Incoming Calls
Incoming Calls
[A line graph shows the portions of phone calls by type over time beginning slightly before 1990 until today.] Incoming personal calls over time or: why I finally stopped picking up for unknown numbers
[The x-axis is labeled with years beginning at 1990 in five-year segments up to NOW (2018). The y-axis shows a relative distribution of callers.] [The calls are (from top to down):] Appointment reminders, misc. (small growing all over time) Family (larger in the beginning, constant with some fluctuations since 2000) Friends (growing from 1995 to 2005, then decreasing but intersected with "that one friend who hates texting", after that decreasing) Legal telemarketers (peak in the beginning, decreasing over time) Auto insurance scammers (a big peak between 2005 and 2012) Other scammers (beginning in 2010, replacing the auto insurance, increasing until today) Political (starting in 2002 and increasing since then) Wrong numbers (constant up to 2000 and then decreasing to nearly today)

This comic shows a graph (a 100% stacked area chart) of incoming phone calls over time to Randall since he was older than six years. Not covered are major modern ways to communicate like SMS , talking on Facebook , or other messaging apps.
Wrong numbers used to be a small but significant portion of the phone calls that Randall received and remained fairly steady until the late 1990s, when they began a gradual and accelerating decline, eventually tapering off to nearly none in 2015. This is likely due to the rise of cellphones and programmable land-line phones, which contain their own address books and only require the caller to enter the number once, greatly reducing the chances of accidentally entering a wrong number in general and eliminating the possibility entirely for anyone with whom you have taken the time to save their number.
Appointment reminders and miscellaneous similar calls have steadily increased with time, likely due to a combination of Randall's increasing responsibilities as he ages, and thus the number of appointments and legitimate businesses who need to contact him, and the increased use by businesses of automated reminder systems. The appointments section seems to be slightly tapering off, possibly for the rise of using other means, such as SMS, for reminders.
The proportion of family members started slowly decreasing until 1998 where it remained almost constant until roughly 2008-2009. Possible reasons for the decline is that Randall's family has been passing away from old age, or that Randall has ceased contact with them; a possible reason for the increase thereafter is Randall's meeting of his current wife, thus gaining in-laws.
A note to keep in mind though is that the graph represents the relative percentage of calls, not the absolute number; therefore, a third possibility is simply that the number of calls hadn't changed, but rather the volume of phone calls from everyone else has gone up. Likewise, the increase in phone calls from family might simply be due to the number of phone calls from everyone else going down while family calls have remained constant. Additionally, as mentioned below, phone communication may be be decreasing due to the rise of other communication mediums.
The proportion of friends who call Randall rapidly increased in the 1990s and began to overtake family, likely due to a combination of gaining new friends over time and old friends growing into teenage years owning a cell phone roughly starting in the 2000s. At that time the Internet wasn't a primary method of communication especially when away from home, thus phone calls were the main way to connect with friends when apart. Over time, Randall's friends and family have been less likely to make phone calls to him, likely as phone calls have been succeeded by other methods of communication. This is supported by an entry for "that one friend who hates texting" which has grown to encompass pretty much the entire "Friends" category; presumably all his friends EXCEPT that "one friend" do all their communicating with Randall by text or other chat services.
Additionally, although there was a large percentage of phone calls from legal telemarketers in the 1990s, this percentage has significantly dropped, perhaps due to the National Do Not Call Registry in the United States, which prohibits telemarketing/automatic dialing to those on the list. Political advertisements are exempt from this list. Instead, there has been a rise in phone calls from scammers and political advertisements.
Telemarketers may target calls based on victims' age or other publicly available statistics. The rise and fall of auto insurance scammers may indicate targeting people in their early twenties. It could also be tied to other events, such as the purchase of an automobile. There have also been various reports online about the commonality of this scam in and around 2013, ( [1] ) indicating this may have been a particularly challenging problem during this period.
The title text refers to a common scamming tactic in which a robocaller , typically one named "Emily," will claim to be having trouble with their headset and say "Can you hear me now?" The trick is either to keep you on the line while taking a second or two to connect you to a real person to get scammed, or to get a recording of you saying "yes" for potential fraudulent use (or both).
[A line graph shows the portions of phone calls by type over time beginning slightly before 1990 until today.] Incoming personal calls over time or: why I finally stopped picking up for unknown numbers
[The x-axis is labeled with years beginning at 1990 in five-year segments up to NOW (2018). The y-axis shows a relative distribution of callers.] [The calls are (from top to down):] Appointment reminders, misc. (small growing all over time) Family (larger in the beginning, constant with some fluctuations since 2000) Friends (growing from 1995 to 2005, then decreasing but intersected with "that one friend who hates texting", after that decreasing) Legal telemarketers (peak in the beginning, decreasing over time) Auto insurance scammers (a big peak between 2005 and 2012) Other scammers (beginning in 2010, replacing the auto insurance, increasing until today) Political (starting in 2002 and increasing since then) Wrong numbers (constant up to 2000 and then decreasing to nearly today)
