother me at all. Why would it? I don't get upset if two people are in public having a conversation. Why the hell would I want to police people talking on the phone in public?

the sound of voices coming through speakerphones is typically extremely tinny, like, very loud treble, very quiet everything else, and as such it is super fuckin' annoying.

also, the person speaking could just put their phone up to their ear and talk that way, so it feels like a deliberate choice to make sure that everyone around them hears the tinny-ass sound of the other side of the conversation.

given that this is something that could be private but isn't, i see it as the auditory equivalent of dudes sitting with legs splayed out across three subway seats in order to ensure that their balls get enough air on them.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [30 favorites]

but I was surprised that they just didn't care that everyone within a 20 foot circle could hear every detail of their family or work conversation.

Actual text from my partner the other day "Oh my god a girl in our aisle is talking loudly on her phone to her boyfriend about....plans...for what she will do to him when she gets home" followed by all the throw-up emojis.

Things that could have been a text (or a disappearing chat) volume #723
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

I don't get upset if two people are in public having a conversation. Why the hell would I want to police people talking on the phone in public?

It's the horrible, screechy, tinny sound that cuts through everything else that I can't stand. If they can make speakerphones sound like an actual person, then... I guess that would probably create a whole new host of problems.
posted by Crane Shot at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

I remember these things called "phone booths" which were tiny private spaces where you could speak to someone on the telephone

I am continually surprised that there are still 5 functioning phonebooths scattered within a 10-minute walking radius of my house. One street corner has two of them. No idea who uses the things/
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:16 AM on September 25, 2023

I guess the sound of speakerphones just don't bother me.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:19 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

like it's totally cool to do stuff in public in a city because cities! yay! energy! but also don't eat freshly microwaved fish on a crowded train.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:23 AM on September 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

I'm still buying phones with a standard headphone socket myself because that's the only way I can listen to music in my 11-year-old car

My solution to this for my 20 year old car is to upgrade the stereo to something that works as a second screen (CarPlay/Android Auto). It felt like a huge upgrade to my car experience having my maps and music there, and frees me to get whatever phone I want.
posted by aubilenon at 9:26 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

In that people hang up and text you instead?
Apple’s Live Voicemail is not the same as the Pixel Google Assistant Call Screen- is there a different feature that is more similar?

If you route your voicemail to Google Voice, it transcribes, albeit not in real time. I've been doing that for at least a decade and while the transcription is terrible (it really only works on Americans calling from landlines, which is approximately no one who calls me regularly), it's generally enough to tell a) if it's an emergency and b) if you actually need to listen to the message (seldom--I'm honestly not sure of the last time I listened to a voice mail).
posted by hoyland at 9:27 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was surprised that they just didn't care that everyone within a 20 foot circle could hear every detail of their family or work conversation.

Sometimes when a particularly annoying work conversation has been shared with the world, I go by afterwards and say "thanks for waiving attorney-client privilege!"
posted by praemunire at 9:30 AM on September 25, 2023 [19 favorites]

JoeZydeco: I'm just trying to understand people that conduct speakerphone calls like this. I even see people doing this in the car.

Ahahaha. The pizzaphone. I came to mention the same thing. I don't really get why, and it looks soooo stupid.

I too am annoyed by people making speakerphone calls (or any loud, drawn-out personal call) in public. My solution is to avoid going out in public ...
posted by Artful Codger at 9:30 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

>> Hopefully the longterm effect of everybody using it who is able is that the robocalls will go away as the scammers realize no one HAS to answer any more.

There's this truly horrible "feature" that allows callers to go straight to voicemail without the phone ever ringing. I have quite a few robocaller numbers blocked, but instead of just, you know, blocking them, I get voicemail. Which I then have to go through at some point. Every few days I look at my phone and notice the voice mail icon, yet the phone never rang and the call log shows nothing.

T-Mobile of course is happy to charge me $4/month to block block these numbers.
posted by Ayn Marx at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why the fuck the smartest-nerds-in-the-room creators of our modern digital communication age couldn’t be assed to at least try to build-in caller ID?

My Android does this for businesses that it can id the phone number for. Between this and the Android phone screen option, I can usually filter spam without losing useful calls.
posted by tavella at 9:39 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Two thoughts:

1. My 8-yo just got a phone-watch-thingy that can only call 5 pre-approved family members. (This is genius: because it's strapped to her wrist, she is much less likely to lose it.) What it means is that I've suddenly had to articulate and explain basic phone etiquette to her. Because she just has no idea. So things like: If you call, and I'm busy with something, I'll hang up. But if it's an emergency, you should call right back and I'll pick right up. (She often calls to ask what my favorite color is, or whether she can have dessert tonight.)

2. I effing love articles like this. They're doing yeoman's work trying to reassemble a shared sense of rules and reality. Which we desperately need.
posted by heyitsgogi at 9:40 AM on September 25, 2023 [15 favorites]

I do hate voicemail, though. I hate having to call in and type in my access code and whatnot.

Before I switched to a phone and carrier that meant I didn't have to bother with this (see Visual Voicemail on Apple, Google), it was worth my time to figure out a saved phone contact that used the pause and wait symbols (typically comma and semi-colon, but your mileage may vary) to automate this process.
posted by zamboni at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Apple’s Live Voicemail is not the same as the Pixel Google Assistant Call Screen- is there a different feature that is more similar?

Smugness.
posted by fairmettle at 9:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [9 favorites]

zamboni: Apple’s Live Voicemail is not the same as the Pixel Google Assistant Call Screen- is there a different feature that is more similar?

I haven't used Live Voicemail. But the Assistant Call Screen asks them to say who they are and why they're calling, and you have a live transcription so you can pick up if you like. It sends them to voicemail if needed. I've been using it for years.

Is Live Voicemail different?
posted by xthlc at 9:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I weirdly got Google-screened by my mom's pixel yesterday. Which isn't supposed to happen bc I'm in her contacts.

Unless it's changed in more recent Pixel's, the screening is something you have to do manually. There's a button you have to press and can use it on any call, even if they are in your contacts. Presumably, your mom either did it by accident or on purpose (as a joke?).

It doesn't automatically screen calls, though Pixels (and maybe other Androids) do flag incoming calls as potential spam calls if they're coming from, for example, known telemarketing companies.
posted by asnider at 9:49 AM on September 25, 2023

Is Live Voicemail different?

From the links above:

iOS Live Voicemail:

With Live Voicemail in iOS 17, you can view a real-time transcription of the message someone is leaving you as they speak, giving you immediate context for the call. If you want to address it, you can pick up the call while they're still on the line.

Google Assistant Call Screen:

Your Google Assistant answers the call and asks who's calling and why.
If the Assistant determines the call is a robocall or spam call, your phone hangs up.
If the Assistant determines the call isn't a robocall or spam call, your phone rings and shows you how the caller responded.
Your phone stops playing media, like videos or music, while it screens the call.

My Android does this for businesses that it can id the phone number for. Between this and the Android phone screen option, I can usually filter spam without losing useful calls.

The point of an authentication protocol like STIR/SHAKEN is that until it is completely rolled out, scammers can straight up lie about the phone number they are calling from.
posted by zamboni at 9:50 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm just trying to understand people that conduct speakerphone calls like this.

Later today I plan to post a question to the green about this.
posted by Rash at 9:57 AM on September 25, 2023

My 8-yo just got a phone-watch-thingy

Thingy? That's a Dick Tracy Wrist Radio!
posted by Rash at 10:00 AM on September 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

zamboni: Huh, that description doesn't match my experience exactly. My phone rings to tell me someone's calling, then if they're an unknown number it automatically sends them to the call screening. If I look at my phone I can see the transcription live of the conversation between the Assistant and the person on the other end, and decide whether or not I want to answer the call before the conversation finishes or they hang up.

I've never had anyone who wasn't a spammer hang up. I can set it to also screen calls from my contacts if I want, but I don't. Maybe that's the case you're thinking of, where they would just hang up and text you?

glonous keming: as a point of information, Google Pixel phones have had voice-assistant call screening since 2018

Apple has been taking features from other products, repackaging them to appeal to their core audience, and marketing them as paradigm-shifting innovation since 1984.

For decades, that was actually a viable strategy because their core audience was "everyone besides nerds". They built great products that were more accessible than the alternatives.

Since a few years after iPhone was released, it's all felt more incremental though. For features like Live Voicemail, their core audience is "iPhone fans", and they're not actually better or more usable than competitor features that have been out for years.

IMO, the place they're really innovating these days is in core computing and developer toolchains, ironically enough. The M2 is 🔥 and Xcode Cloud is excellent. Every developer I know prefers to work on a MacBook Pro.
posted by xthlc at 10:04 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't subscribe to the cell phone cancer myth, but talking on the phone more than 3 minutes makes the inside of my ear feel like it's being slowly microwaved. Any conversation longer than that requires a headset of some type, because I hate speakerphone.
posted by slogger at 10:04 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I know for a fact used to be perfectly happy to spend hours on the phone, now prefer texting, too

I am an old and I have also noticed this.

To be fair, this is because the fidelity of the cell phone REALLY sucks, compared to the solid desk telephone plugged in to the can-hear-a-pin-drop land line. I miss mine SO much.
posted by Rash at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2023 [31 favorites]

In the long long ago there were (maybe there still are) phone plans specifically for Deaf customers. It was basically a text only plan, with some data, such as it was back then. There are times of my life where I'd pay extra to just have the phone portion of my phone not work. Everyone I want to talk to has an iPhone so FaceTime would be fine.

Back when Sprint had that walkie talkie feature on their phone a friend's dad owned a construction company that used them.If he caught one of his employees using that in public the first time was a warning, the second time was a fireable offense. Seemed harsh at the time but in retrospect where everyone feels like they should be on speakerphone or using bluetooth speakers in public, it really feels prescient.
posted by mikesch at 10:06 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Huh, that description doesn't match my experience exactly.

That sounds more like the Manual Call Screen process, described later in the Call Screen support page. My experience with the Google Support pages for Android stuff is that they're approximately correct for most Pixels, but your exact experience tends to vary depending on the model and carrier.

When you get a call, tap Screen call.
Your Google Assistant screens the call and ask who's calling and why. You'll get a real-time transcript of how the caller responds.
Once the caller responds, you can choose a suggested response, pick up the call, or hang up.

posted by zamboni at 10:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm just trying to understand people that conduct speakerphone calls like this.

Like so much in this world, this is the fault of The Apprentice. The people on the TV show hold their phones like this so the boom microphone can pick up the audio better. The audience doesn’t know the reason, but they constantly see reality TV stars holding phones like this, so they think it is a normal or cool way to hold a phone.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:26 AM on September 25, 2023 [23 favorites]

So... ANOTHER reason to hate The Apprentice.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:31 AM on September 25, 2023 [14 favorites]

Never mind that they could have solved the spam call problem years ago with proper solicitor licensing, Caller ID security measures, and mandatory per-call fees for soliciting - but that’s not the business the phone companies, Apple, or anyone else for that matter are in.

This is half right: the decade of spam is a problem created by American telephone companies who decided that they wouldn’t require authentication for Voice-over-IP. Prior to turn of the century, the global phone network was secured by there only being a few phone companies who could police their subscribers. Now there are layers of small providers, and because they get paid to deliver calls the major carriers have slacked on things like not allowing those companies to originate calls or SMS from numbers which don’t belong to them. STIR/SHAKEN is helping, but the phone companies have been slow to take action because it deprives them of direct revenue and add-on spam filtering services. This is also why it’s not a big problem in countries such as the European ones where the sender must pay for the calls: sending spam is pricey there, although they still have targeted attacks where the crooks spoof some trusted number.

Apple doesn’t get paid for any of that so they do have an incentive to help their customers and that’s why this feature exists: they can’t force Verizon or AT&T to change their business models but they can ship live transcription.
posted by adamsc at 10:33 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Back when Sprint had that walkie talkie feature on their phone a friend's dad owned a construction company that used them.If he caught one of his employees using that in public the first time was a warning, the second time was a fireable offense. Seemed harsh at the time but in retrospect where everyone feels like they should be on speakerphone or using bluetooth speakers in public, it really feels prescient.

It also feels harsh because the walkie talkie function was practically designed with construction sites in mind. You now have your radio and your phone in a single, relatively small device. Use the walkie for quick things that you'd traditionally use it for, without needing to dial the phone, etc. Use the phone for, well, phone calls.

Unless "in public" means off the job site this does, indeed, seem draconian.
posted by asnider at 10:43 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Normalize using the kazoo everyone carries at all times to ever so subtly make the point

I had to parse this a few times before it made sense because "Kazoo" is also the name of an open source VoIP platform
posted by mikelieman at 10:49 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

i have in one of my less hinged moments...responded to someone speakerphoning next to me by playing 100 gecs as loud as possible on my phone's speaker.

No idea what gecs are but I've also been provoked into this response, but (depending on the circumstances) the music I play is either '50s rockabilly, heavy metal or (if out of season) a Christmas carol.
posted by Rash at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Where I live (UK) the majority of younger people hold their phones perpendicular (like this). If you haven't seen it you will soon enough.

At first I just assumed it's because people are idiots, but apparently it's because the volume is too low to hear in public, even on speaker. Major design failure all round.
posted by Acey at 10:57 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Sometimes when someone calls to try and sell me something, I turn the conversation around and try to sell them something.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 10:58 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't subscribe to the cell phone cancer myth, but talking on the phone more than 3 minutes makes the inside of my ear feel like it's being slowly microwaved.

Nothing to do with microwaves, but the electronics of the phone will heat up during usage, and if the heat isn't properly dissipated by the case it will turn off to protect itself -- something I only found out when I left my iPhone in front of a sunny window one lovely day. Also, it can become a self-sustaining cycle, because if you're not holding the phone against the side of your head, the part of the phone that detects "should my screen be off or on?" will decide to be "on", and so the screen will turn on and become warmer.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:00 AM on September 25, 2023

My Boomer Era father does a variation of the "phone call = bad news" thing every time he leaves a message because every, single time it's just, "Hey, call me."

Could be he messed up his computer again. Could be to tell me mom is having a pacemaker put in. It's the same message and tone either way.
posted by Cyrano at 11:10 AM on September 25, 2023 [14 favorites]

Similar to earlier remark, I'm confused because Google Voice has had interactive call screening and transcription for like 15 years or something. I presumed this was now common for most services because it's so damn obviously useful. And the whole leaving a short video message in Meet (or whatever they're calling it this week) if nobody picks up? Years now. This whole article seems free-floating, cites no authorities or surveys to demonstrate any argument for a broad/widespread change in habits, and most closely resembles a thinly disguised blog about how one journalist reacted to some recent updates in her phone's OS. Which is fine, but also about as insular as David Brooks complaining about whiskey prices in airports.
posted by meehawl at 11:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

To be fair, this is because the fidelity of the cell phone REALLY sucks, compared to the solid desk telephone plugged in to the can-hear-a-pin-drop land line. I miss mine SO much.

Samsung phones have had HD calling for years, and the fidelity is amazing, but absolutely nothing can be done about the @#&^%@# latency which is the #1 problem I have with pretty much all telecommunication these days. POTS calls were 100% better in that respect.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:12 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Unless "in public" means off the job site this does, indeed, seem draconian.

It did mean off the job site. He didn't want to subject the people who were just out getting lunch to a crackly overly loud walkie talkie conversation. They made full use of them at the job site.
posted by mikesch at 11:32 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Normalize carrying a bass guitar and a battery-powered 100W bass amp around.
Not related to this phone etiquette thingie, I just like the bass.
posted by signal at 11:32 AM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

Google Voice has had interactive call screening and transcription for like 15 years or something.

Voice is 14 years old - I'm not sure when live transcription started, but I can't find anything about it being a launch feature. For smart phones, Google Call Screen appears to have been rolled out with the Pixel 3 in 2018.
posted by zamboni at 11:34 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

T-Mobile of course is happy to charge me $4/month to block block these numbers.

I believe the free tier of the TMobile spam app/service will block them. (Or it sends them to voicemail and they never try to leave me a message.)
posted by hoyland at 11:36 AM on September 25, 2023

Latency with data can be noticeably better on 5G versus 4G. Has anyone noticed if voice call latency is similarly improved?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 11:39 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

> Normalize carrying a bass guitar and a battery-powered 100W bass amp around.
Not related to this phone etiquette thingie, I just like the bass.

boots riley's recent and entirely exquisite series i'm a virgo has a line in an early episode about how it's a crime to deny a child access to bass. and that statement, like so much else from the series, is so true it's almost painful.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:43 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Speaker phone shouters in indoor public areas are like horn,-leaning honkers in fucking residential streets they pollute the Commons for all of us.....and should be treated as such upon sequential offenses
I) warning on your record
Ii) huge fine proportional to your income
Iii) immediate seizure of car/phone by agents of the state
Iv) summary assassination by drone

Petition to add phone conversers in multi-stall public washrooms, with or without speaker: a pelting with rotten tomatoes.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 11:46 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Since a few years after iPhone was released, it's all felt more incremental though.

Incremental? The thing were you hold the button down to change your phone's background feels extremely Windows 98 to me. Its cool that you can do that, but why make it a primary use of the button you click all the time, and so my background is accidentally changing all the time.

Comparatively, the 'spam risk' thing and clarity on the phone calls (I talk on the phone all day for work) is great.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:13 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can relate to the heat issue, as I remember long calls with my girlfriend on my family’s Princess phone in 1968.
I’ve never done this, but I’m sometimes tempted to jump into someone else’s speakerphone conversation with my own advice, and imagine the phone person trying to convince me it’s a ‘private ’ call.
posted by MtDewd at 12:22 PM on September 25, 2023 [9 favorites]

Google Voice, 14 versus 15 years? Pardon me. But Grandcentral was running well years before that and was the bomb. Call screening has always been a thing, the transcriptions came with the Google buyout, later, so I figured that was a classic Googley thing that needed much more compute and also feed into their whole infovore model.
posted by meehawl at 12:29 PM on September 25, 2023

> I saw a low-stakes conspiracy post the other day hypothesising that listening to stuff (whether calls or recorded media) on one's phone in public at a volume audible to others is a byproduct of newer cellphones no longer having a standard headphone socket.

I think this is almost certainly true. You used to be able to get cheap, adequate headphones pretty much anywhere and just plug them in to all your devices.

Cheap Bluetooth headphones are still expensive and not very good quality, plus they need to be charged, turned on and paired, which is a pain. The buds also have a tendency to fall out of your ear and get destroyed or lost, and they look kind of dorky.

I know there are adaptors to connect old school headphones to your charging port, but when I tried this on a prior phone it seemed to wear out the port, which wasn’t made for a cable that gets tugged as I move around, and then I couldn’t plug anything reliably into the phone.
posted by smelendez at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

There are also adapters that let you connect old-school headphones to a very small Bluetooth receiver (about the size of 1/3 of a ballpoint pen). Still has the issue of charging/turning on, but eliminates most of the other complaints, I think, and they are usually under $10. Solved it for my audiophile son and his fancy headphones.
posted by LEGO Damashii at 12:44 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't really believe the headphone jack thing given boomers have been yelling conversations on speaker phone for long before headphone jacks went away. Also the difference between a normal conversation between two people and speaker phone convos is that they are almost always being yelled on both ends.

I work at a museum and the number of times I've had some asshole yelling into a phone get mad at other people talking because "I'm having a conversation" is in the double digits.
posted by Ferreous at 12:50 PM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm not usually one for chicken-little takes about the fragility of "kids these days" but the (to me) bizarre unease and even panic elicited by a ringtone brings me ever close to yelling at clouds.*

You understand that it's not usually the ringtone that is the problem, but the fact that a large number of people who feel this way do so because people near and dear to them only call when it's an emergency? My sister has not phoned me in years; but we text regularly several times a week. If the phone rang with her number displayed I'd instantly be wondering if one of our parents had an accident- or worse. Oh, and I'm a Gen X, definitely no longer a kid. Feel free to yell at clouds if you want to though.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:51 PM on September 25, 2023 [15 favorites]

Yo, you've reached Paul.
Don't be old, just text me.

Best answering machine message ever / died laughing at that line in Beef.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:17 PM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

I don't get upset if two people are in public having a conversation.

In addition to having their tinny sounding phone speaker cranked up as loud as it will go, I swear that phone users elevate their voice at least one notch, if not two, louder than they would normally conduct a conversation in public. I seldom notice the average public conversation, but there are people not on speakerphone who will drill their half of the conversation into all ears.

Answer the phone? On my own time, thank you.
If you can't text or leave a message, I probably don't need to know what you wanted. Problem solved.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:31 PM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

I’m waiting for the moment when the next generation decides texting is offensive and live phone calls are where it’s at. I’m sure the next washpo reporter will do a great job of explaining it.
posted by Galvanic at 1:47 PM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

comic gary gulman:

the phone is just a seldom-used app on my phone.

posted by j_curiouser at 2:03 PM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I frequently wonder if this is a byproduct of the cellphones-cause-cancer myths

It's a product of the performative nature of so many people's self-image these days. So many personal reality tv shows all being self-consciously and tediously
acted out at once everywhere. Ugh.
posted by aught at 2:30 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

You understand that it's not usually the ringtone that is the problem, but the fact that a large number of people who feel this way do so because people near and dear to them only call when it's an emergency? My sister has not phoned me in years; but we text regularly several times a week. If the phone rang with her number displayed I'd instantly be wondering if one of our parents had an accident- or worse. Oh, and I'm a Gen X, definitely no longer a kid. Feel free to yell at clouds if you want to though.

Same. My sister and I text regularly but if she called before 9 am or after 8 pm, I'd definitely be "shit is mom okay!!"
posted by Kitteh at 2:41 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wonder how much of the discomfort many millennials feel with phone calls comes from the environment they were raised in.

When I was a kid we had the landline and no answering machine. So when the phone rang we leapt to answer it. Millennials and later were raised in households that mostly had answering machines and maybe even cell phones. So the culture of when to answer the phone and when to wait for a message were simply different.

Tl;Dr - I don't think we need to pathologise different levels of comfort with different phone use patterns.
posted by Vigilant at 2:46 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

So many of us were raised in environments where nothing really positive came from a phone call. Now that we know when friends are calling us, we're free to hate any other time our phone rings. Answering the phone when I was a kid was fraught with telemarketers and bill collectors.

Same for mail. At this point I generally know when I'm getting something decent in, otherwise it's the bills I can't convert strictly to electronic, advertisements for new windows, and overtures to invest in TrumpCoins, addressed the the previous owner.

We're allowed to hate all these things that just kind of get in the way of us living our lives. They're unnecessary annoyances foisted upon us by people who really don't give a shit about the wellbeing of others. It's ok to be annoyed by annoying things.
posted by mikesch at 2:53 PM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

My relationship to phone calls is summarized by the final lines of Ted Hughes's poem, "Do Not Pick Up the Telephone":

"Do not pick up the detonator of the telephone
A flame from the last day will come lashing out of the telephone
A dead body will fall out of the telephone

Do not pick up the telephone"
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:58 PM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
posted by MtDewd at 3:02 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm just trying to understand people that conduct speakerphone calls like this.

Thanks to the wonders of Bluetooth my phone rings in my hearing aids, but I still have to talk into the phone and holding it like that is apparently the only way my wife can hear me.

It's annoying when you've left the phone in another room and your ears are literally ringing. My family are now used to me charging around trying to find the darned thing.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 3:05 PM on September 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

I do hate voicemail, though. I hate having to call in and type in my access code and whatnot.


Way upthread and I get that not everyone has a mobile phone that was manufactured in the last decade or unlimited data, but this feels a bit like a comment from a time traveller
posted by aspersioncast at 3:30 PM on September 25, 2023 [16 favorites]

The first time I heard someone conduct a work call loudly and with no boundaries in a public space was when I worked in a museum in the late 90s. He dropped his child off at the art table in a large common space and proceeded to shout at a coworker on his probably brick sized phone until we asked him to stop, at which point he got very huffy and stormed out with sad child in tow. The whole staff was appalled. Now here we are more than twenty years later and it's still appalling, just much more commonplace.
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:39 PM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I don't really believe the headphone jack thing given boomers have been yelling conversations on speaker phone for long before headphone jacks went away.

Yeah this explanation is a just-so story. The practice has been a thing since mobile phones became ubiquitous sometime in the mid-aughts and probably well before among certain elements of the populace.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:41 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lol. Motivated by this, I decided to actually check my voicemail. There are 407 "new" messages, with the oldest unlistened one dating back to 2013. How could I even begin to catch up on these? I pretty much always use transcription and then text, email, or call back.
posted by meehawl at 4:02 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

the phone is just a seldom-used app on my phone

the icon for that seldom-used app is a symbol for something that most youngsters under 30 will probably have rarely or never seen, let alone held in their hand (and other obsolete iconography)
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:06 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

People who make video work calls in coffeeshops, even using headphones, make me want to scream.

Their coworkers feel the same way
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 4:11 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Was GenX the last generation that spent hours and hours gabbing on the landline? I loved phone calls as a kid, and especially as a teenager, where I got so good at doing the internal calculus of who was likely to be calling when that I would just pick up the phone and say "Hi, PersonWhoIsCalling!" and I would almost always be right and they would be astounded. I still don't have a fear response when the phone rings, even after getting "the call" about my dad. It helps that my ringtone is me singing the following lyrics to the tune of "When I'm 64":

You've got a phone call,
please pick it up!
People want to stop
hearing this ringone.
Pick up your cellphone,
someone's calling you!
Doodly-doo!
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:15 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Text before calling

I don't know why more people in a business context haven't shifted to text before calling, or just plain texting. I am continuously surprised at how many people leave a voicemail that could have been a text. I was recently going through the recruitment process for a job and the HR person got really passive aggressive with me because I let her calls go to voicemail and we had to play a bit of phone tag. Does anyone pick up unknown numbers these days? I mean, I added her as a contact after the second call, but even so, I don't pick up calls when I am in other meetings/work sessions. Just text me and ask for a convenient time to chat! No phone tag necessary!

In addition, because I am hard of hearing and use a cochlear and hearing aid, I need to have a very specific setup on my phone and ensure I am in quiet surroundings to execute a phone call. In general I often let the call go to voicemail and then text people back to say when I can talk. In the case with the HR person, it had me questioning whether I needed to declare my disability to the HR person, which I was not keen to do so early in the process.

Otherwise, the voicemail transcription features are a godsend for me. I used to have to ask my partner to listen to and transcribe all my voicemails because I could only ever make out a third of the recording.
posted by amusebuche at 4:45 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

FaceTime is 100% to blame for the speakerphone conversation in public thing. I'll be charitable, maybe 99%.

And yes, Android phones have had this for years. The phone literally prints what the other person is saying as they are leaving a message, at which point you can choose to answer. Telemarketers always hang up. I know the Apple crowd will crow about how amazing and innovative this is anyways - gotta justify spending $1000 for a phone somehow. Lately it seems like more calls are being flagged as spam and not even ringing. I only see them in my call log.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 4:52 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

“Don’t leave voicemail”?

My sibling in Christ if you’re calling me from a number I don’t recognise and you don’t leave a voicemail, then you’re *never going to be talking to me* because you bet your ass my primary use-case for voicemail is to determine if the call was legit enough, important enough, or not from my weird estranged brother enough to warrant leaving a message.

Every single incoming call I treat like the cafe Robert DeNiro walks into at the start of ‘Ronin’, and iPhone’s visual voicemail is my “I don’t ever walk into a room I don’t know how to walk out of.”
posted by MarchHare at 5:06 PM on September 25, 2023 [14 favorites]

I've heard about voice mail but I don't think I've ever checked it. In fact, I don't know how to check it. In fact fact, I'm not sure I have it on my phone at all. I'm 52, fwiw.
posted by signal at 5:12 PM on September 25, 2023

You understand that it's not usually the ringtone that is the problem, but the fact that a large number of people who feel this way do so because people near and dear to them only call when it's an emergency?

This is why my better half's ringtone is a klaxon.

Specifically the alarm sound used only in the trailer for Rogue One
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:23 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

People using speakerphones in public don't bother me at all. Why would it?
A person's voice in person is usually fine. Over a phone speaker, it is tinny and echoey in way that grates on my nerves worse than a crying baby or barking dog. I rarely use it on my own phone. I carry multiple pairs of headphones so I can take my own calls or block out other people's. Also, stop listening to videos on your phone without headphones.
posted by soelo at 6:18 PM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

Earlier this summer I was waiting for a southbound bus at Prospect & 10th Ave E. A woman rode by on a mountain bike with a phone mounted high on her handlebars so she could talk to someone at the same time she was riding on a busy two lane arterial. I got on the bus afraid of seeing carnage where 10th meets Broadway on Roy. But there wasn't. God loves children and fools. Or so I have read.
posted by y2karl at 6:46 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

On the other hand many years ago I was in a quiet Tokyo back street, late evening and a young man rode past me on his bicycle, slowly, engaged in a conversation on his mobile. It would be many years again before my resistance crumbled and social pressures forced me onto the cell phone bandwagon (in 2006) but there was something revelatory in that moment (you mean I could use this new tech on my bike?) The future was now!
posted by Rash at 6:58 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Real world anecdata: today on my walk to the grocery store I saw only one person on a call *not* on speakerphone. The rest—at least six or seven—were. And those were the ones I noticed!

I get and make so few calls anymore that I am usually at home or at work in a reasonably private setting. I would never think to foist my conversations on those around me, but antisocial behavior is more and more common and tolerated.

And don’t get me started on phones attached to bikes. Not a fan.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:38 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

re: speakerphone
I will never forget sitting in a hospital waiting room, overhearing a surgeon tell the patient's family, and everyone else, how he was "not able to get all of the hemorrhoid" and "that's never happened before."

Please only use the speakerphone in entertaining settings, folks.
posted by detachd at 7:39 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Finally the war is over and we won.
♬ Technology killed the extrovert star ♬
posted by davel at 7:58 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

To be fair, this is because the fidelity of the cell phone REALLY sucks, compared to the solid desk telephone plugged in to the can-hear-a-pin-drop land line. I miss mine SO much.

It's getting better. Most of the calls I make sound pretty good these days. Cell phones have always been able to make calls that sound good, but carriers have been fighting against it since digital cell phones became a thing. The delay was atrocious, but the sound quality was fine. Unfortunately, the US-made standards only ever had shit call quality, so everyone here assumed that it wasn't possible. The other thing that played into bad call quality was that most people were using phones with shitty radios because that's what the carriers gave away for free (the first few iPhones also had shit-tier radios, as did all the Android ) and the networks were much less dense, leading to constant robot voice. Oh, and calls between cell phones often sucked because half the people were getting encoded with different voice codecs along the way.

Now that HD Voice is a thing and there is end to end interoperability between many carriers, you can get better quality out of a cell phone than landlines ever had, at least for some calls.
posted by wierdo at 8:10 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't get upset if two people are in public having a conversation. Why the hell would I want to police people talking on the phone in public?
I don't want to listen to people talking physically, either. Actually, I just wish they weren't even there.

But I think the real reason is that almost everyone talks louder when they're on the phone than if they're conversing with someone next to them. This may be related to the horizontal boogie with the phone - I do this myself because I have a very flat voice and unless I either speak directly into the microphone or speak quite loudly, people have trouble hearing me. The problem is much less if I hold the phone pointed directly at my mouth. I'm pretty sure this is not the case for 90% of phone users who do this, but they can explain it for themselves. I read somewhere that we unconsciously match our voice volume to the noise around us, which makes sense.

I almost never answer the phone in any sort of crowded place unless I can get to somewhere quiet immediately. The sound quality of phone calls is so poor that I can't hear properly, which also means I start talking louder. If I can't get to a quiet spot, I'll just text you back if I know you or otherwise ignore you. None of this is at all related to age and, no, I'm not in denial - why would you say that?
posted by dg at 9:57 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Talking on the phone used to mean holding it between your head and shoulder and having your hands free. Holding a modern cell phone between your head and shoulder is basically impossible. So you have a terribly unergonomic posture holding your hand up to your head and trying to find the sweet spot for the microphone AND the speaker. Speakerphone solves this issue, and without fumbling around for a pair of headphones before the phone rings through to voicemail. I don’t talk on the phone in public for lots of reasons, but one is certainly that I would find my preferred method of chatting - speakerphone - unspeakably rude.

But seriously, a decent way to actually hold the phone between shoulder and head again … I think that would fix the speakerphone phenomenon.
posted by Bottlecap at 1:28 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

anecdotally, yesterday i overheard someone arrange a drug deal on speakerphone
posted by glonous keming at 4:39 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

amusebuche: “ Does anyone pick up unknown numbers these days?”

Because, while I have had my current number since 2008, the three people who had it before me still have bill collectors trying to contact them, I set my ringtone to silent. I go into contacts and change the ringtone for people I want to actually be able to contact me. (Glassy Ring because I'm old enough to want it to sound like a phone.) A couple of dozen people on the whole planet can make my phone ring. Everyone else can leave a message. Or don't because unless you're one of those couple of dozen people, I'll probably delete it without listening to it.

I also basically just won't talk on the phone unless I have my Jabra Evolve 75 with me.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:43 AM on September 26, 2023

Does anyone pick up unknown numbers these days?”

Yes, all the time. Medical appointments and results - they don't send texts for those. Household appointments, school stuff. Phones do a pretty good job of marking spam risk, but I can't avoid every unknown phone number.

Was GenX the last generation that spent hours and hours gabbing on the landline? I

Probably yes, but my kids spend just as much time on the phone, or talking via face-time, as we did. Also phone alternatives, like voice-based in-game communication. The device changed, but the usage has not.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

My 8-yo just got a phone-watch-thingy

Thingy? That's a Dick Tracy Wrist Radio!

I've been texting with my solidly baby boomer era mom since as far back as ICQ and AIM days, and my mom is a published writer and author, so her texting skills have always been good.

And then at some point in the texts started getting weird and kind of stilted or robotic-feeling in a way that was unsettling at first.

It wasn't until I she came to visit some number of years ago that I realized she now had an Apple Watch and was doing the full on Dick Tracy thing where she was replying to texts with voice-to-text functions and not even looking at her phone. She'd just glance at her watch and start talking to her wrist to reply and doing the semi-robotic voice-to-text modulation thing, and so that suddenly made a lot more sense.

Me? I hate texting on my actual phone and typing on a touch screen, and so I do like 90-99% of my texting on my laptop with a real keyboard. Texting on my phone is reserved for being out and about, and more and more I just use the voice typing function for quick replies and responses, because despite its flaws it's just way easier than my fat fingers on a touchscreen.

And I honestly still miss smart phones that had slide-out physical keyboards (like the original Android G1, or the Droid 2) because even though it was thumb typing it was just much easier for me with physical buttons, and I could still touch-type without staring at the screen.
posted by loquacious at 8:37 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

the three people who had it before me

One of the advantages of being a Mildly Old is that I got my cell phone number fresh and new in 1999 and haven't changed it since. Very grateful for the number portability legislation that has kept it with me as I moved about the country.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:38 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

The word tinny keeps appearing in this thread, so I feel obliged to post this.
posted by neuron at 8:58 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

One thing I enjoy about iOS is its Focus feature. If my phone is plugged in in my car while driving, every single call goes to voicemail right away, and every single text gets an auto reply saying I'm driving and I'll reply when I can. People on a VIP list, like my wife, can get through and those texts get announced and read aloud. (That will backfire on me in a hilarious way, but hasn't yet.) I will not answer the phone if the phone or I don't recognize the caller. Important callers will leave a message.

I suppose this comes from years of microphone practice as a performer, but I speak at a normal volume on the phone, letting the microphone and speaker on the other end of the call do the heavy lifting.
posted by emelenjr at 9:04 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

I will not answer the phone if the phone or I don't recognize the caller. Important callers will leave a message.

Same. And with AI and the increasingly accessible ability to dupe voices, why would I lend my voice to a potential scammer?
posted by eekernohan at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think we’re overlooking the obvious. People talk louder on the phone because the person they’re talking to is far away.
posted by madcaptenor at 9:39 AM on September 26, 2023 [16 favorites]

I'mma just leave this here
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:50 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

but I speak at a normal volume on the phone, letting the microphone and speaker on the other end of the call do the heavy lifting.

I still see so many people yelling into stage microphones.
posted by soelo at 10:27 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I seem to recall a point in time where any taxicab i got into anywhere had a dude driving wearing one of those in-ear headphones with the dangly bit for a mic and volume control that hung down near the wearers throat... these were wired into the headphone jack of the phone (so you know how long ago this was). Anyways these dudes would drive around mumbling stuff under their breath all the time at random and it confused me at first until I noticed the wire coming out of his ear and it started to make sense. But yeah like you could NOT hear the person they were talking to most of the time and if they subvocalized and turned up the radio a bit you'd hardly notice they were having a conversation the whole way to the airport.
posted by some loser at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2023

I have not set up my voicemail.

And I refuse to do so.

Find another way.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

the music I play is either '50s rockabilly, heavy metal or (if out of season) a Christmas carol.

No, no, no. What you want is some John Zorn.
posted by Rykey at 3:00 PM on September 26, 2023

My voice mail mostly gets messages from various doctor's offices (which generally result in 1. phone tag or 2. messages in the practice portal) or from my vets. But I'm a sorta-old and I've had this phone number since 2007 (and one of my email addresses since 1998) so it's almost unusable with spam (just like that email address) unless I take a ton of spam precautions. I also get a ton of spam texts and not just because people are buying my number from political campaigns, either.

Unsolicited advertising is making every form of contact unusable without a lot of defensive crouching. It's hard to have good manners around tech when every scintilla of humanity is twisted to make you a mark for late-stage capitalist exploiters.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 3:02 PM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

99% of my incoming calls are spam. One time, I was getting a call an hour from some telemarketing unit, starting at 7AM and going until about 8PM. The only calls I take are from my elderly parents...everything else goes to voice mail, as a general rule, unless I know that the caller is someone who wouldn't call me unless they needed to speak to me right away.

I have always disliked, sometimes hated, talking on the phone. I associate incoming calls mostly negatively, due to the spam issue. There's nothing you can do about telemarketers who call you from randomized numbers, and that makes me angry more often than not...the times when my job requires me to be on-call, it's even worse.
posted by Chuffy at 8:34 AM on September 27, 2023

Because, while I have had my current number since 2008, the three people who had it before me still have bill collectors trying to contact them

My kid got a phone last summer for tracking-at-camp purposes and there is a lady in Carmel, NY who apparently thinks this is her phone number. We have gotten calls from bill collectors, her health insurance, and, most worryingly (because we have told them, and they will not update their records and continue to call), her son's high school (he is extremely truant, and frankly I'm not sure he'll graduate).
posted by uncleozzy at 11:59 AM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have not set up my voicemail.

And I refuse to do so.

Find another way.

King Canute, I presume?
posted by y2karl at 12:19 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I used to have a phone and answering machine. Then I had an answering machine I could call and harvest messages. I got occasional snail mail. Now I get contacted by email (for myself and theora55, my web id), fb messenger, text, twitter, the other social medias, and voicemail. I don't get tiktok messages because I don't have tiktok, and my inst is verrry quiet. My health care providers have a special app/ site that is great - for them; they do not leave voicemail and use their own site randomly. I have crappy hearing and virtually never hear the phone ring. I might answer a call I'm expecting if I hear it, but no anonymous calls. I love google voice's transcription for voicemail (hugs phone). Long wandering voicemails are torture (looking at that one friend). If you leave me a voice memo I will be extremely cranky, and a video message is Nope. Please do not facetime me without warning, it's too invasive.

Just because text is fast & easy doesn't mean I have to reply in an hour. I am a person, not a business, and, honestly, businesses suck at returning calls. I go for long times without looking at my phone. It's not an emergency. Nope, really. If your house is on fire, call 911, or whatever it is in your country. If my house is on fire, the dog will bark, I will smell it, the alarm will be loud. If I don't answer your text in 30 minutes, don't add a snotty voicemail and an email. It's so annoying it will take me longer to contact you because I'm busy managing my annoyance.

This is an aspect of current times I don't enjoy. The article wasn't particularly helpful. I'll just muddle along.

Also, I'm a geezer, and typically make long-distance calls later in the evening, even though I know it doesn't matter.
posted by theora55 at 4:32 PM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

And I really miss the excellent audio of landline connection on a Western Electric phone. My motorolas had better volume than my iphone; I miss that.
posted by theora55 at 4:33 PM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I rarely have any phone calls in public, but this post has made me consider how much more often I use speakerphone than I used to. For me personally, it's because I can't actually understand the conversation as well via the earpiece but even more than that - I got tired of my cheek or ear or whatever changing settings, pulling down notifications, or just plain ending the call. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason so many people now use speakerphone so often in public is simply because our phones frankly kind of suck as phones nowadays.
posted by Saucy Possum at 8:58 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I dont hold the phone up to my ear when I have a phone call. And as someone living overseas away from their friends and family, I still do phone calls (do all of you live very close to your families or see them alot?) Hearing someone's voice when they're so far away is important to me.

When I do have phone calls (in the privacy of my own home), I use speakerphone (phones get very hot, even with the screen off) and generally the pizza method to hold it, if the phone isn't sitting somewhere while I move around. It keeps the mic close to my mouth. If a phone is in your hand and on speaker, what would you imagine to be the proper way to hold it? (Totally agree that the french way is super weird. At that point, just hold the thing to your face and use the speaker, same effect!)

What I dont get about other people using speakerphone in public is all the background noise. How can people on the other end hear them with all these city noises?
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:20 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just because someone is calling you... does not mean you have to pick up.

I have an 89-year-old friend who calls me frequently (which is great) and this is a point we disagree on. She finds it rude to not answer the phone when it rings. I think she's coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't have their phone on them all day. We all need breaks from availability.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:46 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I always have my phone on with my ringer off. My entire work day is structured af and if someone wants to talk to me they can make an appointment. Not because I'm that important, but because almost nothing is.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:09 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Find another way.


I don't think I will. Good luck
posted by Galvanic at 2:43 PM on October 4, 2023