I hate smartphones

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I hate how I'm forced to carry that damned thing around with me when I go somewhere. I thought the whole point of going out was to get away from these rectangular slabs of glass, but I guess its not according to my family. I hate how addicted I used to be to it prior to last year. I hate how modern it makes me look despite me otherwise (and intentionally) looking like I walked out of a time machine from 2006 or so. I hate how boring it looks and feels compared to the cool looking phones you'd see in the 2000s. I hate everything about smartphones and I'm seriously considering destroying mine out of my anger towards it and to make a statement. It's an object that feels completely out of place in my life and does not spark joy for me. Grrrrr, I hate it with a burning passion. >:(

This is my personal rant on how much I hate having a smartphone and how I seriously want to go outside, grab a hammer, and proceed to smash it to pieces until it is completely irreparably damaged right now. Either that, or throw it and drown it in a lake. Better yet, if I had a paper shredder, I'd remove its case and drop it in there right now (hoping it doesn't damage the shredder, of course). It was a mistake of me to ever get one in the first place.

I could do a further rant as to how much I hate the modern world in general, but I'll end this one here.

To me, smartphones are a necessary evil, in that you are considered an "unperson" if you do not have one.

When my employer mandated that I have a smartphone, I made certain to have nothing but the stock applications installed on it.  Even then, I deleted all of the ones I would never use.

When I go out with my wife, I make it a point to put my phone in airplane mode (or I shut it off completely).

It makes me sad to be with a group of people in a social environment, and I am the only one who is not texting, checking messages, et cetera.  If had I wanted to be ignored, I would have gone out alone.

At times it's tempting to return to unperson status and smash my phone.

I have a flip phone. It makes calls. It receives calls. It tells me what time it is. I did not set up my mailbox, so you can’t leave a message. Dh fixed it so that now I get texts because of two factor identification (hate that!) but I didn’t tell anybody so that they won’t text me. Sometimes I leave it at home by accident. This annoys me because then I have no watch. Or in my car all weekend. This annoys other people.

The grocery store reminds me that I am a non-person by having special cheap prices that I can only access by scanning a square using the shopper’s card ap. They used to fix the prices for me at the register because I have the card, but now they won’t. So I am saved from impulse buys. But when the thing was on my list, I get mad and think about changing stores. Only I live in the boonies and this one is on my way home from work.

I need my smartphone. Is has my music on it, and pictures, videos, contacts, games, social media, and useful apps to help organise my life. I'm very disorganised - except my smartphone, all the mostly used apps are arranged in a neat order and is the most organised thing I have ever had.

I'm using my smartphone to post this post.

Well, flip phones still exist and you can both get ones that are pretty much complete dumb phones or ones that run KaiOS which gives you access to a variety of apps (including things like Google Maps, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.) on its own app store.

So like the options exist to not have a smartphone in 2023, there's no obligation to have one and, like I said, if you don't want one but you might still need access to some smartphone features, there's flip phones that have those (or well simplified variations of them, like I have a backup flip phone that uses KaiOS and like of course, for example, Google Maps on that is nothing like on my phone but it still exists and works and can be used to get directions, at the very least)

Yeah my parents forced the smart phone on me. One day they just bought one for me.
Used to keep it shut off all the time until they got annoyed with me about it.

I know it's necessary to have one.

I don't particularly enjoy texting and that is all people want to do.

I don't have a smartphone or any other sort of mobile phone, but I can see what people mean when they say it's necessary to have one. It seems you can't pay at many car parks now in the UK without a smartphone, and banks and other financial institutions are making it increasingly difficult for people to run their accounts without one.

I don't like them either, but I'm kind of stuck with them.

Out on the farm, the cell service is very weak. If I want to talk to someone I have to go outside.

A land-line might be okay, but our phone company there is a small phone company that just covers a handful of counties and they suck big time. They fleece their customers out of every penny they can. They are eliminating all their copper land lines in favor of fiber optic. If you want phone service from them, they require you to buy Internet from them, too.

To get them to run fiber optic out to the farm would cost many thousands because we are quite far from the nearest road. When we got our telephones in the late 1960s, it cost us something like $20,000 to get them to run lines. Imagine what it would take to get the same company to lay fiber optic today.

So I'm stuck with a smart phone.

I do not have a smart phone, so call me an unhuman. My cell phone is one of the cheapest flip phones that you can still get. I do not text on it. People can text me, but I will only call them back when I need to. That has irritated more than a few people. I just do not want to be a slave to the technology nor have to pay extra money to use it. Cell phone companies are constantly trying to get me to upgrade, so that they can force me into a more expensive plan. No thank you.

When smart phones were first introduced, I predicted that the average person would become more and more reliant on them as time passed. It has gotten so bed that STEM students in my classes will use it to think with instead of using their brain to learn the material. They are losing cognitive skills by misusing the technology.

I see smart phone developments as a detriment rather than a step forward with our evolutionary ladder.

Some people will interpret that as sketchy. That's what criminals and creeps do when they need to ensure no record of the conversation occurred.

Not assuming your motives are the same, but it is a red flag for some people.

They can interpret whatever they choose to do. I really do not care. I would rather email on my computer than attempt to text on a phone. If they know my email address, they know how to get ahold of me that way. Emails are easier to track.

I have had college students email me in text shorthand. They do not get a reply, as I tell them on the first day of class that I do not respond to shorthand. If you are not skilled enough to type it out, then I am not responding.

I mean no offense, but that just makes it sound like you're deliberately making things harder for yourself instead of adapting with the times.

Where's that one Simpsons meme: Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.

Like the simple fact is: phone calls are annoying. I literally have my phone on silent all the time (except for my contacts) because 99% of the time, a phone call is just going to be some scammer in India or whatever.

I just answer those calls with KBBL's GONNA GIVE ME SOMETHING STUPID!

I am content without a smart phone. Some people have told me that they wish they could be that way, but they have become too addicted to change back. A Pandora’s box situation if you will.

I don't much care for smartphones. I got my first one maybe five years ago now? I had a flip phone at phone at one point, but that was years ago and I didn't like it, but it was cheaper than paying for long distance on my land line so it worked for that. Before I got that first smartphone, I tried to get a land line, but learned I couldn't get one anymore unless I had cable or internet and at the time I didn't have or want either. So I got the damn phone. I still regard the thing as a portable leash and ignore it more often than not. Sad reality is though, it's getting increasingly harder to be able to not have one. They've kinda become necessary in a lot of ways...for a lot of things, including confirming things like doctor's visits. Blows my mind.