Two Generations, Two Phones: From Shouting to Voicemail

The Loud Ringtone and the Unanswered Call

The mobile phone rings at full volume, and its owner takes a while to answer. She searches her bag, finds the device, looks at the screen, and picks up. Several seconds pass, and according to the initial account, there was no emergency on the other end. Another participant points out that those under 50 refuse to answer calls. Two ways of coexisting with the same gadget.

Why Do Older People Let Their Phones Ring Until Someone Yells?

The pattern described in the initial message includes a jarring tone, maximum volume, and a slow search. Among the ringtones mentioned are the Spanish Legion's anthem and Spain's national anthem, and even Tarzan's yell, which provokes laughter from others when it rings in public.

There's a nuance: according to the message that opens the thread, the call is never urgent. One of the examples cited are conversations to say that the vacation is going well or that they haven't stopped for three days, spoken at the top of their lungs, as if the earpiece needed help to reach the other side.

Under-50s Who Don't Answer the Phone

The paradox was highlighted in a reply to the thread: those who refuse to talk on the phone are not the older generation, but those under 50.

A participant points out the habit of texting before calling: Can I call you? Before the tone even rings.

Videos Without Headphones and Terrace Video Calls

The conflict isn't just about calls. At a bar counter, some play a forwarded video without headphones, oblivious to the fact that they are flooding the nearby customers with sound. Others forward the same thing to all their groups, like the email chains that circulated twenty years ago.

The height of it is the video call at a restaurant to show what one is eating. According to one account, the interlocutor is heard with a metallic sound, and the conversation bounces off the facade opposite.

Keypad Sounds and Five-Digit Passwords

There's the domestic detail: the click of each key as you type. And its flip side: a participant defends canceling terminal sounds—calls, notifications, keyboard, and vibration—so the phone obeys instead of commanding.

Amidst all this, devices protected with the password 12345 are mentioned, and phones that dial numbers by themselves from a pocket, until someone calls and discovers their contact is out shopping.

The question that remains is another: who should change, the one who shouts on the phone or the one who no longer answers it?