Dumped a Blue Pill Friend Glued to His Phone

[Tbowden1Participant 195]

@vilenord *round of applause* for that!

[JollyMisanthropeParticipant 3356]

I’ll buy a smart phone when that’s the only choice I have. My cell is pretty much for an alarm to wake up to and a timer. $30 bucks a month.

I still don’t understand how people can just walk around staring at their phone all day.

The Children of Doom... Doom's Children. They told my lord the way to the Mountain of Power. They told him to throw down his sword and return to the Earth... Ha! Time enough for the Earth in the grave.

[strnghtnnmbrsParticipant 14]

Wow, great thread! I have to admit. Being a tech guy, I stopped
having a cell phone for 3 years for just those reasons. Granted, I had
to get one again for work, but let me tell you what I have learned with and
without one.

1. Obviously, having no bill.
2. If everyone knows you do not have one, they are forced to call you at home and talk
by voice. This means that the whole day is spent like it was before texting was invented.
If you have a girlfriend, they won’t expect you to text them and they have to wait til
you get off work and get home to talk. Plus there’s no extra emotional crap to deal with
until you decide to deal with it and it does not interfere with work or free time. Best
of all, no misunderstanding because they have to talk instead of text and no ‘why did you, why didn’t
you’ crap…plus if you go as far as adding up the time it takes to text all day compared to just
1/2 hour saying so with your own mouth, the day is pretty much productive.
3. Having an valid reason to control the day for yourself and let the other know you are on your own schedule
and not someone else’s. They have to wait til you get home.
4. The only two pros for having one is emergency and convenience.

Best idea is keep the phone turned off, make it a habit, and get your free time back by putting your foot
down and take a stand. Just think, what would your relationships be like without text?

[GoneGaltParticipant 361]

I also grew up in the pre-cell phone era and hate them in general because of the 24/7 connection to people who expect me to drop whatever I’m doing at their convenience, not mine, and pay attention to them. But I have to admit they do come in handy and not just for a 911 use, especially when I’m on the road and the old pay phones are more uncommon than a truth in a woman’s mouth. I solved the cost issue (ChaosOverAll mentioned $30/month) by buying a cheap TracFone from Walmart and only have to pay $19.79 to Pinzoo every 3 months to add enough minutes (60) to my Tracfone account to keep the service active, using a promo code to get an additional 30 minutes for free. Total yearly cost: $79.16, or about $6.60 per month. The trick is that I almost always have the phone turned off and very, very few people have the number and they know not to call it if they need to reach me – instead, they call my landline phone which avoids the ridiculous cell phone costs and also allows me to use a cheap dial-around number for long distance calls rather than overpriced plans. This way I avoid all texting which I consider to be a socially acceptable way of being anti-social, e.g., avoiding real human interaction that doesn’t require emoticons and abbreviations to communicate. I also have a cell phone I can not only use in emergencies but make calls from my car when I need to, like when the dam thing conked out last year and had to be towed (transmission).

I too had a long-time friend from college who some years back had textitis digitalis extremis, an uncontrollable urge to constantly check for texts and reply to them no matter where he was. We were out one night celebrating my older brother’s birthday, just the 3 of us, at a nice steakhouse when he whipped out the digital pocket pussy and his fingers pranced and skipped nimbly over the keys while we were trying to have a conversation. I kid you not, for the last half hour all he did was text and while that wasn’t the primary reason we’re no longer friends, it fit a pattern of caring far more about people that weren’t present than people that were, so why bother being present any longer?

[MendokusaiParticipant 256]

I too spent the first 35 years of my life without the damned things. I have one now but it stays in my pocket most of the time and yes I DO turn it off at night.

Funny observation,a couple of years back I invited a friend and the girl he was interested in to a pub where my other buddy was playing.

Well ,you know what? No sooner than they had been seated both took out their damned phones & started texting!

I tell my fetard co-workers that if ever I was to go on a date with them & they pulled the same stunt it would be over pretty quick.

[Cap285Participant 6007]

Good for you. Cut extraneous s~~~ out of your life.

Fuck this planet.

[Anonymous 5]

The worst is when you are with 2 or 3 friends at a place and they are texting EACH OTHER at the table instead of just TALKING. This s~~~ drove me crazy and I always felt alone/left out because I refuse to text on a cell phone. Then I ask them what is so funny and they just ignored me or would say “oh nothing” and then continued on texting. Needless to say, I have dumped 4 friends because of that s~~~.

[mikaalParticipant 6]

I was off the grid like you. My boss needed to get in touch with me though so I had to get a phone. My “friends” all cheered about how I finally made it because I had a phone and could be reached. I immediately corrected them on the matter and they called me a hipster….

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