I talked to 2 people at the bar tonight who each got rid of their cell phone a year ago and were loving it.

Ugh, pay for a home phone? It seems so silly, when I'd have to pay extra for long distance to call my family, and I wouldn't be able to use it half the day!

I swear a read a piece on this in the NYT the other day.

Which means it's no longer hip. ;-)

That like giving up teh intarwebs tubes.

I didn't have a cell phone for the longest time, and it was very inconvenient.

Cell phones are OK as long as WE control THEM. After the great uprising of 2012, we will be FORCED to "get rid of" our cell phones if we wish to survive.

I've never had a cell phone since I've leved someplace that doesn't have reception for the last four years. I would be amused to suddenly find myself hip.

Getting rid of cellphones is not the issue, learning to use them in a way that is not deeply fetishistic, rude and contra-useful is the issue. I'm sure when pocket watches became available to the average person they went around fussing with them and pulling them out with a flourish and so on, now just a way to tell time.

Just about every cellphone call I've ever had goes something like this:

Me: I'm lost! I keep driving up and down the Street and I can't find the restaurant.
Him: What do you see?
Me: I dunno. Houses. There's a big white one with a duck pond.
Him: You're not on the Street. You're on the Avenue. Soon you'll come up on that house you hate because you say it's a 60s ranch they keep trying to turn into a victorian. Make a left, then a right at the stone farmhouse with the chickens that make you giggle. You'll be on the Street.
Me: How do you know all this?
Him: Because we've lived here for more than 20 years and you're only THREE DAMN MILES FROM HOME!

But that's about all I use it for. I don't even know the number. When I need it, I call the landline and see what comes up on the caller ID.

jrossi, that made me giggle. And reminded me of this.

Yeah, I call bullshit. I went cell-only five years ago and I'm not going back.

More importantly I think cells have changed the way we think about communications. Now, at least for me, the phone is an attachment to my person, not to a building. Once we divorced the phone number from a physical space, I think there was no going back, and hey, I ain't complainin'

Like Divine Wino said. People who obsess need to chill.

I always hear people whine about how they hate cellphones because they mean you can always be reached. Every cellphone I've owned has had a power button. If I don't want to be reached, I turn it off -- or just let the call go to voicemail. I don't take calls when I'm having lunch with someone. If a number comes up that I need to take, I'll leave the room. Its called being polite.

I don't have a home phone anymore. My cellphone is my phone. One number. One voicemail.

I have one, but not many people have the number, which is how it suits me. I don't use it like a normal phone.

Sometimes I feel sad when people on the train call ahead "I'm on the train, I'm at Leytonstone, I'll be about 10 minutes" because I don't have anybody to call.

Hell no. I have no landline, and I get free LD and totally unlimited minutes for $50 a month with no credit check or contract. Cricket rules, but I never leave my service area.

Until there's wifi everywhere and portable VoIP/PDA/UMPCs are $15 bucks at the corner liquor store, I'm keeping my cell.

And yeah, it's all about not being a dumbass on the phone. I hate talking in public places or on public transport. If I need to make or take a call more than 60 seconds, I go find me some space and make a private phone booth.

I don't really have a point to make, I just want to complain.

I have a cell phone, but I'm extraordinarily wary of using it. (See all etiquette posts above.) But friend of mine, and my primary airport chauffeur, is a total cell phone asshole.

It drives me fucking crazy. When she's picking me up from the airport, every single time, my phone rings before the door of the plane opens. "Hey, where are you," she asks.

Duh, I'm on the fucking plane. Just about to get off. I'll be there in 10 minutes.

I don't know why I typed this. It only made me mad.

When I got a cell phone 10 years ago I thought I was really cool.

When I tossed it out 5 years ago I thought I was really cool.

No one noticed.

Sigh.

I got my first cellphone this year, and dumped my landline after about three weeks.

The trick, as others have said above, is not to let the thing control you--most times I don't carry it around, and I treat it as if it's a landline phone. Many of the voice messages I receive begin with someone berating me for not carrying my cellphone, but what can you do.

I hate phones. Well, not phones themselves so much as how today's culture handles phones (and I mean landlines as well as cellphones). Just because you can call someone doesn't always mean you should, and just because you can answer your phone doesn't always mean you must. Fer crissakes, America, you don't need to call your wife on your way home and ask what she's bringing home for dinner, and if your girlfriend calls you while you're talking to the teller at the bank, please, just kick it over to voicemail and call her back when you're done. I guess I feel that phones have for whatever reason insinuated themselves into the lives of many of us to an unhealthy - or at least unproductive - degree. When I think about phones, I guess I view them as a handy tool. When there is somebody out there that I need to ask a question of, or give a piece of information to, I have no qualms about calling them. I make the call, and that's that. What I do have qualms about is the use of the phone to extend one's personal space, making all friends and acquaintances instantly accessible for how-ya-doin'-just-keepin'-in-touch conversations that go nowhere and will often occur at exactly the wrong moment for the callee (who will often take the call anyway, even if it is inappropriate or inconvenient - see above). The phone, and especially the cellphone, blurs the boundaries of work/play and here/there to a degree that bothers me sometimes. Of course it's very unlikely to change for the better.

I finally got a cell phone about a year and a half ago, and shortly thereafter dumped the landline. In some ways it's really handy - I'm able to talk to whoever I need to talk to when I'm out and about just as well as when I'm home watching TV (which I also have). It's somewhat annoying in that don't always remember to grab it when I go out, and have also left it sitting on my desk at work a couple of times. Overall I'm happy with it, and going over on minutes is not an issue since I don't like talking much on phones anyway, and don't use it more than I have to. I'm not going back to landlines unless there is no other option.

(And, of course, being mobile means that there's at least minimal choice in the marketplace. With landlines, you can go to an alternate provider, but all they're doing is leasing lines and capacity from SBCAT+T, so you're still doing business with them, albeit indirectly.

The folks at the bar were saying they felt like they were more "here" without it, which I can understand. I don't think it's that they were cell phone whores, necessarily, but that they wanted to be more present. The one dude said, "hell mine hardly ever rings anyway so I figured cuhck it!".

I personally like being anonymous on occasion - like going to a pub I go to regularly when I don't necessarily want to engage with people, but I want to be around them, where something is happening. Sort of like 3D TV.

That being said, and being female, I don't think *I* would not carry my cell, even if turned off, for safety reasons and so Mrs Chewy can reach me while I'm wandering.

Oh, and I'm not sure if they went back to a landline at all, or if they are completely sans phone, or do the VoIP thing or what. I'd be curious to know what they did.

deadcowdan - I'm a phone hater too. You're spot on with the extension of personal space description.

I've been thinking about getting rid of my cel and just being without a phone (I've never had my own landline). If I could figure out a way to do it while job-hunting, apartment-hunting, travelling (where payphones are no longer prevalent or even expected), etc. I would.

Pretty much everyone here has a cell. My husband tells a funny story about being up in a high mountain village with all the ladies in their traditional costumes doing demonstrations of traditional dance and cooking over fire, and everything so very pure and rustic... and after the shooting as all were leaving, one little old lady comes scuttling down the cobblestones holding up her long dress and screeching to her friend "Maaaarrrrrie! My purse! My purse with my cell!!"

It's a godsend for us, since he doesn't work in an office, and is all over the place, all the time. He's working out of town for an extended period right now, and staying with a friend. I wouldn't want to use the friend's phone to contact him unless it was important, and he wouldn't want to use the friend's phone to make long distance calls, but he has the cell, so we talk twice a day with no worries. Yay. I love 'em. There are kids alive right now that would find the idea of a personal phone that only receives calls at a single location a bizarre notion.

(((essexjan)))

I've learned to more or less mentally ignore other people's cell phone conversations. Last week, however, I was standing in line at the coffee shop and was aware of the man two people ahead of me having a conversation. Again, I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying but when he approached the counter, he held up his cell phone for the young woman to READ from the screen the two items he wanted to order. Poor girl was squinting and reading it back to him as a question. "Yeah, that and a small double double." I was...astounded. He went right back to talking on his phone.

Sometimes I fantasize about getting involved in the conversations of people talking loudly on their cellphone. As if they're talking to me -- standing in front of them and responding. "Yeah, she should totally break up with him!" or "Hey, don't forget you need toilet paper and cat food, too" or "Your boss should get off your ass already about that TPS report!" I think if you called people on their cell exhibitionism and actually turned them into face-to-face interactions, panic would spread and the behavior might start to disappear.

But then I just breathe and continue my life.

hahahaha! I'd love to see that.

Was in the ladies restroom this morning- someone talking on the phone and, err, taking care of business. That should SO be illegal.

I mostly use mine for voicemail, and to textmessage Google when I can't remember where things are, or what "colophon" means. Yeah, it's always that word, too.

Why is it that when people are having heated conversations on their phones, they seem all bent out of shape when others look at them? If you're yelling at the tiny box in your ear, people are gonna stare. I also can't stand people on cells who come up to where I work. I'm not cutting in on your conversation to ask what cut of meat or fillet of fish you want. Of course, it probably has saved a lot of marriages. I can't tell you how many people trying to figure out what kind of fish or steak to bring home call home for a second opinion.
As for me, no one ever calls my cell except my husband, and the kids when they want something.