The Hindu : International : Cellphonies: the art of talking to ether

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 15, 2005

International

International

Cellphonies: the art of talking to ether

Amy Harmon

NEW YORK: As cellular phone conversations have permeated public space, so, it seems, have fake cellular phone conversations. The practice of cellphone subterfuge is growing.

James E. Katz, a Professor of Communication at Rutgers University, says his classroom research suggests that plenty of the people talking on the phone around you are really faking it. In one survey he conducted, more than a quarter of his students said they made fake calls. He found the number hard to believe. Then in another class 27 of 29 students said they did it.

``People are turning the technology on its head,'' Prof. Katz said. ``They are taking a device that was designed to talk to people who are far away and using it to communicate with people who are directly around them.''

Some stage calls to avoid contact, whether with neighbours or panhandlers, co-workers or supervisors. Some do it to impress those within earshot, others so they do not look lonely. Men talk to their handsets while they are checking out women. Women converse with the air to avert unwanted approaches by men.

Camera phone shutterbugs fake being on the phone so they can get a good angle without looking suspicious. And certain cellular vigilantes fake for the benefit of real callers who are oblivious to the rules of common decency.

``I fake phone talk to get a point across,'' said one. He once forced an apology from a woman spewing excessively personal details into her cell phone in an elevator by shouting (made-up) escapades of his own into his (powered-off) phone. ``People need to know phone etiquette and fake phone calling is a great tool for showing them.''

The technique

The fake phone call has an etiquette, or at least a technique, all its own. Inexperienced cellphonies risk exposure with their limited repertoire of ``uh-huhs.'' Sophisticated simulators achieve authenticity by re-enacting their side of an actual dialogue. Or they call voice-activated phone trees, so it sounds like someone is talking on the other end.

Prof. Katz said the practice first drew his attention when students in focus groups he had organised to study a wide range of cellphone use began mentioning it, unprompted. The habit, he said, is the latest technological twist in a culture that has long embraced various forms of dissembling in the name of image, from designer knockoff handbags to plastic surgery. Some fakers admit to programming their phones to call them at a certain time to show off their ring tones; others wrap up make-believe Hollywood deals in front of people they want to impress.

And phantom callers are often simply trying to cope with social anxiety by showing that they have someone to call, even if they don't. One of Prof. Katz's students said she pretended to use her cellphone when she was out with a group of other college-age women who were all on theirs.

In that sense fake callers are may not be so different from a lot of real callers, who are always partly performing for others even as they as they appear to withdraw into their own private space in public.

``The cellphone allows people to show strangers that they belong, that they are part of a community somewhere,'' said an academic.

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