Technology continues to make us ruder.
According to a Uswitch survey, Zoomers prefer texting over answering live phone calls from strangers and unsolicited numbers. They also refuse to listen to traditional voicemail messages from people they don’t know.
Instead of answering or listening, many Zoomers simply text: “What do you want?”
I think technology-enabled rudeness began with the invention of the answering machine. Some people began using them to screen calls in the 1970s — something considered extremely rude at the time, according to social scientist James Katz.
However, by the mid-1990s, Katz explained, more than two-thirds of U.S. homes had them — and half used them to screen their calls.
Still, it was considered rude to hang up on an answering machine without leaving a message — something that drove me nuts until the invention of *69 in the early 1990s.
By dialing *69, you could quickly call back the last person who phoned you — which I often did to find out who had hung up on me.
One time, I got this greeting: “Hello, this is Victoria. Bill and I aren’t in right now. Please leave a message at the beep.”
I didn’t know Victoria or Bill, so I hung up.
A few moments later, my phone rang.
“Hello,” I said.
“Who is this?” said an irate woman.
“Who is this?” I said.
“You called me,” she said, spelling out her full number, “then hung up!”
Ah, it was Victoria! I wrote her number down.
“No, you called me and hung up!” I said.
“Star 69 took me to you!” she said.
“Star 69 took me to you!” I said.
Victoria uttered several profanities then hung up.
Email was another innovation that escalated rudeness. I remember reading a Wall Street Journal story about two Boston lawyers whose email exchange went viral.
One lawyer, a 24-year-old woman, sent an email to an older, established lawyer, declining his job offer.
The older lawyer, miffed that the woman would email her rejection after she’d already accepted the job offer in person, fired off an email telling her she wasn’t very professional.
She replied that if he were a real lawyer, he would have made her sign a contract.
He replied, in so many words, that she was a snot.
She sent one last reply: “blah, blah, blah.”
And now Zoomers are putting their own stamp on technology-enabled rudeness.
According to a PCMag/YouGov survey, talking on speakerphone to friends or family in public places is not something they consider rude — it’s how they multitask.
To protest strangers and unsolicited callers who attempt to talk to them on their phones, reports Fast Company, they answer without saying hello — just breathing heavily into the receiver.
Recruiters and employers report being incredibly annoyed by the widely practiced stunt.
To protest strangers and unsolicited callers attempting to leave them a voicemail, they leave a message, such as: “Don’t bother recording. I haven’t listened to my messages since 2005.”
Truth be told, I have been rude, as well.
For several weeks after Victoria cussed me out in the early 1990s, I drove around to random pay phones calling her and Bill’s number — and hanging up on their answering machine.
The payback was sweet.
Find Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos of his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
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