We Don't Care. We Don't Have To.

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I’m not sure why, but this video absolutely mesmerizes me:

Do you remember learning how to dial a telephone? Yeah, neither do I.* Funny how cultures themselves have curricula. (So do TV shows: over the 20 years of Law’n’Order’s run, they went from carefully explaining how The D. N. A. works to assuming you know what it means when the lab reports that the perp and the victim have seven alleles in common. TV shows are still dumbed down, but notice what they dumb down.)

Also, I love the idea that wrong numbers would have caused people to panic in Ye Olde Dayes.** I don’t think she even uses the term “wrong number”—which makes me realize that at some point, the lexicon didn’t have a standard term for it. I love that, too—how language evolves. Makes living at the beginning of the Digital Age that much more fun.

And yes, I’m a complete dork watching vintage shorts without commentaries now. I can’t help it! They’re just so damn fascinating!


*Hell, I’m even past the Screaming Abuse At The Automated Voicemail Instructions Lady For Repeating Instructions EVERY DAMN TIME When EVERYBODY KNOWS THEM ALREADY (c’mon, who doesn’t know by now that “When you have finished recording, hang up”?) Stage. I’m on the stage where I’ve learned the combo hit that automatically KOs her.

Also: Dear phone companies, please hire Ellen McLain to do your future Automated Operator recordings. Take advantage of the Stockholm Syndrome so many gamers have developed!

**Nowatimes it's more a source of hilarity, like the time I kept getting calls from people asking for a guy named Juan. If you don't think I found it funny to tell them "There is no Juan at this number" or to hang up and explain to friends "It was a wrong number. They were looking for some Juan I don't know," then you haven't been paying attention.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...oh god tell me the combo hit that gets me to the beep right away. Even if it's a pain to do things involving entering numbers on my silly smartphone. Please, dear god.

(That's one thing I actually miss about non-cell phones; the part where you could talk and press buttons at the same time, as opposed to needing to move the phone away from where I can hear things, choose the keypad option, enter stuff, and then start listening again.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Supposedly this combo still works. I gotta admit, lately all the phones I've called skip straight to the beep after I press 1, so it could be obsolete and I wouldn't know yet. I need to find more friends to call.

I resist smartphones mostly because I really hate having just a screen. I like the tactile feeling of an actual keypad. Yes, I know, after the Singularity happens I'll still buy keyboards rather than typing with my mind like a normal person. It'll be my Stubborn Old Person Habit.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I still prefer buttons for my Phone Needs. Fortunately my smartphone is used so seldom for Phone Needs compared to everything else that it's a minor annoyance.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

I'll join you in the keyboard-buying checkout line. I like having physical clicky-pressy buttons for everything, which was a pain when my mom took me camera shopping this summer and all the cameras had giant touchscreens plastered over the entire backside... and you couldn't even double-tap the screen to make it take a photo! What's the point of having a giant touchscreen if you can't do that, for crying out loud, my boyfriend's smartphone can do that.

Also, I was just reminded - after this year's MIT Mystery Hunt, my team went to a local restaurant for dinner, and the conversation came around to smartphones, and in particular the bitching about. So everyone at the table pulled out their phones to compare... and the button-phones outnumbered the smartphones. First time that's ever happened to pretty much everybody at the table XD

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

PUSH-BUTTON PHONING!

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I will totally be with you on that. I hate touchscreens, always have.

We can rant together in the nursing home about how much better a real keyboard is :)

[michellerz.livejournal.com]

LOVE the Juan jokes!! There's a guy named Juan who works for my dad, and whenever he calls, we have a contest to see how many we can come up with. There's always at least a dozen because you can't stop after just Juan!

"Who was that, Dad?"
"Oh, that was just Juan."
"Just Juan what?"
"What? Oh, Jesus, here we go again."
"Was he Juan-dering what time you need him to come in tomorrow?"
etc. :)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I actually do remember learning how to dial a phone. And yes, I mean dial, not push buttons.

Damn, now I feel old.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Eh. I remember it too, and Dad pointing out that in movies, all the phone numbers are short ones, so no one has to wait for a 9 to roll back.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah! I never even thought of that!

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I hadn't noticed the movie thing, but I remember finding out that the big cities got the quick-dialing area codes like 212, 213, 312 (NYC, LA, Chicago). I felt a little insulted that Atlanta had the mediocre 404.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* I remember thinking rotary phones were terrific fun, but I don't remember having to learn how to use them, either.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I remember learning to dial a phone also! The dial kind, though those went away when I was still quite young.

I also remember proudly demonstrating to my mother that I could make a phone call, and her apologizing to the lady on the other end of the line ...

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

We learned how to use phones is school, and we also had a field trip to the post office to learn how to mail letters.

I am old.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... letter-mailing may be fading out as a thing we automatically know. We also had to be taught that in school.

(There's a Rifftrax movie that has a shot of a woman dialing a rotary phone. Mike Nelson's comment: "Everyone under 25 looks at that thing she's dialing and wonders WHAT THE HELL IT IS.")

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

We had a rotary phone well into the '90s.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I knew how to use one, but it was a curiosity at other people's houses. We were on the cutting edge of phone technology.

We did have a BETAMAX well into the 90s, though. (Okay, we STILL have it, because of the Claymation Christmas Special, but it was our MAIN video player till around 1995.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

We taped the Claymation Christmas Special on VHS. We really ought to get it on DVD. Sure, we'd miss out on the old ads for York Peppermint Patties, but that'd be a small price to pay to watch it on something that isn't rapidly decomposing.

[hrhleia.livejournal.com]

My parents still have a rotary phone in their bedroom - it's probably Bakelite(tm) - and I still think they're a lot more fun to dial than regular phones. I don't remember being taught how to use it, but I must have been at some point. It does take a while if you have to dial long distance, though.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

On one of my forums, I just found a picture relevant to this discussion:
(http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b3/WestRider/?action=view&current=TailPhones.jpg)