WTF, Just Answer Your Phone
By Dan Hoffman
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKeO9Q6CII&w=575&h=390]
Text messaging has revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. In my own life, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will simply never talk to certain people on the phone. No matter how inconvenient and irritating it is to send endless amounts of text messages to coordinate a date or arrange a time to meet, a real phone call will never be answered. In fact, sometimes I even receive a text in reply to a call I made. If I called, doesn’t that imply that I want to talk, and that a text message is insufficient? It’s gotten so bad that if having a real conversation is truly necessary, I won’t actually call until I get a text message stating when my call will be answered – because there’s no doubt in my mind that an unsolicited call will go unanswered, and I’m not going to leave a voicemail because that’s just a waste of time.
Of course I’m as guilty of avoiding real phone conversations as the rest of us. There is something undeniably appealing about the capacity to quickly communicate with people without the awkward nuisance of forming speech. On the one hand, texts allow us to craft deliberate, thoughtful messages, and on the other, they let us avoid serious communication. This in mind, I still try my best to maintain the sanctity of the phone conversation, whether it be for simple things like making plans, or for long, serious talks. It’s a losing battle I’m fighting.
This new video posted by the Killing My Lobster imrov group isn’t actually that good – its jokes are crude (the man being smacked, the girl getting shot, etc.) – and the whole things seems to be screaming in our face, “Aren’t we clever!?” while we want to say back, “eh, not really, calm down.” But all the same, it gets to something that must be on all of our minds at moments in our lives. There reaches a point where text message exchanges become so long and so detailed, you just want to say (if you’ll even have the chance to actually speak), “answer your damn phone and stop wasting our time.”