Clueless

[billroper]

daisy_knotwise and I just got back from Augustfest where the closing music act was Joe Cantafio and the 101st Rock Division, which turned out to be a substantially better group than I'd expected. They'd recently done a tour in the Middle East, entertaining U.S. and other Coalition troops, which made for some interesting stories as well.

While the rest of the band was taking a break, Joe played a few acoustic pieces. So he's standing at the microphone, trying valiantly to introduce a song that he'd written for his cousin who died in Iraq, and there's this clueless individual standing three feet in front of the stage, talking loudly on his Nextel phone. After this went on for more than a minute, Joe finally asked someone to please shoo the fellow away.

There's a desperate shortage of common sense out there.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

There's a desperate shortage of common sense out there.

Too true. That's why so many of us won't call sense common, because it just isn't.

Sorry to hear the idiocy was so prominent, and I hope it didn't ruin the night.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what it is about the phone in our culture that turns many people into completely insensitive jerks. I was aware of this before cell phones -- if you're talking to someone, no matter how important and urgent the discussion, and the phone rings, they drop what they're doing to answer it and will often chat at length about what brand of hair color to buy. Somehow the person calling on the phone, just because they're calling on the phone, becomes the number one priority and the person who's physically present is snubbed.

The way many people will drop whatever they're doing and gab on their cell phones no matter where they are and what they're doing is the same thing technologically enabled.

It occurs to me that cell phones need a large, prominent control that I'll call the oops button. It should be large and prominent so it's easy to hit it without getting the phone in your hand to look at it. It would: (1) play a recorded message to the person who's calling, on the lines of "I'm in a place where I can't pull out my phone, I'll get back to you as soon as I can", and (2) put the phone into silent mode or turn it off. Since I just got a phone, I'm realizing how hard it is to remember to silence it when entering a place where it would be rude to have it go off. I really don't expect it to ring, but if it did I'd probably be embarrassed.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

I think the rudeness can be put down to pavlovian conditioning. We have been taught to pick up the phone when a bell rings. People everywhere find it extremely difficult to not answer. It takes ...well..thought, and some will power. Could be there is an addictive tendency at work too. Which would explain why some are able to ignore it. Startlingly few people are intelegent in any useful way.

[billroper]

Actually, I think if you thumb the volume control on my phone while it is ringing, it will shut off the ringer.

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

The nextel phone system is a particular invader of public peace. That annoying beep before anyone talks, and then people usually have the volume cranked all the way up so they can hear if someone is talking to them even if they're seperated from their phone by 100 feet. They annoy me more than cell phones.