763
It was fine.
The Best part of that time was not being expected to be personally available every minute of the day. The phone was a part of your house and not a part of you.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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was not being expected to be personally available every minute of the day
I'm just not and people get used to it. I take some days to answer to texts, often leave my phone where I can't hear it and it kind of works fine. If it's really important, people usually try several times.
I like the DND feature that mutes everything but rings for repeated calls within a certain time frame - that way if it's something important enough, I can get notified the second time around, otherwise I can toss my phone somewhere and not be bothered until I decide to look at it again.
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I will never understand why android removed the ability to easily set notifications per app and per contact. my blackberry and my first android were great for that
now my phone just lives on silent and I'll maybe respond to somebody within a few days
It certainly made you practice your manners if you were talking to the dad of your crush.
"Hey Gramps, be a good little sheepshagger and get me Madam Fuckalicious on the horn, will ya?"
I see you also grew up in the phone call era
Greetings, fellow geezer!
get me Madam Fuckalicious
so disappointed that this wasn't the username of op or the person you are replying to
True story: As a little kid, my mom taught us to answer the phone as such, "McTubbs residence, Fudgy speaking." I still carry that etiquette to this day.
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If you wanted to call someone, you first pick up the receiver and listen. You might suddenly be eavesdropping on another person's call, and you might try to convince them to hang up right there in the call.
Teenagers would beg their parents to get them a second line so they could talk to their friends without getting interrupted.
On a more rare occasion, someone might have left the receiver off the hook. When you do that, it would make a terrible racket for a short while, then it would give up. So if you needed the phone, you'd pick up the receiver and nothing would happen. You had to go through the house to each phone and make sure it was hung up.
That last bit reminds me of a prank that my friends and I used to play in high school in the 90s. We would make a Beigebox, which is just a normal landline phone with alligator clips on the cord instead of the normal connector. You could use the alligator clips to attach the beigebox to someone's phone line from the exterior of their house, at the phone junction box. We would do this, take the phone off the hook and hide it. Their phone would be tied up until they found and disconnected it. Sometimes it would take them days (or contacting the phone company from another line) to find the issue. If we were feeling particularly malicious, we would dial internationally or a 900 number instead of just leaving it off the hook.
Reading this back now, I feel like to Gen Z this prank reads like "In the previous century, I would play a naughty trick by filling the chamber pot of mine enemy with adobe so that it cannot be cleaned."
That's not a prank. That could ruin someone's life. What if some relative was dying and the victim didn't find out because you cut their phone line?
What if they needed to call 000(911) in an emergency?
I wouldn't see this as a joke, man.
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I begged my mother for a second line…. But it was for my modem. So i could stay online longer lol
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In the very early days of the Internet, if your mom's friend called to gossip it meant you had to reset the 5 hour countdown on downloading that single image.
MOMMMMM!!!!
Happy mother's day all
The edging was INSANE back then.
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You could pick up a second phone in the house and listen in, whilst not breathing
Some phones, you could unscrew the covers on the microphone and the earpiece. And then you could just take the microphone out, because it wasn't wired in, it was just a loose piece that sat on contacts kind of like AA batteries.
Before caller ID came along, call waiting and three-way calling were a new thing for a while. I had one of the old Mickey mouse phones, and you could unscrew and take out the microphone on that one. So me and a buddy would take the phone book, pick two numbers at random, and then using three-way calling I would call each one of them as quick as I could, and then listen in as two strangers called each other. You got arguments, and accusations, and a couple of times a guy hitting on a girl who had no idea how he got her number etc. blah blah. I was certain I was a prank genius.
Later I started getting a bit more inventive like having two pizza places call each other, etc. But the best one was, in the white pages I found a Mr so and so Junior, and a Mr so and so Senior. I made those two houses call each other, and both houses were full of people, and they got into a big argument over who called who and they kept passing the phone around saying hey let me let you talk to your dad he'll tell you what's up blah blah and we're just sitting there laughing and laughing. That one went on a while.
Caller ID came along pretty soon after that and the fun was over.
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The aggressive thing was not covering the receiver when yelling at your brother, who wasn't even home "it's your gf, you in?" Wait a few seconds then yell "no, the one with the big ears" and a few seconds later inform the poor girl on the phone that your brother wasn't available.
The prank answers! I miss the prank answers!
"Grapefruit's Mortuary, you stab 'em, we slab 'em. Some go to heaven, some go to hello?"
I usually go with the old tried and true, "Bart's crematorium you kill 'em we gril em"
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Honestly it was pretty horrible when I think about it. Both my parents were very active in sports clubs and had jobs that involved getting a lot of calls at home. I had to answer the phone several times a day, yell, take notes when my parents weren't home and wasn't allowed to be on the phone for "too long" because someone else could call.
Telemarketing did ruin it. This was the main reason people bought answering machines, to screen calls. Missing calls wasn't a big deal for most people, it was the telemarketing that drove people to buy answering machines, and then to get caller ID, and the ability to block calls, etc. Telemarketing was a boon for the phone service providers.
If you're anxious about answering your phone it all started with telemarketing.
It's amazing how communication mediums seem to become so saturated by marketing that it essentially destroys them.
Phone calls, mail, fax, email.
At the very least, I'm extremely disappointed in the government for destroying phone calls (or standing back and just letting them get destroyed). The nature of a phone network lends itself well to placing responsibility on the caller. Absolutely enforceable. No will to do so.
Like, you actually need a permit to do door to door sales. That's GOOD. Copy-paste that legislation for phones.
I'd be 100x happier with my tax dollars hunting down and punishing phone abusers than funding a speed trap.
Don’t forget the entire internet, newspapers, telephone listings, radio, television, movies, video games, every surface of a store, public spaces like parks and sidewalks, and probably your dreams in the near future
Advertising is cancer and it destroys anything that tolerates it for even a moment. An industry with zero ethics or morals. If you work in advertising you’re a disgusting scumbag piece of shit and your parents are ashamed. No amount of money is worth it and the world would be objectively better without you in it.
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Not covered in this image: having to learn how to be more discreet in your tweens and teens. You told your dad's boss that dad "couldn't come to the phone right now" and took a message, not that he was dropping a hot deuce and had run out of toilet paper.
There were some benefits, like when I would skip school and they would call home and leave a message for my dad about it and I would be able to delete the message without him ever knowing about it.
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A shared family phone line was basically social roulette. You never knew if you were answering for gossip, business, or pure disaster.
Ahhh. Memories.
- Me at 11yr answering phone: “hello? I AM NOT !!!!
- Me at 16yr answering phone: “hello? I AM NOT <dad’s name>!!!!
And:
- Also me: “MOM PHONE FOR YOOOOUUU!!”
- Mom: <normal tone cause she’s in the room near by> “did you ask who it was!?!”
- Me: “who’s calling please? Mom, it’s Debbie!!!!!”
And lastly:
Kids will never get to experience the thrill of talking to your girlfriend about tonight while your little sister gets on the phone in the basement and makes “make out noises” loudly before giggling and hanging up.
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Yeah and sometimes, before my voice broke, I would be mistaken for my older sister when her boyfriend called. Which was awkward for everybody involved.
I too got a story like this: My sibling's partner confused us - not to blame him, we do sound alike. I picked up and he gleefully invited me on a date. I deadpan handed the phone to my sibling.
Also, if you made plans there was no reliable way to chase anybody up. So for example on a Friday you'd all agree to meet on Saturday in town by the park at 10am, then four out of the five of you would show up, you'd wait for 5-10 minutes and if Ashley didn't arrive you'd just be like "Well, I guess we'll find out if she's still alive on Monday" and then just go about your day. In theory someone could call her that evening and find out what happened, but usually nobody bothered.
There was also a brief but very confusing crossover period where you could call a friend, her Dad would answer and say she's already on the other phone (meaning a cell phone) so you'd make chit-chat with her Dad for five minutes in case the other call finished, which it usually didn't.
EDIT: Also I don't know if it was the same anywhere else, but where I grew up (UK) some kids tried to call a payphone from a different payphone and reverse the charges so they could chat for free, and the police showed up and told them off lol.
The best was when dad would yell "GET THE PHONE!!!" across the house. I'd pick it up and it would be for him. I'd yell down "IT'S FOR YOU!!!!" He'd' have to run across the house and answer the phone all winded and shit. Good times.
That's literally how doors work. Someone knocks and it could be your sister's boyfriend or your dad's boss or your best friend or a marketer or a serial-killer.
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How terrible, learning social skills for talking to a diversity of people and contexts.
When it was a telemarketer, we'd say "just a moment" and then sit the phone in front of the TV speaker. You'd hear little buzzy "hello? hello?" punctuating Jerry and George's coffee shop banter. It was funny. Other times my friends would make sex noises in the background. Also funny.
Another fun one was answering the phone with a question like "is Becky there?" This would always throw them off. Can't do any of this nowadays because now they just note that your number is an active one and sell it to data brokers (which is why I will never have "read receipts" activated on my phone)
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The world was different when you had to walk the streets and have random encounters with others.
Shaniqua don’t live here no more…
This was the way
It wasn't that bad
It was exciting. No idea what the phone call could bring.
Nowadays... 'Unknown number' just preloads frustration because you know it's most likely a robocall.
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