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The Phone Call Is the New Hand-Written Note

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oldphone 249x300 The Phone Call Is the New Hand Written Note

When was the last time you saw one of these?

I see people putting text messages on the phone or computer and I think, ‘Why don’t you just call?’
– William Shatner

I picked up the phone to call my buddy Earl on his birthday and it felt weird. Kind of like I was his grandma or something. It’s gotten awkward calling out of the blue now, even someone in my inner circle. When I made his birthday call, I was afraid I’d be interrupting whatever he’s was doing. 1.

It didn’t used to be that way. Phone calls used to rule the world.

Remember the old days when your mom used to hang on the phone, tethered to the wall and basically ignore you? The phone was so important that when it rang everything came to a screeching halt. And you always answered it. You’d even answer a strange pay phone if you happened to be walking by and it rang 2. Now, people screen everything — God forbid they should talk to you at the exact time you called 3.

The phone has history. You talked to your first girlfriend on the phone for hours, thought cordless phones were some kind of black magic and routinely made legendary prank calls — they’d never know it was you asking if they could please page Mike Hunt.

My main reason for the phone call was because of how shallow and weak our beloved Facebook birthday wishes are. They’re meaningless because everyone is just being told that it’s someone’s birthday. Before Facebook, you had to care enough to keep track of that stuff. One week I had five Facebook friends with birthdays and I didn’t really even know any of them 4. I shouldn’t know their birthday.

The irony is that no one can put down their cell phone for 10 seconds to take care of their kids, but we rarely use it to connect with people by talking anymore. Society’s attitude today is a text with brutal grammar and no indication of tone or inflection is just fine.

Well, it’s not.

While I make my living in the mobile industry, a text or Facebook “Like” can’t take the place of spending the time actually talking to someone and connecting. Seinfeld used to joke that you couldn’t waste an important conversation on a cell phone call. Now we text for everything.

The phone call is a lost art. Yes, it feels like you need an appointment to talk to someone on the phone now, but that shouldn’t stop you. It shows that you want to take some real time to check in with them. For a decade people have been talking about how personal the hand-written note was. With our latest shift in technology, the phone call has taken it’s place. It is the new “hand-written note.” 5

With each advance in technology that brings us closer together online and over cell towers, it pulls us apart in other ways. Use technology to fill the gaps we need, but fight it when it tries to fill the parts of life that aren’t empty.

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  1. To be honest, he was probably in front of the mirror singing “Crazy Train” into a hairbrush
  2. That was cool.
  3. Guilty, I do this all the time. I’m part of the problem
  4. That’s my fault for not managing Facebook properly
  5. Of course, no one knows how to buy a stamp anymore either.

The Phone Call Is the New Hand-Written Note is a post from: Shake Your Foundation Follow me on Twitter


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