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So what's your type?
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There are many mobile users who put their phones ahead of the people around them
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No one gadget has so profoundly affected everything, from language to culture to even basic social interaction, since the invention of television. Gone are the days when clothes, cars and what have you made the man. Nowadays, it's all about digital bling, baby, and for most people, how you use your cell phone says a lot more about you than anything else you do. In fact, this armchair observer has even found that people have their own personality categories based on how they use the phone.
Megaphone maniac
Take the megaphone maniac, for instance. Praveen Kumar, a PR professional, says his job puts him in touch with a lot of people like this. "They think that because they are on the phone, no one else can hear what they're saying. I've unwittingly overheard people talk about personal stuff that would make their Freudian psychologist turn pink." For most people, it gets most irritating when they choose to do so in the confined quarters of a bus, or worse still, at a cinema or concert.
"It's bad enough having to put up with lewd jokes and catcalls, but I don't want to go into Brokeback Mountain and have Jake Gyllenhall drowned out by an Indian accent asking if there will be extra idlis at breakfast," says Praveen.
Close on the heels of the megaphone maniac, the most hated mobile user is the constant communicator. You've seen these people at possibly every restaurant and coffee house, especially among groups of twos or threes.
While every other table is buzzing with conversation, there's one person so bored he's done with chewing his nails and is now moving onto other unsightly chewable areas of his person. Meanwhile, his friend is busy digitally interfacing with the rest of the world, implying, whether he wants or not, that the person he's come to meet just isn't worth his time.
"The problem is," says Sudeepta J., who markets IT products for a multinational, "you don't want to be impolite and just get up and leave. So you give them hints like looking at your phone and making random angry noises so they get the hint. I used to do that until one person on the phone turned to me and said that I was being impolite."
In some cases, this is just a ruse, used to escape a socially awkward situation. They've even got a word for it on urbandictionary.com — evoid. Which means to use technology for the sole purpose of avoiding human contact. Journalist Ananthaswamy G. was recently subject to evoidance. His boss decided on a whim they should go out and bond over coffee. Once they got there, though, they realised they were as hardly comfortable with each other. "My boss pretended to have an urgent half-hour phone call to make and I drank my coffee alone," laughs Ananth.
Then there's the child-with-new-toy syndrome that affects many people. These guys are an interesting combination of kleptomaniac and curious kid, having to pick up any unattended phone and play with it. And almost always, they're most interested in that inescapable bane — the ringtone. So you have it. After a mind-numbingly difficult day at your dog-eat-dog office, all you want to do is absorb the sights and sounds of normal human life. Too bad the only sounds you'll get are a butchered rendition of an already painful Himesh Reshamiya, for want of a better word, song.
Borrowed airtime
And as if all this isn't enough, you have the host of people living on borrowed airtime. They won't buy their own phones, but insist on being connected 24/7. The result is that sometimes you seriously wonder whose handset it is.
By no means is this list exhaustive. Feel free to pick on your favourite mobile phone peeve and insist that everyone guilty as charged be tarred, feathered and run out of town. Or, at least, be given a long, hard lesson in mobile phone etiquette.
RAKESH MEHAR
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