Slashdot Mirror
Lamenting the Demise of Hangups
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."
Make an aggressive hang-up app.
This is really just an updated version of Seinfeld's cordless phone bit
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?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
n/t
...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...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
"the physical act of hanging up a telephone when we're done using it no longer occurs"
Oh really? At work I have a Cisco VOIP phone where I have to lift the traditional ear/mouth piece off the cradle and then put it back down (hang it up) when I'm done with a call.
Plus I'm sure someone can write an app for jailbroken phones with a button labeled "Angry End", so if you press that, it transmits a loud slamming noise just prior to disconnecting the call.
Preface disconnecting with the following: "This is me hanging up on you".
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.
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.
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?
Scorta futuere amo!
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?
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.
With a button that I smashed on my old Sanyo phone from Sprint if I wanted to "rage quit" the call.
Never had the interest of smashing the headset against the hook. I always knew that would damage it. :)
... now you can cool down, call back an hour later and blame the dead battery for the hangup.
If only hangups really were on the decline. Seems to me people have more and more of them these days. The day when nobody has any hangups at all will be a great one for the human race.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is what I did 3 or 4 times with a nokia E63 and a few times earlier with whatever dumb-phone I had.
I'm not kidding, I kinda see the point of the article, that split second felt liberating.
Afterwards, not so much: a mixed feeling of guilt, shame, resentment at you and at the other person, etc. Depending on whatever the hanging-up was for...
Then after you cool off you would just pick up the back cover, the batter, other parts of the phone, assemble it and calm down.
However, you cannot do this with a smartphone. I imagine the screen or the case would crack, plus a smartphone is usually expensive to replace.
Hasn't anyone IM'd you that voice calls are obsolete?
I work in a call center where we still have physical phones (though we only use headsets), I remember hearing about one supervisor call where the sup eventually advised the customer that there was nothing more to discuss and he was going to end the call, he picked up the receiver, de-activated the headset then hung up the receiver, just for the sound.
Not to mention that the idea put forward here was done on a Seinfeld episode years ago.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
"Calls aren't ever really under our control anymore, they "drop" intransitively.' "
The writer must be living in some 3rd world country, like Usa maybe?
The best hangup is when, mid-conversation, you whip your cell phone off a wall, smashing it into a million pieces. Didn't have those in the old hangup days, did you?
we don't get that satisfying crash and clatter when hanging up on somebody to make a point.
We also don't have to get up early to shoe our horses anymore. Bummer.
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!
Is not a word
...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.
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!
Simpsons did it first.
Anyone I'd hang up on like that would already just ring straight through to voice mail. Not that I actually associate with anyone I'd hang up on like that. I suppose in a hypothetical situation where I did, I could return their call specifically to hang up on them. But then I'd have to tell them that. "Hey! I called you back, just to hang up on your! (click!)" Maybe the poster isn't putting enough artistry into his hanging up! Or maybe he's just hanging out with the wrong people.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
pointless article this has nothing to do with smart phones, you couldn't hang up any but the most early briefcase type mobile phone
Swear at the person, then hit "End".
#DeleteChrome
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.
Jerry Seinfeld summed this up years ago in one of his standup routines.
I don't own a smartphone or a cellphone, so I don't understand what this article is talking about. Don't you have to do something proactive to the phone to cause it to disconnect a call? How can "hanging up" have possibly gone away?
Has the author never seen a cordless phone? You know, what practically everyone who still uses a land line has? You can't hang that up either. In fact, the only thing keeping the aggressive hang up going was the flip hone.
What did we do before the telephone was invented? Slam doors. And so on.
Oh, I don't know. I find it fascinating that somebody is able to make a living by making facile commentaries on how telephone etiquette changes over time.
Who do I need to fuck to get a job like this?
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I got a port-o-rotary so I can still hang up on A-holes.
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 turbare "to stir up") from *manstuprare, from manu, ablative of manus "hand" (see manual) + stuprare "defile" (oneself), from stuprum "defilement, dishonor," related to stupere "to be stunned, stupefied" (see stupid). "
What about for the recipient of a modern hang-up? You don't hear a dial tone on cell phones when that happens, just silence. Kind of takes the bite out of someone hanging up on you.
Sheesh
When I am in a conversation and the other person suddenly hangs up, I will know that the person calling was the cause or that it was a technical issue. Ask anybody and they will tell you that they can tell the difference.
This is the case when I am on the phone and the other person calls with a cellphone. This happens when the other person is on a landline.
What you do not have with a cellphone that you have with a landline is, as caller the satisfaction of slamming the horn down, missing the phone in anger and needing to slam it down several more times.
If you missed, the callee could hear the callers frustration and giggle, However if he did not miss, you would not hear all the noise and you still were sure that the person hung up on you.
So in the past you suddenly did not hear the person anymore. Now you suddenly do not hear the person anymore. There is no difference, except maybe in the theatrical sense.
And yes, we still use the same words for things. That is language. I am sure there are many words we use for things that we do not even know what the original meaning was. That is why ethymology exists.
My guess is that this is about trying to be nostalgic, while there is nothing to be nostalgic about.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Stories like this are like a broken record.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What we really need is an app that generates a *plonk* sound, hangs up, and dumps the caller into a block list.
Log in or piss off.
Works pretty well for ending conversations over any medium.
hang-up (hngp)
n. Informal
1. A psychological or emotional difficulty or inhibition.
2. An obstacle to smooth progress or development.
I thought this would be a story about people losing some neurosis or something. I have never heard the word "hangup" used any other way. It's a noun, not a verb. Is this like the weird use of the word "shutter" as a verb to mean "close", even though everyone understands "close"? Or like the bizarre American insistence that "anymore" means "lately"?
It took me years of psychotherapy to get rid of my hangups. Why would I be sad about their demise?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
That's what I miss about my old flip phone. Snapping it shut was just as good as slamming down a handset.
And if hanging up isn't rude enough, throw your phone at a child's face.
1. Remove cell from ear.
2. Slam phone face forward on desk.
3. Quietly pick up and verify screen is intact.
4. Carefully push the end button.
5. ???
6. Profit
I like to follow up with a tersely worded email cc'ing superiors. Lamenting the lack of carbon paper required for such a task.
So that isn't some football terminology?
I had a friend who kept a referee's whistle next to the phone for sales people. Just remembering that. Thank you.
..but becomes an expensive habit.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
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 hangs up the phone? No matter how angry, disgusted, or stressed most people will at least say something to indicate that the conversation is over. In my opinion, anyone who doesn't, and hangs up deliberately, is either consciously or subconsciously indicating that they want to continue the conversation, but on their terms. Of course, the other party doesn't know this, so it is a completely useless gesture....
Shooting deaths were lower doing those periods of time, not higher.
(Note: Posting AC because I don't have an account. I know, I know, I should get one)
Mod Parent way, way up. One of the joys of my college education was taking the history classes of Roger D. McGrath. His book (highly recommended) "Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier" shows that, contrary to popular perception, the old west was quite safe. Safer, in fact, than many cities of the era and farrrrrrr safer than society of today. There is, admittedly, one area where that was not true. In the category of accidental deaths caused by drunken cowboys, the old west had a problem. However, take out that one category, and the old west was quite a safe place.
Gordon
Think it has this 'slam the phone face down to hang up' option. The other side however probably doesn't hear the slam.
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.
>It offered a way of ending a conversation prematurely, sternly, aggressively
Or you can stop being a fucking crybaby and learn how to end conversations like a rational, thinking adult. Shouldn't be too hard if you're not an American.
Charles Dickens put a whopper of a clue at the start of Bleak House that probably 99.99% of modern readers would totally miss because no legal paperwork has been written in longhand in living memory. It's just not possible to preserve this stuff.
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.
Kriston
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I guess crime, disease, poverty have been eradicated, since people are actually concerned about stuff like this.
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If someone calls me and the call drops I'll call them back, immediately. That, to me, seems like common curtesy. But only if I know who the hell you are. If you block your number I'm not answering. If I don't call you back, fuck off and call someone else.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
My first (or second, I think first...) mobile phone, the Philips Genie had the ability to satisfactorily hang up on people. It had a spring loaded microphone at its base, you could press the mike to answer calls (and extend it) and hang up (and retract it.) It was actually kind of cool, viscerally hanging up on a spam call...
Pesky little devils, aren't they?
Maybe it's just my cheap HTC smartphone or lack of ability to correctly use a smartphone, but the slightest bit of mosture on my fingers or change in skin temp. turns a simple hangup into a series of inabilities to hang-up followed by a series of hang-ups and accidental call-backs. Why must the end button be the same button used to call someone back?
(2) knuckle phone
(3) fast phone
rendered in a faux-retro style. It has also entered the Taylor Swift breakup-song stage:
Taylor Swift also discloses a phone-flinging episode in her song "Stay Stay Stay":"...I'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night.
... I threw my phone across the room at you.
The object of her aggression/desire returns ready to talk, wearing a football helmet.
.
In fact, cell phone throwing has become so common-place now that the concept is even part of a Taylor Swift break-up song, Stay, Stay, Stay with the lyrics in the music video being: "... I'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night.
... I threw my phone across the room at you.
The object of her aggression/desire returns ready to talk, wearing a football helmet.
You know it's trendy when Taylor Swift's all over it!