It certainly made you practice your manners if you were talking to the dad of your crush.
“Hey Gramps, be a good little sheepshagger and get me Madam Fuckalicious on the horn, will ya?”
get me Madam Fuckalicious
so disappointed that this wasn’t the username of op or the person you are replying to
It’s free. You can have it.
MadamFuckalicious@blahaj.zone. It’s a gamble.
Fishmonger, I’d like to speak to your daughter
click. Buzzing tone
True story: As a little kid, my mom taught us to answer the phone as such, “McTubbs residence, Fudgy speaking.” I still carry that etiquette to this day.
It was fine.
The Best part of that time was not being expected to be personally available every minute of the day. The phone was a part of your house and not a part of you.
I will never understand why android removed the ability to easily set notifications per app and per contact. my blackberry and my first android were great for that
now my phone just lives on silent and I’ll maybe respond to somebody within a few days
Telemarketing did ruin it. This was the main reason people bought answering machines, to screen calls. Missing calls wasn’t a big deal for most people, it was the telemarketing that drove people to buy answering machines, and then to get caller ID, and the ability to block calls, etc. Telemarketing was a boon for the phone service providers.
If you’re anxious about answering your phone it all started with telemarketing.
It’s amazing how communication mediums seem to become so saturated by marketing that it essentially destroys them.
Phone calls, mail, fax, email.
At the very least, I’m extremely disappointed in the government for destroying phone calls (or standing back and just letting them get destroyed). The nature of a phone network lends itself well to placing responsibility on the caller. Absolutely enforceable. No will to do so.
Like, you actually need a permit to do door to door sales. That’s GOOD. Copy-paste that legislation for phones.
I’d be 100x happier with my tax dollars hunting down and punishing phone abusers than funding a speed trap.
Don’t forget the entire internet, newspapers, telephone listings, radio, television, movies, video games, every surface of a store, public spaces like parks and sidewalks, and probably your dreams in the near future
Advertising is cancer and it destroys anything that tolerates it for even a moment. An industry with zero ethics or morals. If you work in advertising you’re a disgusting scumbag piece of shit and your parents are ashamed. No amount of money is worth it and the world would be objectively better without you in it.
I think like pretty much every industry, it will push whatever the boundaries of legality are to maximize profit. I think advertising in particular has none of the public interest guardrails that every other industry has. I think I could be cool with advertising as a concept if there were actual limits.
I’m pretty sure in my lifetime someone is going to somehow put an advertisement on the surface of the moon and the world will collectively and righteously lose thier shit. Why wait?
Advertising should be illegal outside very specific instances, imo.
When a person needs a thing, they should seek it out.
That we’re constantly bombarded by marketing is not spoken of enough as the tragedy that it truly is.
I am so fucking mad email is ruined by telemarketing. It would be so fucking convenient if not for spam. Kinda hate that it’s how you sign up to anything now too like some weird id.
The prank answers! I miss the prank answers!
“Grapefruit’s Mortuary, you stab 'em, we slab 'em. Some go to heaven, some go to hello?”
I usually go with the old tried and true, “Bart’s crematorium you kill 'em we gril em”
STOP CALLING HERE!
…
hello?
Yeah and sometimes, before my voice broke, I would be mistaken for my older sister when her boyfriend called. Which was awkward for everybody involved.
I too got a story like this: My sibling’s partner confused us - not to blame him, we do sound alike. I picked up and he gleefully invited me on a date. I deadpan handed the phone to my sibling.
In the very early days of the Internet, if your mom’s friend called to gossip it meant you had to reset the 5 hour countdown on downloading that single image.
MOMMMMM!!!
Happy mother’s day all
The edging was INSANE back then.
We didn’t have call waiting, so for us it was literally just no using the internet before 9pm because you didn’t know who might call
Ahhh. Memories.
- Me at 11yr answering phone: “hello? I AM NOT <moms name>!!!
- Me at 16yr answering phone: “hello? I AM NOT <dad’s name>!!!
And:
- Also me: “MOM PHONE FOR YOOOOUUU!!”
- Mom: <normal tone cause she’s in the room near by> “did you ask who it was!?!”
- Me: <normal tone> “who’s calling please? <yelling>Mom, it’s Debbie!!!”
And lastly:
Kids will never get to experience the thrill of talking to your girlfriend about tonight while your little sister gets on the phone in the basement and makes “make out noises” loudly before giggling and hanging up.
My partner seems to exclusively communicate by yelling to me from other rooms/floors in the house.
So that yelling lives on.
Maybe get an intercom
And there would be one phone centrally located in the house, usually in the kitchen. If you were lucky the phone cord would be long enough to stretch into a closet or something where you could close the door and have a modicum of privacy. Otherwise everyone nearby would get an earful of your conversation. And you couldn’t chase your annoying siblings away because the phone line was too short.
Also, if you made plans there was no reliable way to chase anybody up. So for example on a Friday you’d all agree to meet on Saturday in town by the park at 10am, then four out of the five of you would show up, you’d wait for 5-10 minutes and if Ashley didn’t arrive you’d just be like “Well, I guess we’ll find out if she’s still alive on Monday” and then just go about your day. In theory someone could call her that evening and find out what happened, but usually nobody bothered.
There was also a brief but very confusing crossover period where you could call a friend, her Dad would answer and say she’s already on the other phone (meaning a cell phone) so you’d make chit-chat with her Dad for five minutes in case the other call finished, which it usually didn’t.
EDIT: Also I don’t know if it was the same anywhere else, but where I grew up (UK) some kids tried to call a payphone from a different payphone and reverse the charges so they could chat for free, and the police showed up and told them off lol.
There were some benefits, like when I would skip school and they would call home and leave a message for my dad about it and I would be able to delete the message without him ever knowing about it.
Yep. My parents always appreciated me answering the phone in the evening and telling the “telemarketers” to stop calling, so they didn’t have to get up from the couch.
This was the way
It wasn’t that bad
It was exciting. No idea what the phone call could bring.
Nowadays… ‘Unknown number’ just preloads frustration because you know it’s most likely a robocall.
That’s literally how doors work. Someone knocks and it could be your sister’s boyfriend or your dad’s boss or your best friend or a marketer or a serial-killer.
And people used to just do that unannounced.
Now we always send a txt to be safe they won’t just ignore us
Not a fan of those either TBH
The concept of a party line would send a gen z person into a coma.
This post gave me whiplash. Am I old?
It didn’t ring very often.
Unless you wanted to get online. Then everyone would call in the small window you were using the line.
I’m too young to have experienced dial-up, but wouldn’t it be the case that people just wanted to go online and/or call people after school or work, so around the same time?
Yep… fun times. Unless you were rich and had a dedicated internet line, there was always someone who got mad at you for jamming the line
The world was different when you had to walk the streets and have random encounters with others.
