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> "No one should ever be able to interrupt me, absolutely ever" is a disturbingly entitled and modern take.

I have developed a telephone phobia when things started to fall apart between some people and me. I got really scared of phone calls and seeing particular people call. While this is no longer an issue, the fear has been embedded in me. I have rationalized some of it with a "I don't want people to interrupt me". In reality, I don't mind being on a phone call to discuss something, but these have moved on to other platforms.

I mostly get these days spam calls specifically from outside of my country of residence and recruiters (specifically English! - plenty of +44 numbers). Unlike years ago (in the US for me), I remember 95% of all calls were meaningful, the complete opposite of where it is for me now.

Regardless, I agree with your statement. This is anecdotal for me, but the march of technology and its imposition on the way we communicate has also resulted in the creeping march of very low-brow behavior unseen in times when talking to someone over some network involved just picking up a phone and calling them.

>Not too long ago, it was perfectly fine for people to turn up at your house unannounced, to pay you a visit, for no reason in particular other than to engage socially and you were expected to host them at your house (!).

Not really. Maybe for the particularly extroverted individuals, but I'm quite aware of people, both older and younger generations, who would love nothing more than to have nothing to do with anyone disturbing the peace of their homes.

Folks out in the countryside especially have such a tendency; people go out to live in the country in part because there's less god damn humans to deal with compared to city life.

I definitely don't come from a family of "particularly extroverted individuals" but when I was a teenager, about 10 years ago, in the UK, it was VERY common on the weekend for family members to randomly appear without calling ahead. Now it is totally unheard of

I think that people are blissfully unaware of how different things were before we gained the ability to instantly communicate across long distances at all times. Even those who lived through it have forgotten, or have no wish to go back (as you said, who wants random people to arrive? Not many people. But still, THEY DID)

Of course. With the ease of communication we have, and considering we no longer have servants or a designated person in the family that is tasked with maintaining the house to a perfect standard at all times as their full time job, it goes without saying it's usually rude to try to do so. Not arguing we should go back to that.

I was attempting to drive the point that we've gone from "you can be interrupted at any moment when you're home in and be expected to host friends" from "I get severe anxiety if I get a phone call". Clearly there's a point in between, or do most people really like the hermit lifestyle? Even if some people in here are genuinely busy with hobbies, side projects or genuinely lead a busy life, most people I know that express this point of view are most definitely not doing anything remotely interesting with their free time.

The fact that extreme social isolation (either on purpose or not) is one of many factors that can lead to steep decline in mental health suggests that behaving like this is not good for us, yet a life of "do not talk to me ever, email me if you must" is always seen as the perfect end goal in most of these discussions.

why do people need to be doing something interesting by your or anyone else's standards to hate being interrupted? "people like to not be interrupted too much" is certainly a weird take.

yet, equating "likes to not be interrupted on someone else's schedule" with "likes extreme social isolation to the point of mental illness" is a weirder one.

just because i want people to text me that they're coming over, and waits till i see it and confirm that that's cool with me, doesn't mean i'm into driving myself crazy in solitary confinement. this is the default for most people agreeing with the article, and folks like you are just upset because you hate not being able to get your hit of extroversion in on your schedule but have to wait (more than in the 80s) for folks to agree to share their social energy.

> that it actually started poisoning others that never had a problem with this (Gen X comes to mind).

sigh

https://slowrevealgraphs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/scre...

I'm sorry you feel talking to other human beings synchronously is the same as being forced to systematically adhere to a norm that is now commonly accepted to be determined by epigenetic factors.

> "Not too long ago, it was perfectly fine for people to turn up at your house unannounced, to pay you a visit, for no reason in particular other than to engage socially and you were expected to host them at your house (!)."

That very much differs with social class and location. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visiting_card for the elaborate social conventions which developed amongst the European and American aristocracy regarding visits to the home.

When he says "Not too long ago" he is talking 20 years ago, not 200.

In Spain it's pretty much expected to be able to host a visit at any hour from the afternoon except for, obviously, eating times.

I hate it, it makes you a slave of housework.

I live in very rural America, outside of cell coverage and the neighbors turn up all the time to talk. And these are good conversations. There has never been spam or sales or the like that has turned up at my door.

Meanwhile the land line gets about 2 spam messages a day, and 1 real call a month. And being the owner of an LLC seems to mean my cell gets about 5 spam calls a day. The ringers stay off, and I still hate the phone.

> "No one should ever be able to interrupt me, absolutely ever" is a disturbingly entitled and modern take.

I think you're exaggerating it, it's more just that interrupting people is considered rude because we have so many less intrusive means of communicating now. If you want my attention, right now, no forewarning, you should probably have a good reason unless we have the kind of relationship where I expect out-of-the-blue calls and you know my schedule.

> Not too long ago, it was perfectly fine for people to turn up at your house unannounced, to pay you a visit, for no reason in particular other than to engage socially and you were expected to host them at your house (!).

Yeah... because we didn't have cell phones. And it sucked. Especially with socially clueless people that didn't have good boundaries. I remember having to play that "hide from the windows until they go away game" as a kid because an obnoxious neighbor would tie up way too much of your time unless you were blunt to the point of being rude; and well, you don't really want to do that if you live next to people right? I'm glad that practically never happens anymore because the norm is you don't bang on peoples door.

> Surely we can deal with the very occasional call from someone that wants 5 minutes of your time, no?

Well, sure, but they can text first right? "I need 5 minutes, are you busy at the moment?" Solved.

You are quite right.

Especially in a work setting I have seen many times where email discussions or message discussion go overboard with lots of misunderstandings, heated feelings etc and once you get on the phone with the other party you solve the issue in just minutes.

It's easy to use harsh language in text, but on the phone things usually calms down. It's also less error prone as in a phone discussion the feedback loop is truly real-time vs messages/slack/email.

You can also better hear and sense the feelings of the other party.

Strange, since often I find people use the phone simply to avoid committing anything to writing and to cover up ignorance with ambiguity, which is more obvious in an email.

‘Not too long ago, it was perfectly fine for people to turn up at your house unannounced, to pay you a visit, for no reason in particular other than to engage socially and you were expected to host them at your house (!).’

Two thoughts come to mind. First, the effort required for somebody to turn up at your house ensures that this would happen much less frequently than the relatively costless telephone call. Second, some folk probably hate phone calls more than in-person conversations.

> And yes, if you're ill but can't be arsed to call your NHS GP, then you're clearly not sick and shouldn't be tying up already strained public resources.

Doesn't the NHS provide an app to do this exact thing asynchronously? Those apps are ubiquitous across the EU.

> > And yes, if you're ill but can't be arsed to call your NHS GP, then you're clearly not sick and shouldn't be tying up already strained public resources

> Doesn't the NHS provide an app to do this exact thing asynchronously?

It does. I book appointments directly through the NHS app (have done twice in the last few weeks, in fact). Back in 2017 when the article was written things were almost certainly a bit different, though that feels about right for when I would've first been booking online using the Patient Access app.

It depends on your practice. Mine has booking appointments and messaging currently disabled, which is annoying, but I imagine it must be to overcapacity.

To paraphrase your take: "This is not a problem because it is not a problem for me."

The original piece just seems so anxious.

A better title would almost be 'Telephones make me anxious' because I don't think they hate the technology itself.