Lamenting the Demise of Hangups 215
An anonymous reader writes "Ian Bogost writes about a cultural tradition we've mostly lost as smartphones have become ubiquitous: hanging up. While we still use the terminology (in the same way we say 'rewind' when skipping backward on our DVR), the physical act of hanging up a telephone when we're done using it no longer occurs. And we don't get that satisfying crash and clatter when hanging up on somebody to make a point. 'In the context of such gravity, the hangup had a clear and forceful meaning. It offered a way of ending a conversation prematurely, sternly, aggressively. Without saying anything, the hangup said something: we're done, go away. ... Today a true hangup — one you really meant to perform out of anger or frustration or exhaustion — is only temporary and one-sided even when it is successfully executed. Even during a heated exchange, your interlocutor will first assume something went wrong in the network, and you could easily pretend such a thing was true later if you wanted. Calls aren't ever really under our control anymore, they "drop" intransitively.' It's an interesting point about the minor cultural changes that go along with evolving technology."
They beauty of smart phones (Score:5, Funny)
Make an aggressive hang-up app.
Re:They beauty of smart phones (Score:5, Informative)
And of course, dmomo's law rings true once more:
"The Internet already did your idea":
http://www.appbrain.com/app/the-cell-slammer/The.Slammer [appbrain.com]
Re:They beauty of smart phones (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't remember aggressive hang-ups being audibly distrubing. Maybe it's because you had hammered the switch down before the crashing noise.
The real problem is that mobile phone calls disconnect all the time, and for a number of reasons. So terminating a call prematurely isn't always a definitive, "fuck you, you've been hung up on."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just send a followup text message with the goatse image attached and the quote "this is what your mama ate last night!" That will get the message across, while also permanently psychologically scarring the individual and preventing them for ever again displaying affection to their mother--you know, what you really want in the moment of anger during a hangup.
Re:They beauty of smart phones (Score:4, Funny)
Slight variation, I sent the goatse text to myself after having an angry conversation with my mom. I feel much better now.
Re: (Score:2)
The real problem is that mobile phone calls disconnect all the time, and for a number of reasons.
What, when you press the disconnect button? Are there any other reasons?
Re: (Score:2)
Lost signal, failed tower handoff.
Re:They beauty of smart phones (Score:5, Insightful)
This problem is easy to solve:simply say "fuck you" before disconnecting.
Re: (Score:2)
Which, incidentally, is exactly what is done to achieve the desired dramatic effect in the (painfully amateuristic) video accompanying 'The Slammer'.
Re:They beauty of smart phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Hanging up on someone was as rude as telling them to go fuck themselves. Anyone who misses hanging up on someone has something wrong with them.
We've traded hanging up on someone with the even ruder talking on the phone when you're conversing with someone face to face. When the phone rang, the polite thing to do was answer it, say you had company and offer to call back. Now assholes just ignore you and gab on their phone. Didn't you kids have parents that taught you how to act like a human being?
Don't get me started on musical ring tones, sometimes I feel like walking into next cube over and smashing their goddamned cell phone. Whoever came up with the idea should be tied to a chair and made to listen to the first fifteen notes of the song they hate worst, over and over.
Re: (Score:2)
So you prefer the Apple way where half a train carriage fumbles for a pocket whenever one goes off?
What pisses me off is the Morse code style SMS notification. It's always at top volume, goes on for ages and is the preserve of those having long conversations with the other person. If you've got that much to babble about fucking call them instead of "BIP-BIP-BIP BEEP-BEEP BIP-BIP-BIP" (twice) every minute. You're probably going to see whoever you're texting obsessively in about an hour anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you assume it's only one person? The heavy texters I know are usually conversing with multiple people at the same time.
Re: (Score:2)
I have done it and have it done to me, however a sudden hangup is more about timing as opposed violent response. As the other party never hears that crash of the phone hitting the receiver by that point the phone call was already over.
Ring tones yea that I agree with being able to modify ring tones so a room full of (popular brand name of phone) everybody doesn't reach into their pockets, but most of them are just plain wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. When my phone rings when I'm talking to someone I switch it to vibrate and apologize for not having done so before.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I see by your UID you're not that young and were used to landlines and phone manners. I don't know why things changed with cell phones.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're a Pavlovian Dog, yes. The polite thing to do, if you have Free Will, is let your answering machine or voicemail take the message.
We are talking about the days when phones had physical bells. There was no voicemail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, people could just grow a pair and yell, "You know what? FUCKKKKK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" into the phone before 'hanging up'. I'm pretty sure the message would be conveyed.
Also: I'm a fan of the "fuck this shitbrain, I'm putting it on mute and setting it on my desk while I do something important," dis. Then they have to hang up: I care just enough to show them that I don't value their time, and will denigrate them by making them hang up on me.
Lame (Score:4, Insightful)
This is really just an updated version of Seinfeld's cordless phone bit
Re: Lame (Score:2)
That's what I thought at first, but if you read to the end of the summary, you'll find out that they're actually talking about how calls drop unexpectedly all the time any way so, the person on the other end is never sure if you hung up on them or if the call just dropped.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a call drop... once? twice maybe? in the last 10 years. Must be an American thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed; unless the battery gives out - and then the phone will warn me earlier, so I can warn the other person - I never have dropped calls, even when talking inside a car on the highway.
There Must be a Slam-the-Phone hang-up app... (Score:2)
With all the craaps out there, how can there not be an app that plays a phone-slamming sound over the connection and then disconnects the call?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, we've still got that. You know, when you call back, and it rings once and then goes straight to voicemail.
Even by the standards of crappy Soulskill posts... (Score:3, Informative)
...this is a crappy Soulskill post.
Even for a slow Saturday night.
Couldn't you find another Apple linkbait troll piece to post instead? You know, "Rumor Says New OS X Release Locked to Processor." You know, the lame crap that gets posted here every day which is still better than this...
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention that the idea put forward here was done on a Seinfeld episode years ago.
No app necessary. (Score:4, Insightful)
Preface disconnecting with the following: "This is me hanging up on you".
Re:No app necessary. (Score:5, Informative)
Forget the hangup.... I'm missing (Score:5, Insightful)
the full duplex, circuit-switched, not-laggy realtime conversations I used to have on a landline phone. I could be talking, and the other party could be talking at the same time, and both of us could hear each other and understand everything.
The young uns here will probably think I'm making this up. I'm not; back in the day, Candace Bergen could drop a pin and I could hear it over the phone.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm missing [...] the full duplex, circuit-switched, not-laggy realtime conversations I used to have on a landline phone.
That depended on the distance involved. I grew up in an era when most phones had a rotary dial and a real bell that rang (now I settle for an mp3 recording of a 1960s post-office phone on my Android device), and it was quite common to get a noticeable lag on international calls. Not as badly as with some VOIP calls, but there nonetheless.
But if your call connected (which it always did except when lines became congested at Christmas-time), the line was yours until you ended the call.
Even back in the 198
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No kidding! A person could talk for hours and hours with "unlimited long distance" and hear every waver in a person's breath with a crappy $5 telephone.
Currently, I'll get randomly dropped on my cell at least once a conversation while at home. This only started occurring a week ago, when I got back from a long trip: I'm right at the periphery of two different carrier towers, and while I had been able to pick up the good signal of an off-brand carrier, I'm only getting a (much weaker) AT&T signal. Fail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If call quality was an important aspect of cell phones, Nokia would still rule the world. Apparently, angry birds is more important, so you get what most other people pay for.
Re: (Score:2)
Your phone calls over land lines stopped being pure analog in the 80s when everyone switched to fibre back hauls. They've essentially been VoIP (not in the strictest sense, but in the 'converted to digital from analog' sense) since then.
Your conference calls will have bigger problems with conference/speaker phones than anything else, those are the ones that really destroy a conversation.
I haven't used WebEx in a while, but you can certainly tail the difference between everyone using a handset or headset in
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Candace Bergen could drop a pie and I could hear it over the phone.
FTFY
Re:Forget the hangup.... I'm missing (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest I don't recall ever having a dropped landline call since 9/11 (northeast NJ so it's understandable that the network was properly overloaded)
Say what you want about the Bell monopoly (and its Baby Bells) - they sure knew how to engineer a damn solid network.
Re:Forget the hangup.... I'm missing (Score:5, Insightful)
they sure knew how to engineer a damn solid network.
That's what regulated, cost-oriented prices in a monopoly do. Gold plate everything, spare no expense in the research of perfection, and earn a fixed percentage on it. Nowadays, we spend money on advertisement instead, because it's much more efficient at recruiting clients than quality in a competitive market.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is exactly the problem I've been having lately while on AT&T towers. Weak signal, random jumps in signal quality (loss of signal to full bars and vice versa), and calls not coming in even when I supposedly had full signal. I really want to get my phone to hop over to the nearby iWireless (an affiliate of my carrier, t-mobile) and I know have good signal (I was on them previously but can't find them now), but I'm not quite sure how...
Re:Forget the hangup.... I'm missing (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure mean "when you had AT&T since the breakup of their monopoly", not "AT&T back when they provided analog phones and had the US telephone monopoly".
Earlier in my electrical engineering experience, I actually reconnected 50 and 60 year old phones in old houses to active, analog, land-line circuits from almost any decade between 1920 and 1980, and it _all worked_, including the older phones that were wired directly to wiring jacks inside of wall plates, and lacked modern RJ-11 wiring connectors. (The 1900 era phone took some extra work.) Many, if not most, of those old phones frankly had better sound quality than the modern consumer grade phones. And because the entire setup was analog, they filtered but still carried some small amount of higher frequency signals that modern digital phones _cannot_ carry, particularly useful for sharp sounds that digital analysis and remixing smear. A "bang" or "clatter" including that of hanging up the phone, was much more clear.
There are some very real advantages of modern digital systems, such as more reliable transmission over long distances and easier central switching without mechanical relays. But the robustness of the equipment and overall quality of the equipment that AT&T was providing for consumer use was not one of the problems of older phones.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure mean "when you had AT&T since the breakup of their monopoly", not "AT&T back when they provided analog phones and had the US telephone monopoly".
No, it was back before. They were big into cell phones in the 1950s.
I didn't read past your opening sentence. Anyone so deliberately obtuse is not worth talking to. Throwing out irrelevant statements that look to be a pro-monopoly political stance in a discussion that's not the least bit relevant to set off my "ignore the loon" meter.
Uh... you can still hang up on someone... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to hang up on someone and deliver the same experience, just shout "fuck you!" and tap the "end call" button. You get the same satisfaction and they'll get the message. Is that so hard?
Yes, and a generation of kids (Score:2, Funny)
yes, and a generation of kids will grow up clicking on a stylized picture of a floppy disk to save things, without having ever used a floppy disk.
This is news how?
Proof of copyright concept right here? (Score:2)
So this here is why we have copyright, to protect the inane misguided ramblings of those who have nothing constructive to say but are desperate for people to listen to them. So we call it "art" and give them a monopoly on their inanity for several generations.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, but they flip side is that no one else will ever be allowed to say these same inane ramblings and claim it as their own. Only Ian Bogost will ever be seen as THAT stupid (at least on that subject).
Re: (Score:2)
Touche, a silver lining!
If only... (Score:2)
SIGHUP (Score:2)
Yeah, when my process gets a SIGKILL it doens't know what happened (or even THAT it happened), but when it gets a SIGHUP it knows someone or some thing hung up on it or at least pretended to.
Call center work (Score:3)
The best hangup (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, traditional phones break into many more pieces of shrapnel... hopefully you don't get hit by the whip-around effect when the phone cord reaches its maximum length...
Technology to the rescue... (Score:2)
Dare I say that one could "improve" on the so-called hangup, and make it arbitrarily more obnoxious if so desired. Hell, in place of the end call button, present a menu of your favored obnoxious call termination options.
Better act quick though; this brilliant innovation is just the thing patents are made for!
I miss the hang up... (Score:5, Interesting)
...about as much as I miss putting a new roll in the fax machine. i.e. not at all.
But then again I bet if you look hard enough you'll find an old fart who thinks that VHS tapes are superior to Bluray.
Re: (Score:2)
Well you could record a live TV show onto a VHS, you can't do that with a Bluray. Just saying...
Sure you can. You can even get writable discs for your camcorder, if you like tinkering with old technology.
And before the phone? (Score:5, Funny)
Before we had the phone, there was no way to hangup at all! Let's lament the lack of smacking someone on the face and stalking off!
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, that is fairly lamentable. You can't do that at all anymore without serious repercussions. Meanwhile, cowards who would never even look someone in the eye get away with screwing them over every day through various back room dealings and lies.
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong. Slap a man's face, and his seconds would contact yours and arrange pistols for two and coffee for one; in the Old West, he would just draw on you, or, if Wyatt Earp, pull your revolver from your holster and pistol-whip you into unconsciousness. As for cowards and back room deals, how did the Templars lose everything, or what happened when Thomas Cromwell broke up the monasteries for King Henry VIII?
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to what you think, duels and gunfights were far less common than you think.
You didn't openly shoot people or challenge them to duals since there was a 50/50 chance your ass would be dead. In about 3 duels you're almost certainly going to be dead (yes, I know one of are particular presidents was a dueling fanatic, but there are exceptions to every rule that do not make the normal).
Gunfights weren't common in the old west. Duels weren't common either. It had to escalate considerable further in mos
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to what you think, duels and gunfights were far less common than you think.
And slapping a man a far worse insult than you think (unless the slapper was female, of course -- in that case, it would just be embarrassing or foreplay). Also, most duels ended with both men exchanging fruitless shots, then deciding that honor was satisfied. Slapping another man, however, was far more serious than A making ambiguous comments about another man (B) (probably that he was entirely too close to his daughter) then refusing to publicly apologize for the third hand comments that got back to B u
Hmm (Score:2)
Isn't that what swearing is for? (Score:2)
Swear at the person, then hit "End".
Re: (Score:2)
Swear at the person, then hit "End".
the two aren't mutually exclusive. Swearing at the person before throwing the handset down just added to the satisfaction.
Re: (Score:2)
dont swear.. get a referee whistle. works especially well against call centers, as they cannot take off their headphones fast enough.
Re: (Score:2)
What are these "dropped calls", then? (Score:2)
I keep hearing people talk about "dropped calls" - is that when the landline develops a fault and the audio keeps dropping out? I don't know if they still do that, because I haven't had a landline phone for about ten years - and their inherent unreliability is one of the reasons I got rid of it.
Re: (Score:3)
Where do you come from, 1960s or 70s France, or Eastern Europe?
Re: (Score:2)
No, a fairly remote part of Scotland. I got rid of the landline because frankly it was crap and I wouldn't want to have to rely on it in an emergency. I still have the copper pair for ADSL, but that's crap too - and in fact failed while I was composing this post so the router has switched to 3G.
It's raining and a bit windy, so the line has probably failed somewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
In the USA and in England, it's normal for mobile phone calls to disconnect in the middle of the conversation. Each instance of this is a "dropped call".
I go to England quite a lot. I've never had one of these "dropped calls". I don't know about the USA though, I hear their phone system pretty much sucks.
Seinfeld Routine (Score:2)
Why are we blaming smart phones? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Erh... it may be me, but ... how about SAYING so? (Score:3)
I needn't slam a phone to tell the other person on the phone that I'm done with him.
We recently invented a technology called "talking". It allows to "tell" them instead of using possibly ambiguous actions that may be misinterpreted. "Go to hell, you old bastard" is hard to misinterpret.
Hang-up, dial, ringing.. (Score:2)
There are tons of words that are in use that derive from something else - yet people still cope.
It is neither novel nor clever to point these out. And even worse to make a Slashdot article about a stupid observation. Hang-up means "to end a phone call" - the term is derived from the action of older phones, where hanging the receiver on the phone ended the call.
I'm going to bed to do some that's word has these origins:
"The long-standing speculation is that this Latin word is altered (probably by influence of
Re: (Score:2)
No, not quite. That's not what "hang up" means.
When I was a boy, you young whippersnapper, we had a candlestick phone (look it up: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/telephones/candlestick [collectorsweekly.com]). When the phone rang our distinctive ring pattern, you picked up the candlestick with your right hand, then picked the receiver up with your left and held it to your ear. When the call was complete, you hung the receiver on its hook. Not placed, hung. That, sonny boy, is where the term "hang up" comes from.
Since the te
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...
Catch-22 (Score:3)
From Catch-22:
"It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money."
"T. S. Eliot," ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he requested Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling." Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.
"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.
Today, someone would ponder why Wintergreen would slam down the phone, since that would break the screen.
Re: (Score:2)
Today, someone would ponder why Wintergreen would slam down the phone, since that would break the screen.
That book made me wonder about a lot of things that went on in it.
Sounds like a new app (Score:2)
We have the "End Call" button. We just need an app that adds "Hung up" and "Hang up hard" buttons, that insert the sound of a legacy phone receiver hitting the holder. The app needs to randomize these sounds, otherwise a "Hang up silencer" app will come out. Well, it probably will, anyway. And we'll probably end up with a market in "hang up sounds", like spitting, laughing, mooing, etc.
Usenet (Score:2)
What we really need is an app that generates a *plonk* sound, hangs up, and dumps the caller into a block list.
Why would you want to keep them? (Score:5, Funny)
It took me years of psychotherapy to get rid of my hangups. Why would I be sad about their demise?
Smashing it on the ground is even more satisfying (Score:2)
Disconnect about hangups... (Score:2)
First of all, If you are simply hanging up on someone, then you are just doing it wrong....
Secondly, disconnects became relatively common as people started buying cordless phones (as opposed to cell phones) as the battery would die unexpectedly. Cordless phones became common in the 90's. This, in my opinion, is what changed how people viewed disconnects (i.e. the need to call back), not today's cell phone usage. In other words, this behaviour change started much sooner than you think.
Finally, who just ha
other languages (Score:2)
for example, in german the word hangup "aufhängen" was displaces by "auflegen" (to lay sth. down), like you did with the old telecom telephones with keys on one big block and a receiver to hold at your ear. Of course, you could try to implement this by an app, which hangs up when you lay down the phone ... but face it, you did not hang up or lay down your DECT mobile, as well.
Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone (Score:2)
My Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone hang up when I slam them down on the table.
The Galaxy also mutes when I cover the screen with my hand.
I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.
An app for that? (Score:2)
It shouldn't be hard to make an app for that. Digitize the crash of a bakelite handset on a rotary phone, and make an app that plays that clip before disconnecting.
Re: (Score:2)
This is nonsense. People still hang up on each other. The load crash just isnt there... instead its a simple call ended. Then they attempt to call back unsure if you did it on purpose only to get voicemail. Then it dawns on them.
That the callee's battery has run out?
Re: (Score:2)
No. A phone that isn't on the network will go directly to voicemail, no ring. A phone on the network will ring at least once to the caller before the phone even responds, and that gives the caller notice that it went to voicemail because it was directed to.
No rings = not on the network (Dead battery, turned off, out of range, airplane mode)
1 ring = forced to voicemail ( I don't want to talk to you )
many rings = ignored. (I'm busy or not near my phone)
Re: (Score:2)
If the other person didn't warn them that the battery could give out, there's no practical difference from an hang up on purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
Happens all the time in what has been unofficially called The Clapham Triangle:
"Yeah, that was fun. Look, we ought to get the others involved in this so we can organise this when everyone is free and then... hello? Hello?"
"Are you still there? Hello?"
"Hello?" *looks at phone, call appears to still be connected* "Hello? HELLO?"
*other commuters express facial irritation. I mean, come on, you make this journey every day at this time and this always happens. What's wrong with you?*
"Hello?" *rechecks phone, call
Re: (Score:2)
Glad that's not just me.
I wish they'd trash all calls for much more of the route; what do you think we'd have to club together for that service?
Rgds
Damon
Re: (Score:2)
You don't hear a dial tone on landlines either. I've always wondered about that on TV shows because I've never heard a dial tone on a landline when the other person hung up, just silence.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine the screen or the case would crack, plus a smartphone is usually expensive to replace.
Back when you were throwing that Nokia E63 at the wall, it cost as much as a smartphone does now. Once all the smartphone data is kept in the cloud so you don't have to manually recreate it, you will be able to start gratuitously ruining them again.
Re: (Score:2)
It is no longer illegal to telemarket to cell phones in America. Law was changed a year or so ago, maybe slightly more but within the last couple of years.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you shoe in the afternoon? Just because of other responsibilities in the morning that are more important or is there some other logic that I'm unaware of?
You sound experienced, I'm asking out of ignorance on my part.
Re: (Score:2)
A cow with a full udder is very uncomfortable; if you delay milking her, her body will reduce her milk production. Chickens start feeding as soon as the sky brightens before sunrise, if you don't feed them when they are ready, they won't eat as much and their egg production may suffer. You feed pigs before the heat of the day because they eat less when they are hot. The time of day for shoeing a horse has little impact on one's daily food production, so it waits.
Re: (Score:2)