Devices Enforce Silence Of Cellphones

[EL the Famous]

As alluded to in my previous post, I firmly believe it's appropriate to jam them in certain circumstances ... but those circumstances should be limited and known to the public, and outside of those, I agree that people just need to deal with the damn things, annoying as they are.

 

what do you suggest for people talking in theatres aloud WITHOUT cellphones? mandatory muzzles? somebody talks too loud during a movie on a cellphone or not...my solution is to tell them to kindly shut the fuck up.

[JUDE]

what do you suggest for people talking in theatres aloud WITHOUT cellphones?

 

tazers.

[ction]

My suggestion is that people who are chronically annoyed by the behavior of other people should stay home.

[EL the Famous]

My suggestion is that people who are chronically annoyed by the behavior of other people should stay home.

 

perfect.

[Good Old Neon]

My suggestion is that people who are chronically annoyed by the behavior of other people should stay home.

 

I guess my response to that would be that people who choose to place and take phone calls anywhere and everywhere, regardless of the venue or circumstances, should have the common sense and decency to like, use some fucking discretion already.

[EL the Famous]

I guess my response to that would be that people who choose to place and take phone calls anywhere and everywhere, regardless of the venue or circumstances, should have the common sense and decency to like, use some fucking discretion already.

 

i don't think anybody is disagreeing w/ that...

[OOO]

I guess my response to that would be that people who choose to place and take phone calls anywhere and everywhere, regardless of the venue or circumstances, should have the common sense and decency to like, use some fucking discretion already.

 

The problem is that people in this country have the right to be idiots, and unfortunately a large chunk of the population exercise this right.

[Good Old Neon]

The problem is that people in this country have the right to be idiots, and unfortunately a large chunk of the population exercise this right.

 

True dat...

[Analogman]

Maybe it has just become a social norm. I am often amazed that I see cops talking on cell phones while they are driving. Lately, I have noticed signs in fast food places and stores stating that people should not talk on cell phones when they are in line or when they are at the register.

[embiggen]

I think Larry David had a good solution on Curb Your Enthusiasm a couple weeks ago. Some jackass next to him in a restaurant was talking loudly into his Bluetooth device, so Larry just started talking to himself loudly thus interfering with the other guy's conversation.

 

that was classic.

[yermom]

people should not talk on cell phones when they are in line or when they are at the register.

People who do that kind of stuff are rather annoying. I often see people make waitresses stand at the table waiting for them to finish their calls before she can take their order.

[Lammycat]

I don't have a cell phone but I do carry around a truck air horn I like to randomly blare in public. It's how I communicate.

[ction]

Another thing that is really annoying is when you go out to a bar or something and there is a big group of people having some kind of social outing and then they start talking loud and laughing and having a really good time. Fuck those people.

[EL the Famous]

someone should envelope the world in a cone of silence.

[embiggen]

"good times" should be outlawed.

[mountain bed]

No one has a good time anymore.

 

(Sorry LC)

[cryptique]

My suggestion is that people who are chronically annoyed by the behavior of other people should stay home.

That's what I do, mostly.

 

I don't see any problem in trying to enforce some basic etiquette, however. I appreciate a movie complex where the security staff actually removes people from theaters for being disruptive. I've been in such places ... but sadly, not around here.

[Lammycat]

How come people don't carry boom boxes down the street anymore? I miss being able to randomly hear other people's favorite music in public.

[embiggen]

no one listens to music anymore.

[Reni]

i was spending a lot of time with a friend of mine who is a pediatric neurosurgeon, probably the best in the country, and he was called several times on his cell phone regarding patients. You really want to fuck with that? Do you really want to jam the signal of someone who giving admit orders for your kid, or saving your husband, or reporting a crime?

 

amen.

 

When I ride on the train, there are frequently annoying cell phone talkers - but I just tune it out and get on with my day.

 

Can people be annoying and loud? Sure. Can I make an effort to personally practice polite cell phone usage? Yup.

 

Let it go.

[Reni]

How come people don't carry boom boxes down the street anymore? I miss being able to randomly hear other people's favorite music in public.

 

I saw an elderly man (with some sort of disability) with a rolling walker the other day. It had a basket on the front and a transistor radio in it. He was walking very slowly amongst fast walking commuters, listening to the music pretty loud. It made me smile, I thought it was awesome.

[boywiththorninside]

From Philip Roth's latest, Exit Ghost:

 

"What surprised me most my first few days walking around the city? The most obvious thing-the cell phones. We had no reception as yet up on my mountain, and down in Athena, where they do have it, I'd rarely see people striding the streets talking uninhibitedly into their phones. I remembered a New York when the only people walking up Broadway seemingly talking to themselves were crazy. What had happened in these ten years for there suddenly to be so much to say--so much pressing that it couldn't wait to be said? Everywhere I walked, somebody was approaching me talking on a phone. Inside the cars, the drivers were on phones. When I took a taxi, the cabbie was on the phone. For one who frequently went without talking to anyone for days at a time, I had to wonder what that had previously held them up had collapsed in people to make incessant talking into a telephone preferable to walking about under no one's surveillance, momentarily solitary, assimilating the streets through one's animal senses and thinking the myriad thoughts that the activities of a city inspire. For me it made the streets appear comic and the people ridiculous. And yet it seemed like a real tragedy, too. To eradicate the experience of separation must inevitably have a dramatic effect. What will the consequences be? You know you can reach the other person anytime, and if you can't, you get impatient--impatient and angry like a stupid little god. I understood that background silence had long been abolished from restaurants, elevators, and ballparks, but that the immense loneliness of human beings should produce this boundless longing to be heard, and the accompanying disregard for being overheard--well, having lived largely in the era of the telephone booth, whose substantial folding doors could be tightly pulled shut, I was impressed by the conspicuousness of it all and found myself entertaining the idea for a story in which Manhattan has turned into a sinister collectivity where everyone is spying on everyone else, everyone being tracked by the person at the other end of his or her phone, even though, incessantly dialing one another from wherever they like in the great out of doors, the telephoners believe themselves to be experiencing the maximum freedom. I knew that merely by thinking up such a scenario I was at one with all the cranks who imagined, from the beginnings of industrialization, that the machine was the enemy of life. Still, I could not help it: I did not see how anyone could believe he was continuing to live a human existence by walking about talking into a phone for half his waking life. No, those gadgets did not promise to be a boon to promoting reflection among the general public." (pages 62-64)

[Sir Stewart]

Cabbies talk to people from home, I assume. Whenever I'm in a cab, I feel like the cellphone is one of the greatest inventions ever.

[Lammycat]

There should be helmets for people to wear when talking on a cell phone. A self-contained area for people to ask each other where they at every 10 minutes.

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

"I'm in my helmet. Where the bloody hell are you?!"