There was a good point explaining how the invention of email made communication a more dreaded thing. When all you could do was send written letters, it could take weeks or months to communicate with someone on another continent. When email was invented everyone thought it would make life so much easier to get a near instant reply. But now some some people have to read and send a hundred emails a day. It’s the same with cell phones. A hundred years ago we mostly didn’t have phones. Then landlines became popular but you had to be home, also you had to memorize numbers or write them down. Now everyone has a cellphone where anyone can call you at anytime and any place. It could be work related, medical related, an old friend wanting to say hi, a tech illiterate family member asking for help, someone trying to sell you something, or any other kind of spam call. Phone anxiety is completely understandable.
On the mobile side I just don’t answer the thing unless it’s the doctors or something. I’ve Pavlov’d my friends and family into never calling as they know I generally don’t answer, so they text instead.
My pet hate with texts is when some people will spam you with repeated texts rather than one long one.
- Hiya mate what you on tonight? X
- Just thinking we could go grab some food x
- From that place you was talking about. X
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Makes me think about the concept of social density in the mouse utopia experiments. It wasn’t population density per se that caused the decline of the mouse society, it was the inability to escape social situations.
this sounds interesting, where can i read more?
I know you said read, but the reason this came to mind was from rewatching an excellent Down The Rabbit Hole video recently. It’s a good one, 24 minutes long and no annoying bullshit or filler. The concept of social density is mentioned in the video, which isn’t something I saw reading the wiki on it or during a quick search.
Side note, these experiments are what inspired the Rats of NIMH books which you may be familiar with.
to be fair they didnt have to deal with phone calls
Doesn’t this happen to everyone?
