The paranoid narcissim in this thread in incredible. I have no idea how some people function at all if the idea of a phone call unravels them.

This was a teacher that told me in the 90s. “Phone calls are an invasion. When you call someone you’re saying ‘stop everything you’re doing and talk to me’. This was specially true when Caller ID was not a thing.”

Leaving a message equals to a DM or text. The recipient can respond later, but a call, it must be at that moment. It’s synchronous.

One thing that severely degrades the usefulness of the phone network is all the spam calls. It’s all I get these days. I can’t just call someone and have them pick up because nobody answers calls from unknown numbers.

It’s especially frustrating when I’m waiting for a call, like for a delivery, and have to pick up every unknown number.

ETA: Also, the immediacy of phone calls make them mainly used for emergencies. If I get a call from someone I know the first thought is “oh god what’s wrong?”

So I don’t call people because I don’t want to freak them out.

How? Asynchronous communication is better for a lot of people. And now that we have really good choices for that, it's hard to ignore.

A phone call demands that you drop everything in that moment and pay close attention to the person on the other end. If they ramble, deviate, breathe heavily, have a lot of background noise, etc, you're stuck with that experience for the duration. Also, recording without consent is illegal in a lot of places, so you have to be able to write things down in order to refer back to the conversation if it contains any important information.

In contrast, everything else is self-documenting, can be read through multiple times, and can be handled when there is time to focus on that task. As a bonus: most people can read and understand text faster than they can listen. So it's just more efficient.

I 'member when they used to be called PMs.

I guess they aren't private anymore.

For the workplace, calls are king. If you're a professional, calling another professional, it's the easiest and fastest way to exchange information back and forth. Long email chains that take several days to reach their conclusion are inefficient. If you need something done, in the work/business arena, just call. Younger generations are entering the workforce for first time and are scared to make or answer calls. It's embarrassing.

Sure, outside of work, keep calls to a bare minimum. Family usually text first to arrange a phone call.

People have no back bone anymore. Oh no, I'm getting telemarketing calls... Just hang up.

Why are people so offended over the fact there are some ppl who don't like phone calls? 🤷‍♀️ who cares

Easy, back in the day all we had was phone call for instant communication, so not much to compare to.

Also, you didn't call a person, you called a house or place of work. This meant it was used more sparingly (need to keep the line open/share with the rest of the house) and if you were away, then that phone call couldn't bother you. This also meant people were used to not being able to reach who they wanted to talk to, so if you felt like letting the answering machine get it, no one would think anything of it. You were either on the phone or present in the moment, not trying to talk with a number of people who don't know each other.

Now everyone has a phone at their hip. You can call someone and if that someone sends it to voicemail, you know they did and it can become a point of drama depending on the circumstance. Now I can be in the middle of text conversations with a half dozen people across half the world and so when my phone unexpectedly rings then I wonder who is this asshole who thinks they deserve my full attention over these other folks, even though the other person has no way of knowing about those conversations. We are expected to juggle concurrent conversations and a phone call derails that.

For me it's a few reasons:

1. It demands my attention right here, right now
2. I don't know that it's going to happen, I cannot prepare
3. Usually during the call I'm forced to hold the phone, meaning I can't look stuff up or write stuff down easily
4. I fidn listening way harder than reading, and the quality of calls doesn't help with that

I much prefer text because it give some time to delay answering until it's convenient for me, look up answers to any questions I may have, and because I can re-read and think about stuff.

Calling is like an interrupt forcing me to drop everything there and then and immediately provide an answer, messaging is something I poll every now and then when I'm not overloaded or focused so I can actually take the time to answer.

About the same time that 99% of the incoming voice calls are scammers.

Easy:

Between ages 13 and 18 if I received a phone call it was because I was in trouble, so now when I get one there is a pang of guilt and panic over whatever it is I could have possibly done

Why though?

What is so hard about getting a call and talking to someone?

Voicemail should be lower on that list, I'd rather take a call than check voicemail any day.

Its my right to be not reachable, outside of work i will take time for your matter when its fitting for me.

And im forgetful and prefer to be able read important information again.

Thats why my phone is always on mute and my voice recorder tells people my email address.

Combination of spam callers being more prevalent and the younger generation has unbelievably high social anxiety as a direct result of them mostly being raised indoors and alone with family.

I'm not saying that the way we older folks grew up was inherently better at all times, but it certainly forced us to converse with strangers and develop those skills.

My little twin brothers and my little sister were actually afraid to call a pizza place and order pizza when they were younger. They still don't really do phone calls aside from work related things or direct family.

People in the comments claiming it's social anxiety but I have no problem talking to people face to face or in an internet-based voice or video call. But phone calls are just ass. The audio quality sucks, I barely understand what the other person says and I don't get to choose when and where it happens, might be one or both people are in some noisy situation etc and it's just all around so awkward. I also think it's kinda rude. A message is "Hey I want to exchange X information, reply whenever you want", a call is "YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME RIGHT NOW". It's also incredibly annoying when some official place insists on phone calls only. Fucking brilliant, now I have to take half an hour of my day queueing and/or calling repeatedly to get done what I would have typed out in half a minute as an email. It's even worse if it's them who call you. "You will get a call from us in the next 3 days". Now I have to be on fucking high alert to be available at that exact time or the back and forth missed calls start. Instead of just receiving an email and replying whenever.

Edit: not to even mention that text is permanent and can be referenced later while calls are not

In a world where async communication is effortless, demanding immediate attention is antisocial.

You're saying that you don't care what I'm doing at the moment. You want my full attention immediately. Even leaving a message is more of a time waste than a simple text message

1. don't call unless it's urgent
2. if you're calling me it's not urgent

This doesn't apply to landlines, ofc

I want shit that leaves a record so when someone pulls a "I didn't say red", I can pull out the text or DM or whatever, and say, "So when you said red here was it that special red that's actually blue?"

Because we don't have those nice thick hard plastic handles to rest on your shoulder

Since I have to give away 99% of my "confidential" information to landleeches to beg for a basement to barely survive in, scammers infest every nook and cranny of the rental market. Ive probably had my info stolen while looking for an apartment 10 times by now. Does anyone do anything about the scammers making fake rental listings? Fuck no! Centralize rental listings in one location? Get fucked!

This of course ignores the GiGa data leaks that happen every 5 days.

Every call I get is a scam call. Every single one.

Till you call I guess. Well guess what, the actual people who want to call me aren't much better then the scammers.

I'm so glad you are living such a good life that you look forward to a phone call. That you are excited to voluntarily interact with another human being. Not everyone has such a privilege.

Basically, as soon as other reliable methods became widely adopted. No, I don't have any phone call related anxiety or whatever, I'll call someone if I really need to, I would just rather not. I'd much rather get a text that says, "Hey, we're meeting up at 7pm to go out and do, XYZ, do you want to come?" than a phone call that starts with that and turns to "So anyway, did I tell you my mom blah, blah, blah... And I don't know what to say, because I kind of want to go, but it would be a lot blah, blah, blah."

Phone calls with friends and family have a way of spiraling off into tangents when I don't necessarily have the time to entertain them, but don't want to be a dick all the time telling people I don't have time at the moment to listen to them. If there's a self-service section to a company's website or app, I can usually do whatever I need faster than it would take me to get through the automated menus and hold music to call and have them do it. Like my pharmacy, if I want to refill a prescription online, I log in, check a box and hit submit. Done. If I call them, I need to go through three menus to get patched through to the pharmacy, tell them what I want, hold for a moment while they help someone in the store, give them my info and wait for them to look it up, etc.

When I plan to meet up with people, I make plenty of time to talk to them and listen to whatever. When I get what I think is going to be a short phone call that devolves into tangents, I don't necessarily have the time to entertain whether the fact that my friend's cousin had his toe amputated due to gangrene means he should get the spot on his nipple tested for leprosy, or if he should just improve his personal hygiene and see if it washes off in the shower.

If something really is going to be a pain to communicate via text, schedule that conversation and we can have a call to discuss it, but I'm not answering phone calls whenever somebody calls out of the blue unless I'm interviewing for jobs or expecting a call about some sort of emergency.

In addition to everything else, there's also a feedback loop of spam calls predominating. The more legit conversation moves to other methods, the more spam calls stick out. That, in turn, means even more people prefer something other than phone calls. It eventually gets to the point where 99% of calls are spam, and that whole method of communication becomes useless.

And if you really don't want me to call you or call you back .... text, email or send me a message that says

CALL ME

That is the single most disgusting uninteresting uninformative and ugliest thing that anyone can text me. You can text me a dick pick, ransom demands, blackmail images, racist crap or gore pictures of something and I wouldn't complain and probably might even respond to you ... but if you just text me 'CALL ME', I'm blocking your number or contact and never answering anything from you again.