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"Once upon a time in a land far far away, 3-way calling was the coolest thing, except, when you didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know you were on a 3-way call and your undercover crush was exposed. Doh. I digress. After reading this story on Jezebel it got me thinking about how much I, and many of those around me, have grown to dislike actually speaking on the phone so I wondered to myself, &amp;amp;#8220;self, what happened?&amp;amp;#8221; I never want to be on the phone and I never am, unless it&amp;amp;#8217;s to give directions/make a quick meetup plan, speak with customer service, at work when something needs explaining, or to make a reservation. Why is that? What happened? When did it get weird? I asked around and sure enough the haterade poured in: &amp;amp;#8220;Ha! I&amp;amp;#8217;d be happy if phone conversations went away along with fax machines. It&amp;amp;#8217;s one of the most awkward ways to communicate and I&amp;amp;#8217;ve never been a fan! I&amp;amp;#8217;d much rather IM, video chat, text, email, or even write an old-school letter.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Joanna, 27 &amp;amp;#8220;The phone got scary when there was fear of radiation. I think etiquette is a big part of it too&amp;amp;#8212;there really isn&amp;amp;#8217;t a private place anymore to speak. We&amp;amp;#8217;re always in a public space (you can&amp;amp;#8217;t hear because it&amp;amp;#8217;s loud, other people on the phone, or other people are chastising you if you&amp;amp;#8217;re on the phone.)&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Becky, 32 &amp;amp;#8220;I cannot even handle reservations anymore: If I cannot find a restaurant I like on Opentable.com I panic and write it off! When I get a delivery, I only go through Delivery.com and SeamlessWeb. What happened to me?! Just like the keyboard has completely destroyed my handwriting skills, I feel like I&amp;amp;#8217;ve lost the ability to pick up the phone. I do anything and everything I can do online, on chat, on email, etc. All manners of written communication do not replace a phone call, but I seem to forget that at times. I think that if you do not repeatedly use the phone, you get out of practice, and the threshold to not pick up the phone only increases as time goes by. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not so much the fact that I don&amp;amp;#8217;t dare pick up the phone anymore, which in itself is quite bizarre, but also that it&amp;amp;#8217;s become a matter of patience; if I pick up the phone now and get put on hold it&amp;amp;#8217;s more annoying than ever. The other day I had to call my bank for the first time in what feels like years, and the five-minute wait felt longer than it ever did, the identifications process annoyed me to the core, and the fact that I had to explain what I wanted to an actual person was grating. I am so used to getting instant (online) gratification now that speaking to customer-service agents feels even more cumbersome than before. As to family and friends, I really have to start making more effort to call them more instead of communicating via my keyboard. So much gets lost when you only communicate in writing, let alone if it&amp;amp;#8217;s only via Facebook walls! I am not a poet, I cannot express myself correctly in writing, at this point I must come across as disaffected and uninterested and it&amp;amp;#8217;s not nurturing relationships. P.S. I like the idea of a web freeze instead of a phone freeze! My friend did a week with no screens at all a while ago (no tv, no pc, no iPhone), and it seemed like quite a challenge, but she also enjoyed it!&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Marc, 32 &amp;amp;#8220;We live in a digital age of quick soundbites, frenetic multi-tasking, and self-styled status updates. These technological advancements in communication have made us more likely to avoid the emotional complexity and patience that comes with the kind of sustained interpersonal conversation that takes place face-to-face or over the phone. When you speak with someone on the phone, you hear their voice, and a voice expresses emotional nuance &amp;amp;#8212; bitterness, self-satisfaction, jealousy, frustration, cynicism, fatigue &amp;amp;#8212; that can easily be avoided in an email, a text or a tweet. Selfishly &amp;amp;#8212; and let&amp;amp;#8217;s face it, humans are selfish &amp;amp;#8212; we seek to avoid the possibility of dealing with a person who might not give us exactly what we want to hear in the moment we want to hear it. And so, we avoid the phone. Because we have other new forms that enable us to escape from confronting people and their pains, their eccentricities, their overindulgent monologues, their human needs.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Josh, 32 &amp;amp;#8220;I think the Gchat/text/BBM methods are much less intrusive and support our multi-tasking lifestyles. Calling just to chat can feel like an inefficient use of time and therefore seems to have become something we squeeze in when we can&amp;amp;#8217;t get anything else productive done&amp;amp;#8212;during walking, driving, riding the bus, etc.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Mikel, 29 So, what about you ladies? Do you have a love/hate relationship with your phone too? Do you find yourself texting, emailing, and tweeting profusely? Or do you actually love a good gab session on the horn? If so, who do you talk with regularly? My guess is mom or grandma? And discuss: How many hours did you spend talking to your boyfriend on the phone in high school&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221;You hang up! No you hang up!&amp;amp;#8221; What&amp;amp;#8217;s With All the Spam in the Comments Section? Sick of all those annoying ads in the comments section lately? So are we! We police the site regularly and delete spam as soon as we can, but recently, the volume of spam has increased dramatically. We&amp;amp;#8217;re working on a way to block them permanently, so please bear with us, and know that we&amp;amp;#8217;re as eager as you are to get rid of these pests. Meanwhile, please continue to use the Report Abuse button to flag spam&amp;amp;#8212;it really does help!&amp;amp;#8212; and continue to leave your brilliant feedback below. If you have any urgent questions about the spam, please contact us. And a special note to you, spammers; we officially declare you a major DON&amp;amp;#8217;T. 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<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2011/04/when-did-the-phone-get-scary>