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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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British Problems
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People talking on their phones like they're eating a pie, and then trying to slide the contents into their ear, I guess? The analogy broke down, but you get what I'm talking about!
I blame The Apprentice for making the young'uns think that it's the correct way to use a phone, but at least in the show they were doing it intentionally so that everyone could hear the call. Or perhaps they just think it's the cool way to use a phone?
Showing my age but it reminds me of the "side talking" meme from the Nokia N-Gage. It was stupid then and it's even more stupid now.
Hahaha, I was wondering where that came from! Nobody else seemed to notice or mention it, whereas I tend to burst out laughing when I see it.
What's actually the point in doing it? I have noticed it's mostly iPhones - do they have particularly bad or really breakable small speakers, and you have to put it on speakerphone or something?
My theory is that the people doing it are young enough to have never used a landline phone, so they were never "normalised" on how to hold one. Then they saw people on The Apprentice and similar shows holding it like a pie (because the call was on speaker for the rest of the group to hear), and assumed that's the correct way to do it.
Presumably either nobody's ever corrected them, or they consider the actual right way to be old fashioned/uncool, or they simply feel weird not doing it like that now that it's ingrained.
Whatever the reason, it winds me up a treat and I wish that I could tell them how stupid they look!
Related, is people holding handheld radios (walkie talkies) sideways, popularised by 'cool guys on tv doing it'.
It's actaully very bad to do this - transmissions on handhelds are supposed to be vertically polarised (base station antennas are always vertical) and holding the radio sideways will transmit a horizontally polarized signal. This actually really matters - it can reduce by as much as 30dB the received signal strength at the other end (and -30dB is 1/1000th)