MisterShouty

Having ranted tirelessly on the subject of the annoyance of mobile phones in my life, I came to realize that my first post had merely scratched the surface of the insufferable and detremental effect this device has on me on a daily basis. So, the need to vent once more rises to fever pitch …

Not only do people make ridiculous amounts of noise with their mobile phones in normal public places, but they also cause huge amounts of annoyance by using their phones during events in which you are specifically requested to switch them off. Movie theatres is the classic example of this. The management go out of their way to request that all phones are switched off, specifically to respect the people with which you will be sharing the theatre. Yet, still we are surrounded by those that either think the rules do not apply to them, or simply don’t give a shit about ruining the experience of the other patrons.

I don’t think anyone would argue that people actually answering their phones and holding conversations during the movie is acceptible … but people do! It’s this level of inconsiderate behaviour that, in my mind, warrants punishment along the lines of public beatings. These arseholes have absolutely no respect for anyone else. They’re lost in their own tiny little world where nobody matters but them. They don’t deserve even basic human rights.

Then you have the people that fully accept the rule about phone calls but seem to think that the use of every other function on their phone is perfectly reasonable in the movie theatre! In a darkened room, where people behind them are attempting to enjoy the movie, they sit with their phones illuminating their face as they text, tweet and fuck about with anything they can.

If you don’t want to watch the fucking film, GET OUT OF THE THEATRE.

It’s so gawling that it doesn’t even occur to them that they are ruining the film for the people around them. They simply don’t give a shit. Again, the only answer is public humiliation.

The same goes for the use of phones at any other event at which people are attempting to enjoy the show. Comedy shows, concerts, theatres, anything.

Sit down, shut up and enjoy the show or GET THE FUCK OUT.

Another use of mobile phones that is not just inappropriate but dangerous AND illegal is while driving. People are fully aware of the danger of talking on the phone whilst driving, but they still seem to do so whenever they feel like it. Must be another rule that just doesn’t apply to them, right?

Frankly, I couldn’t care less if you die in a ten-car pile up caused by your lack of attention to the road. But if I’m in the car as well, it becomes my business. I will not stand for this unnecessary risk.

And this, again is only the tip of the iceberg … I know people that attempt to compose text messages, emails, facebook updates and tweets while driving. Well, I say “know”. They don’t do it while I’m in the car any more. Not if they want their phone to remain in one piece. I used to threaten to remove the battery … but as so many people have an iPhone these days, I just threaten to throw the fucking thing out of the window. They get the message.

On the subject of receiving messages, exactly when will people get to the point where they realize that receiving notifications every 30 seconds all day, every day is just TOO FUCKING MUCH TO HANDLE?

Seriously, between text messages, emails, facebook, twitter, instant messages, application messages and Christ knows what else, some people’s handsets are beeping and flashing none stop from dawn to dusk. Literally every few seconds. Being with these people is enough to drive a person insane … because they HAVE to check every message! You never know! It might be important!

In my opinion, the number of notifications a person receives is inversely proportional to the amount of actual social skill they posess. The social retards that have notifications streaming in every second of every day need serious help. Preferably from someone with a shotgun.

Moving slightly away from the social retards, email notifications on mobile phones are something that always piss me off. People simply do not communicate via email anymore. The service is only needed for confirmation of online orders and the exchange of documents. Email notifications on your phone are completely unnecessary. All you’re doing is providing spammers with a way of annoying you several times throughout the day rather than just once when you check your mail in the evening!

Texts, emails and tweets aside, the mobile phone is still the most obnoxious, rude device ever created. Receiving a phone call is exactly like someone standing in front of you, shouting “TALK TO ME! TALK TO ME!” and prodding you in the chest every two seconds until you speak to them. But it’s so difficult to get this point across. You tell someone that you didn’t get their text, didn’t receive their call and didn’t hear their voicemail because your phone was off – because you simply didn’t want to be disturbed and they look at you like you’ve strolled into their house and shit on their kitchen table!

We cannot allow privacy and the ability to be left alone to become a thing of the past!

You may think that the fact that you have my number in your phone gives you the right to invade my life at any time. You may have cultivated the elevated sense of self importance that phones give some mentally challenged people, but I refuse to be bullied into being at your beck and call 24 hours a day, every day. If you’re so desperate for attention, get yourself a gerbil, or a dog, or a prostitute! I don’t care! Just get out of my damn face.

Next up, the cheap bastards that use prepaid sim cards and attempt to make their own money last for as long as they can by forcing other people spend theirs! Cheeky fuckers that “one-tone” you when they want to speak to you – ring your phone for a couple of seconds and hang up, making YOU call THEM back. Who do they think they are? Why should I be paying for the call YOU want to make? Go Fuck Yourself!

These same people whinge and complain if you don’t send a response to their every text – even if it’s just an “OK” … and yet they’re the worst offenders for not responding!

Yeah, I got your message, but wanted to save my credit!

Get a real contract! What are you, 12?

Even now, there are aspects of mobile phone use that I’ve not covered … it’s an incredibly invasive device that has turned just about everyone I know into a dribbing, irritating idiot. Here’s hoping that sooner rather than later, this obsession that has been fed by the onslaught of apps and social networking sites will diminish and we will be able to live like civilized human beings again.

Although somehow, I can’t see it.

Posted in Consumer, General Misery, People Skills

Many years from now, when the wise men of the future look back at the downfall of the human race in the 20th and 21st Centuries, I have no doubt at all that they will cite the mobile phone as the beginning of the end.

This device has a hell of a lot to answer for. From it’s social implications to the tiny annoyances that become so frequent and widespread that they end up driving you up the wall with anger … to the completely anti-social, purposely irritating and offensive uses to which certain unbearable elements of the human race put them.

Let’s begin with something universally annoying.

Why is it that so many people insist on having their ringtones set to maximum volume? Fair enough, in a lot of noisy situations, it’s perfectly reasonable to have your phone turned up loud enough to hear. But for example, the quiet zone on a train – does that situation warrant a ringtone volume that would cut through the sound of a hundred hyenas giving birth?

It’s the complete lack of consideration for others that really gets to me in this particular example. There’s no way that these people simply forget that their phone isn’t in silent mode – because they’re exactly the same people that you can see prodding at the damn things every few seconds in case there is a new text message or Facebook Status Update that they’ve somehow missed since the last prod.

Do they think we want to hear their crappy little ringtone?
Are they trying to boast about their taste of music?
And do they really believe that BLARING out Akon’s latest for 20 seconds every time they get a call is the way to do it?

We don’t care! Put it on vibrate, you unbelievable arsehole!

Plus, once these tossers have let their shitty ringtone play for what seems like an eternity, we then have to endure their half of the conversation as they proceed to yell into the phone like it’s a baked bean tin connected by a length of string to the other party, a good 20 miles away.

Here’s a tip for you.

If you have to speak at a level that is even slightly above normal conversational volume just to be heard, chances are there’s something wrong with your phone.

“Wot? Summink wrong wiv ma wikid, perfect i-fone?”I hear you cry with that same slurred, broken English and with the same strangely simultaneously bored and annoyingly overenthustastic tone in which you carry out your lengthy conversations about absolutely nothing.

…

Yes. Stop yelling and get it fixed, you retard.

This brings me nicely onto something that I like to call “Chav FM”: The free music broadcast service available on the top deck of every bus in Great Britain!

Whenever I use public transport, it always astounds me that I’ve never seen a news story about one of those chavvy little teenage fuckwads that frequent the upper deck of buses being force-fed his own mobile phone by someone that has just finally snapped after putting up with the onslaught of the shit music they insist on pumping out of their tinny handsets for the entirity of the journey. It wouldn’t be quite as annoying if they occasionally played something worthwhile. Something that could actually be classed as music. But it’s always the worst kind of R&B and Rap music that they can possibly find.

Not that their taste in music is the real issue here. Again, it’s the total mind-numbing self-important lack of consideration for the people around them that sparks my fury.

There are times when what I feel like more than anything at seven o’clock in the morning is a good twenty minute blast of loud, obnoxious metal. But, not being a fucking wanker, I don’t inflict it everyone around me! I am fully aware of the social construct of our society and I like to live within it – in the hope that others will pay me the same courtesy.

Obviously, I’m constantly disappointed.

These Chav FM DJ’s are a huge offender in my mind and need stringing up by their genitals until they see the error of their ways.

But I digress …

Now, I’ve banged on about Facebook in the past, so I’ll keep this short.

One of the mobile phone’s biggest crimes against humanity is affording it’s user the opportunity to constantly “check” and “update” the plethora of so-called Social Networking sites.

The irony, of course, being that the very act of ignoring your ACTUAL friends even when they are sitting right next to you in order to send an inane message to one of your fake friends on the internet is INCREDIBLY rude and ANTI-social.

The use of Facebook is a perfect example of how the mobile phone is turning entire generations into ignorant, rude and self-important idiots.

Now, I never count myself completely out of my sweeping generalizations! I don’t mind admitting that I read Twitter updates for probably 30 to 40 minutes every day. But I consider Twitter to be in a different league of “Social” site than anything else. There’s no pretense of following famous people to be their “friend“. If you’re following someone, it’s because you are actually interested in what they have to say.

A very accurate comment appeared in my feed just a couple of days ago.

Twitter makes me like people I’ve never met while Facebook makes me hate people I know in real life.

So incredibly true. Although, it’s not just the content of the updates that makes me hate them. It’s the frequency in which they prod the updates into their phones while I’m trying to have a converasation with them. Just makes me want to punch them right in the fucking mouth.

This ties in with a kind of mobile phone ignorance that I’ve disliked for as long as I can remember. Way before social networking was the craze, in the very same way that Facebook kills conversations now, the text message became one of the most offensive things in my life.

In my mind, if I am face-to-face with a friend and we are mid-conversation and my phone alerts me of a text message … the person in my presence takes precedence! It seems so amazingly obvious to me that it’s just unbelievably rude to hold your hand up to someone with whom you are actually talking, stop the converastion practically mid-fucking-sentence so you can read a text message!

You ignorant, arrogant twat!

In these situations, I simply break off the conversation and walk away. Obviously, the person is not actually interested in what I’m saying – so why bother?

And finally, bringing it back to something on which we can hopefully all agree … text message abbreviations.

It has become the “in thing” to spell as much of your messages incorrectly as possible and this offends me on several levels.

Obviously, as a user of the English language, I make an effort to use it in the way it was meant. Maybe my grammar isn’t perfect on occasion, but I certainly try to speak and write properly when it matters. So, to see this trend of purposeful misspelling and unnecessary abbreviation growing around me makes my blood boil!

It’s not interesting, nor is it clever to act thick.

On the other hand, we have the people that simply ARE thick. It always makes me cringe when I see misspelled words on signs outside shops or in pubs … and even on television, usually in adverts for upcoming programmes on the badly run satellite and cable channels. This general dropping of the general public’s average IQ can certainly be linked to the lack of proper spelling and grammar in text messages and emails alike.

People tend to see the dislike of incorrect spelling and grammar as a “pet hate“. Something on which only total pedants waste their time. Well, I disagree. Reading a message laced with spelling errors is like listening to a song being sung out of key. It’s something that a lot of people simply cannot ignore. It’s lazy, unnecessary and just plain annoying.

Third, it’s abbreviations. You can ask people why they opt for “c u l8r” and they’ll tell you that it’s simply quicker and easier to type that than “see you later”.

Um, BULLSHIT.

Predictive text wes designed to make composing messages quicker and easier than selecting every letter separately in that manner. In fact, on many handsets you have to turn the predictive text function off to use these “handy” abbreviations! Can you begin to even imagine the amount of money that has been spent over the last fifteen years in creating this functionality … only to see it ignored? It doesn’t bare thinking about!

You might argue that predictive text doesn’t work. Well, the problem is that it assumes that you know how to spell. As I’ve already established, if you’re one of those people that has difficulties, it’s probably because you’re a bit thick.

Furthermore, on a lot of more recent handsets, they keyboards are qwerty! The very same layout that you use every day on your computer. So, it should be absolutely no problem to type a short message properly without having to resort to childish abbreviations for as many of the words as you can. Are you so fucking lazy that you’re making the effort to save yourself 3 or 4 key presses per message?

Get over yourself, you irritating cunt.

Posted in Consumer, General Misery, People Skills