| I see this as a manifestation of the loss of teaching effective communication skills. This takes a moment to explain, so please slow down and consider this: before the cultural revolutions of the 1960's, general education included more emphasis on communications conflicts and resolutions of them. For example, every school had a debate team, and the various forms and rules of debate were common knowledge. Yes, this is true. Debate and watching people skilled at argumentative discussion used to be a popular form of entertainment. Then, during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the best or the "stars of debate" all sided with the youth culture and not the establishment. That then triggered the removal of debate from educations, from entertainment, and from public life. Now, decades later we have the situation that groups of adults cannot form without conflicts and arguments that drive the community creation aspects away. We have created a culture that cannot communicate, because we have stopped teaching basic oral conflict negotiation of any form. |
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| ▲ | lapcat 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I think people also forget (or don’t even know) that before mobile phones you’d often walk over to someone’s house just to knock on the door to find out if they were in or see what they were doing. Um, we had phones before mobile phones. | | |
| ▲ | vidarh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We did, and yet people did still often just come over unannounced, to the point that it that the unannounced visit - which was common enough to be believable, but not always welcome - was a frequent plot point in various media. It was common during my childhood for us to always have something in the cupboard - like a cake or biscuits or chocolate - that we could offer in case someone just dropped by. It's been decades since I've cared about having anything ready for a possible surprise visitor, as while before I'd feel rude if I didn't have anything, now I'd feel they were rude for not checking in advance as now they rarely have an excuse for not doing so. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | > We did, and yet people did still often just come over unannounced, to the point that it that the unannounced visit - which was common enough to be believable, but not always welcome The question is, what exactly is the relevance of mobile vs. non-mobile phones? I think it really depends on the walking distance. If someone is your neighbor, there's not a lot of effort saved from calling or texting first. Going back to the OP, these are two very different things: "you can just text them… or not even bother and check their socials to see what impression of a life they’re presenting today." As far as one-to-one communication is concerned, a landland call is just as good as a mobile call or a text. But social media addiction is an entirely different matter. That's not even about announced vs. unannounced visits but rather about living in the real world vs. living in a virtual world. > was a frequent plot point in various media. I'm not sure that citing fiction is useful. | | |
| ▲ | vidarh an hour ago | parent [-] | | I explained the relevance of mobile phones to you. People are not always at home. Without a mobile phone you had an excuse. Now you don't really. It doesn't even matter whether or not you were actually home - there was less of a social expectation to always call because it was a recognised excuse that you "were in the neighborhood" and implicitly had no way to check without dropping by. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | I already responded to this point at length here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49892375 but in brief: on this interpretation, mobile phones should actually result in more successful drop-bys, because you can call or text when you're "in the neighborhood". Thus, mobile phones are not an excuse to avoid home visits. | | |
| ▲ | vidarh 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You're still missing the point entirely: A lot of those visits are not wanted and weren't wanted to the point that unwanted visits were a trope in media. Before they would happen because we had no ways to stop them until someone was at the door with a plausible excuse. |
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| ▲ | flyinghamster an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Um, we had phones before mobile phones. True, but back in the day one had to pay for every call, sometimes at per-minute rates: always so for long distance, and in some areas even for local calls. Quite a contrast to today's unlimited-minutes cellular plans (which likely get used little enough that the providers have no trouble offering them). A key factor in the development of dialup BBS systems in the US was that local calls were usually at least flat-rate, with unlimited service available here and there. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, back then I recall a number of social events revolving around local BBSes in Champaign-Urbana, and Fidonet's Net 115 in the Chicago area. All that sort of thing vaporized pretty quickly once the internet opened up. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | > back in the day one had to pay for every call, sometimes at per-minute rates: always so for long distance, and in some areas even for local calls. Where and when did you pay per-minute for local calls? Everywhere I lived and traveled within the US back in the day, so to speak, local calls were always unlimited, even in rural areas. | | |
| ▲ | flyinghamster 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In the Chicago area you had options ranging from fully-metered to unlimited throughout the metro area. In the 1990s, as more people got online, the unlimited plans went away, and the best you got was that calls within eight miles were flat-rate but pay-per-call. |
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| ▲ | gizajob 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I know. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So please explain the relevance of mobile phones. Where I lived, suburban United States, landlines were ubiquitous, and we used them all the time. | | |
| ▲ | gizajob an hour ago | parent [-] | | If you’re at home, you can answer the landline. If you’re the person who is out, then you don’t have a landline to call. Or then have to make the decision while out to go and find a payphone and have correct change and put in money to make a call to see if the person is in, while the clock is frantically ticking on the call. Like if you’re equidistant between your house and your friends house, it is also simpler to walk to theirs and find them rather than walk home, call them, check they’re in, and then walk to theirs anyway. Also if you weren’t the person who paid the phone bill, it was often presented to you as a more parsimonious solution to use your feet rather than the telephone. Another example is if you made a plan to meet somewhere at a specific time and the person didn’t turn up. You would have no clue about where they were or what happened even if you found a payphone and called their house and it rang out. You were still s.o.l. for the rest of the day so dealt with it. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | > If you’re the person who is out, then you don’t have a landline to call. Or then have to make the decision while out to go and find a payphone and have correct change and put in money to make a call to see if the person is in, while the clock is frantically ticking on the call. You seem to be completely changing the situation. In this comment, you're talking about wanting to visit someone at home, whereas in your original comment, you're talking about not wanting to visit someone at home: "there’s fewer reasons to even go to someone’s house any more, you can just text them… or not even bother and check their socials to see what impression of a life they’re presenting today." In other words, the mobile phone is a replacement for a home visit rather than a means for a home visit. (On the other hand, a laptop or desktop works just as well or better for checking social media. Indeed I'm currently typing on a laptop.) It's true that mobile phones can make it easier than landlines to find out if someone is home, but if that's how people were using mobile phones, then you would expect more home visits, or at least more successful home visits. > Also if you weren’t the person who paid the phone bill, it was often presented to you as a more parsimonious solution to use your feet rather than the telephone. I don't understand this point. Long-distance calls were frequently billed per call, but of course walking is not a replacement for those. Local calls were typically unlimited for a fixed monthly rate. | | |
| ▲ | vidarh 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Local calls were typically unlimited for a fixed monthly rate. Mostly in the US. Today it is more widespread, but it used to be highly unusual. | |
| ▲ | gizajob an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You seem to be completely autistic and determined to raise disputes where none exist. Maybe in your suburban sprawl where multiple telephones and multiple cars per household are essential necessities because it’s a 90 minute walk to a shop or a friend’s then one would have unlimited local calls but in huge parts of the rest of the world unlimited calling simply wasn’t a thing. I can’t imagine you get invited to many dinner parties. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | > You seem to be completely autistic > I can’t imagine you get invited to many dinner parties. Please read and respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | |
| ▲ | gizajob 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You’ve broken and disrespected the HN guidelines towards several people throughout this thread so it’s nonsensical to go invoking them at others. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > You’ve broken and disrespected the HN guidelines towards several people throughout this thread How so? At worst, I said "Um". Regardless of what you believe I've done, do you not acknowledge that you ought to follow the guidelines, and that personal insults are unacceptable, blatantly cross the line? The guidelines don't say that you get to violate them if someone else does. It may be hypocritical of me—though I disagree with that here—but in any case it's not nonsensical. |
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| ▲ | gravatron 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | nah he's right, you seem rather maladjusted. |
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