The Messages Will Continue Until Morale Improves
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes, formerly from Como Park, emails:
I keep getting campaign text messages. “Hey, Joe, the country is going to the dogs. Text Senator . . .”
No, I won’t text. I don’t live my life on my cell phone, it’s there for my convenience, not yours. But there’s no escape.
“Text STOP to unsubscribe.”
“STOP”
“You texted STOP. Are you certain want to unsubscribe from these important messages from Senator?”
“YES DAMMIT”
“Okay we have unsubscribed you. If you want to receive these important messages from Senator in the future . . . .”
“Hey, Joe, the country is going to the dogs. Text the Committee to Reelect Senator . . . “
“I already texted STOP”
“That was a different list. Are you certain you no longer wish to receive these important messages from Senator?”
“YES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU”
“You realize that engaging in antisocial behavior affects your social credit, banks will consider you a reputational risk to close your accounts, a Red Flag order will be docketed against you and the IRS will be calling shortly? Do you still want to unsubscribe from these important messages from Senator?”
***
My folks had an old black Bakelite rotary dial phone sitting on a little table near the dining room. I miss that.
Joe Doakes
March 11th, 2024 at 6:48 am
You don’t actually have to answer any call (or text, a pseudo-call).
I understand the point(s) being made, but you’re talking about two similar but entirely different means of communication. Text messages come on cell phones which may or may not be used as traditional talk-only phones. The latter are known as land-line phones. I have an old black rotary dial phone (bought in 1985 at Brookdale Best Buy) and I also have my parent’s Princess phone from the 60s. I like both, but they don’t help screen calls, for which we use a modern cordless that gives away the caller’s ID. If the caller doesn’t allow it or we don’t recognize them we let them go to the answering machine. I rather like that my cell phone allows me to reject calls so I don’t have to go through the ring process.
The real problem is that callers are “allowed” to be as selfishly disruptive as they like and people (older MNs especially) will still answer (respond). Like so much else in society today, we accommodate a55holes.
March 11th, 2024 at 9:55 am
my cream colored dial phone has a light that flashes instead of a bell(a deaf phone). it is plugged into an answering machine that has a caller-id display. If I don’t recognize the number its extremely unlikely that I’ll talk to you.
When people say they will text me information I always say “go ahead but unless you use the USPS it won’t work”
My phone also obviates the excruciating romps through telephone menu trees.
Life can be simpler!
March 11th, 2024 at 10:05 am
I have some simple rules because of all the abuse of phones that’s expected these days.
I have “Do not disturb” on my phone at all times. If you’re not in my contact list, you don’t get through to me unless you call twice in 15 minutes, otherwise your “ring tone” is silence. The police will call at least twice in that time (I know that for a fact after the horses got loose one day), so emergencies work fine.
If you left a voicemail, good for you. Mine are made as texts, and I delete them freely, and block numbers left and right. I’m in WI and we’re a battleground state, so I am bombarded with all sorts of unsolicited texts and calls during politics season and my “block” key is just about worn out.
Telecommunications used to be expensive, which is why it tended to have only high value messages. These days the costs have dropped to essentially nothing, so all the junk that used to be sent to lower cost “junk mail” is being pushed onto your phone. And I that’s screwing people who grew up in an age when they used to expect that phones had valuable communications and not all the junk corporations and politicians want to send to you.
I’ve adopted the fundamental rule that was viewed as quite rude back when I was a kid: the phone is only answered when *I* want to answer it. I think the demand for attention by society at large by trying to use push notifications, unsolicited calls and texts, all serve to invade my personal space and I won’t put up with it anymore.
(Of course, I was one of the folks back when caller ID debuted who’d answer unsolicited calls, “Hi, is John there?” Back when it was people who were making the calls and not computers this was always good for a laugh because of the confusion on the other end of the line. But these days computers answer the phone and it doesn’t have the same effect and I’ve gone nuclear on the demands for my attention.)
March 11th, 2024 at 10:35 am
nerdbert;
Before caller ID messed me up, I used go into my office on two Saturday mornings per month. I was in IT then, so I would make calls to senior level IT leaders at my prospective accounts, because many of them would be in their offices. They never expected a sales geek to call them, because it was Saturday. I got several appointments that way.
That company gave me my first mobile phone in late 1990. It was a Motorola satchel style. Air time back then was about $2.00 per minute if I recall. The FCC hadn’t blocked out numbers for them yet, so I had a residential land line number. Can’t tell you the number of junk calls that I received back then, but when I informed the caller that if they ever called again, I would reverse the charges.
When I would get junk calls at home when my kids were little, I would hand the phones to them to babble mindlessly until the caller hung up.
March 11th, 2024 at 10:52 am
Several of you have made the point I wish I had made.
The phone is for MY convenience. It’s for my PRIVATE communication (I know, not really, hello NSA, but more-or-less private versus broadcasting on a walkie-talkie or putting up a billboard). It’s not for the general public to bombard me with their pet causes, via text or robocall.
So why is it? I can only speculate T-Mobile makes money on text messages and robo-calls. They must. They know who the spammers are – they warn me of spam calls. So why not just block them at the server? Why let the call go through at all? There must be money in it for the phone company somehow.
Same with campaign texts. Nobody ever signed up to receive a campaign text. They should not be allowed to force me to Opt Out. Their message should not be sent at all, if it’s spam. But it is. Why? Again, must be money in it for the phone company somehow.
Yeah, I know, I agreed to it in paragraph 156(g) subclause (f) of the Terms and Conditions which are on file in Cleveland. That’s just lawyer bullshit to cover their ass. It’s not customer service. I want customer service. Why can’t I have it? How much could it possibly cost to shift me to the No Bullshit Plan?
March 11th, 2024 at 11:11 am
Bigman, all the questions you ask and points you make are reasonable, but they rest on the fact that most of us here grew up in high trust societies where, in this case, callers were presumed not to be a55holes so there is little or no infrastructure to handle their actions. It all has to be built and tested and modified and enhanced, and it’s just easier and cheaper to let it all through.
March 11th, 2024 at 12:16 pm
They’re not allowed to block those numbers. We’ve had the ability to block known spam numbers for quite a few years, but the FCC’s rules on interoperability have required the major carriers to exchange all messages with minor carriers, even the ones that service those spam numbers. Even today, it takes mighty efforts on the parts of the major carriers to get known spam minor carriers banned since everything has to be documented and the Federal bureaucracy navigated before they can kill the connection.
Only spam from inside their own networks are carriers able to ban, and only the bad actors don’t share their spam lists (I’m looking at you AT&T, you b*std*rds). Which is why there are so many spam calls from minor networks willing to provide a way around the banning.
And of course, this will never help you in one area: politics. Politicians have exempted their “communications” from any sort of ban as spam.
And if you think T-Mobile is bad, try having a line on AT&T. I’ve got a work phone from them and I get 3-10x the spam on that as I do on my T-Mobile phone.
March 11th, 2024 at 2:44 pm
Bigman.
Having spent 3 years in the telecommunications sector of IT, I can tell you for certain that all of the second and third level carriers make a lot of money. AT&T and Verizon have invested in all of the towers. They have to let the sub carriers use them. Then, they use that to recruit their customers and gain new customers to their “network”, while paying less for that access.