Cell phones build culture of rudeness

Bonnie Chau Chau is a second-year English
student who, deep down, wishes she had more people in her address
book. E-mail her at bchau@media.ucla.edu to make her
feel more popular. Click Here
for more articles by Bonnie Chau

Cell phone use is a breeding ground for a generation of idiots,
promoting isolation and perpetuating insecurity. As if people
aren’t impassive enough with strangers, we now have a
palm-sized excuse to place even less priority on being polite to
people.

Who needs interaction with people you’re actually
physically next to? Face-to-face conversations? Overrated! If
people today were ever taught manners ““ this is questionable
in itself ““ the use of cell phones is slowly undoing it
all.

For one, it’s so rude ““ so rude ““ to be in
conversation with someone and then stop to pick up the phone and
begin another conversation for however many minutes. In fact,
it’s comparable to call-waiting … but at least with
call-waiting you don’t have to pretend you’re not
listening in on someone else’s conversation.

Why do people think it’s totally fine for someone to stop
mid-conversation and start a conversation with some other person?
Why is it OK if it’s facilitated by a little phone which may
or may not be sending deadly radio waves into your brain?

What I like best about cell phones is how people have no need
whatsoever to memorize any phone numbers. Take away your cell
phone, and you are just a sad little person. Perhaps you’re
right next to a pay phone and perhaps you have 10,000 quarters. But
you are still just a sad little person with no phone numbers in
your head. With all the brain cells you’re saving by not
memorizing numbers, you can do more productive things, like program
new ring tones into your phone or play Snake or even add and delete
people from your 1000-name address book.

As adept as we might become at doing these things, we are slowly
losing our ability to be alone. Even those very long five-minute
walks from class to class must be filled with
“I-have-friends-I am-not-alone!” conversations. I see
people who hold their cell phones like security blankets, who check
their messages just to look like they’re doing something. But
face it, talking loudly on a cell phone about last night’s
party will not reinforce your popularity. And the people who use
those hands-free pieces look stupid, talking while staring into
space.

Now surprisingly, I too have a cell phone. But I hate having it
with me. I hate having it on. I almost never bring it with me to
school. Any time it rings, I cringe and feel a deep hatred for the
phone, whether or not I’m in a public place where others can
actually hear my “Brave Scotland” ring tone. And any
time someone else’s phone rings, I just want to scream.

I almost did two weeks ago, when I was in class and
someone’s cell phone rang. This class has 15 students and we
were all sitting around a table in a deep discussion. And then a
cell phone rang. Then the girl had the nerve to pick it up!
I’d never seen this before and couldn’t believe I was
seeing it then. This girl … she bent down over her backpack and
picked her phone up and answered it.

“Hello?”

Then she started having a conversation as if it were just
totally fine. I was utterly stupefied. So was the professor. Is
this not the epitome of rudeness? I suppose this should not be
especially shocking since I have recently established that every
day, in every lecture, at least two cell phones will ring. At
least.

What’s worse is when people don’t pick up their
phones in class. I don’t know if they just can’t find
their phone or if they don’t know it’s theirs or if
they’re just frozen, hoping if they don’t answer it,
nobody will know it’s theirs and the ringing will just go
away.

You’d think by this time in the school year, this long
after the invention of the cell phone, people would learn to turn
off their phones. But cultural lag dictates that we invent the cell
phone first and then sit around and wait for manners to catch up.
It’s a shame our lecture halls can’t be like Ackerman,
built inside thick slabs of reception-free concrete, but so be
it.

In the meantime let’s just be really cool and uncouth and
marry our cell phones.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *