Slam it so hard you could make it ding. If you were still mad, you could then yank the cord out of the wall. If you still weren’t done, you could throw it across the room, and it would be just fine, when you calmed down, plugged it back in, and set it on the table again.
The phone would, but the wall impacted would have a hole
This was so unbelievably satisfying….Fuck you! SLAM … brrring …SLAM … brrring … over and over again
Flip phones are where it was at. Conversation had you mad? Bye! CLACK!
I would usually call my friends from lowest to highest digits in their phone number
And the ringer in the phone was a physical bell with a little magnetically-actuated hammer, so if you slammed the receiver down hard enough, the bell would actually resonate for a little while after. You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.
“You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.”
Oh man, this comparison is going to stick with me; it’s one of my favourite things I’ve read in recent weeks
Thanks! I debated whether to include it, because it’s definitely one of those “well my brain sure isn’t normal!” things, but now I’m glad I did.
“AND NEVER CALL ME AGAIN!” slam
ding
+1 enlightenment points
You can still do that if you don’t mind buying a new phone after.
I got the 2024 moto razr+ flr my work phone when ATT had it on sale for almost nothing since nobody was buying them
I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to hang up by snapping the phone shut.
Back when we used to *69 everyone’s mom.
Dropped my old Nokia 5 floors. Mom on call didn’t even notice. Thing worked afterwards too.
Like straight down? On what kind of surface?
I spiked the fuck out of an old Nokia in like 2093 against the carpeted floor in my office. Sadly I slightly cracked the corner of where the battery case met the phone. The phone still worked but the battery wouldn’t stay connected. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on the internet who ever broke a Nokia.
Yes straight down to smooth Concrete. Fell out of my hand as i was opening a door at the top. Thing wasn’t even damaged. Battery popped out was all. Thing was epic for a cheap phone.
So it kept your mom on the call with no battery?
Old Nokias are so great, they don’t need battery.
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Oof, this speaks to me. I hang up on marketing calls 3-4 times a week, and boy this does sound way more satisfying than just tapping a touchscreen.
There’s a pizza place in the nearby city that has almost the same number as mine, there’s just one number difference. For the last few years I’ve been answering numbers I don’t know as the pizza place. When they ask for me I act frustrated and say,
“look I’ll tell you what I tell all the other telemarketers, you bought a bad list and got the number for a pizza place. “my name” doesn’t work here, and never has. Now do me a favor and drop this number, I’m getting sick of giving this speech 10 times a day”.
If they haven’t hung up by that point, which they usually have, I say have a good day then hang up. I’ve noticed my spam calls have significantly dropped off after starting this, maybe it’s coincidence and they’re dropping my number because it’s not generating income, but just in case it is working I’m going to keep doing it.
I’ve found that playing porn very loudly when marketers call is a good way to get added to the Do Not Call list very quickly.
And, the phones were built to take it.
AFAIK, one reason for that is that AT&T was the monopoly provider of telephone equipment. They didn’t have to compete with anybody who might undercut them for price. In addition, people often rented their phones, paying a small rental charge every month. That meant that AT&T built the phones to last. They were extremely solid because AT&T didn’t ever want to have to replace a phone that someone was renting.
Nowadays, we see the answer to the question “What if we made the hinges plastic?” in almost everything we do, everywhere we go.
Landline phones were mostly plastic and took lots of abuse for years just fine.
I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…
While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.
IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.
Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.
The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.
The old heavy ones were bakelite
Bakelite is plastic
Back in the days when you could dial numbers using the hook. Great for those taxi phones in supermarkets that had the keypad covered over.
I used to take the order for food deliveries They had usually mis-dialed so I’d never hear from them again. I’d offer extras too just to jazz it up a bit
