Phone free resturants if you're eating alone sounds kind of miserable. Sometimes i want to read something while i wait for my food to come out.
Is there a reason why someone sitting by themselves reading a book on the e-reader app on their phone is more offensive than someone sitting by themselves reading a dead tree book?
And I don't know what you're doing when you're transfixed by your phone and I'm not going to peer over your screen to find out.
If you really want to read a book in peace, try a library.
This is a wild projection of your own experience onto someone else's actions.
> If you really want to read a book in peace, try a library.
I've quite enjoyed the times I've taken a book to a restaurant and read over a meal. I do not appreciate you, or people like you, dictating how I ought to act in public in a way that doesn't affect anyone else in the slightest.
I don't want to start conversations when I'm alone at a table with my book. The fact that you find it somehow less social for me to be on my phone instead of reading a book when I am minding my own business at my own table seems like a tremendous failure in your own boundaries and expectations of other people.
I asked a friend who doesn't use a smartphone about how it feels walking into a room full of people with phones and he told me the same thing. I have a smartphone but I don't take it out reflexively. I don't even consider myself a very social person or an extrovert, yet it always has to be ME to start a conversation in a room full of people because they would rather stare at a screen that say a hello.
I'm going to talk to you whether you like it not. If you don't want to talk to people, then maybe don't put yourself in a social setting? Imagine entering a coffee shop and finding it dead silent. I would just go home and make some food. If you have a problem with me talking to you, go ahead tell me how much you don't appreciate it or whatever, I don't care.
It's not my intention to be rude but based on your responses on this topic I'm guessing you're fairly oblivious to the relevant social cues. There's nothing wrong with that per se but adopting an attitude of "not my problem" is probably just going to aggravate the people around you.
Perhaps these people just don't like you.
If you find a social interaction is entirely one sided, usually that is a sign you should take a moment to self reflect on what is going on.
You seem to have a strange definition of what's a social situation. Maybe I want to be around people without talking to them; if I wanted to strike up conversation with strangers, I'd sit at a bar.
You're obviously conscious of the fact that you may be doing something that people don't want, which makes it all the more confusing to me that you're upset about people possibly preferring their phones to books: if you're going to interrupt them either way and potentially invade their space, why do you care how they're signalling? (For the record, I don't think people inherently are signalling, but you seem to--it's the inconsistency in your own stated approach that's confusing me.)
Sure, I might be doing something you don't want, but that's also true of asking a girl out (and I mean in real life, not on snapchat). She might say yes, she might say no. Either way, you I never get anywhere unless I ask.
Here are some places I think its perfectly acceptable to talk to strangers:
- A class (barring when the professor is speaking).
- On a bus or at the bus stop.
- A coffee shop
- Airplane ride
- DMV
- Waiting for a table at a restaurant
Maybe you disagree. I can't read minds.
As for what makes phones particularly bad, its because they discourage social interaction. Why talk to people when you have endless stream of dopamine in your pocket? In economic speak, phones dramatically raise the opportunity cost of actual social interactions. So everyone just stares at their phones, and this negatively affects even those who choose to opt-out of technology because we are deprived of human engagement because we are unable to compete with those little dopamine machines.
Oh, and unlike with books, everyone has a phone at all times, and when things get boring (even a little), then the phones come out and you're left talking with yourself.
Do you make a habit of interrupting people who are reading? If so I can just about guarantee that you're "that guy" to the people you're doing that to.
Nor should you, talk about injecting yourself into something that is none of your business.
I was this person. Eventually I gave it up because I didn't want to be mistaken for just another screen-addled zombie with no impulse control miserably scrolling Whatsapp and Instagram.
Perhaps I have too much self-awareness but I'd argue most people have too little.
Who cares? They're strangers. If they want to make faulty assumptions and feel an unjustified smug sense of self superiority that's none of my business.
At this point I read ~all books on my phone as a simple matter of practicality. I'd prefer my phone had an epaper screen and grayscale page centric apps (instead of scrolling) but that's just not how things are.
Yes, I came to the same conclusion. IIRC I read Great Expectations on the thing!
In my case scrollability was a bonus. Horses for courses.
So you gave it up not because you are worried about being a "phone addicted zombie" but because you are worried about being precieved and judged as such?
Some would say changing your behaviour due to social insecurity is just another form of being a zombie.
I do when I’m going somewhere that doesn’t allow phones. How is this complicated or hard to understand?
I mean, sure that is true, but that logic would also apply to a resturant that spits in your food.