America is headed for an age of dumb.
🤞
apple is considering the dumbing down phone.
The iDumb Pro Max flip phone with next gen T9, starting at $1399
I love smartphones. Instead of having to buy books, I can just pirate like thousands of epubs to put in my pocket and I’m effectivly carrying a bookshelf with me.
I ain’t carrying a fucking book, too heavy. (Also, yaRrr 🏴☠️)
Edit: Also, audiobooks.
I wish popular cell phones would offer an eink option. I know there are 1-2 phones out there, but they always seem to be on some ancient version of Android.
The best one is a Chinese only one that is a massive struggle to get GApps on it. It can be rooted now, but still not exactly an easy phone to set up for Western use without caveats.
Boox Palma was so close. It just needed cellular capability.
If my kindle played audio files / podcasts that would be half of what I use it for.
No. A very small number of people is.
BI is one of the biggest culprits of trying to push social trends in a ridiculous, serflike direction, and then they wonder why their ‘prestige’ has dropped to the level of rag.
Genuine question - can you speak more on how this article would promote a social trend in a “serflike” direction? I’ve been thinking about switching to a “dumb phone” for the same reasons as the person in the article, and I’ve seen it as a potential reclamation of my time and attention to the present moment.
BI definitely publishes a lot of nonsense, but I feel like I’m not fully understanding your meaning.
It just seems like a good chunk of the articles I see from them are stories promoting going without, dealing with less, and downgrading lifestyles in response to cost of living, but doing so in a “feel good” sort of way, kind of like a life hack in a sense. They just seem to keep pumping out stories that portray families and people in their 30s to 40s that are downgrading into small homes or even trailers, eating next to nothing, or forgoing basic necessities as a way to somewhat normalize not having shit but still working your ass off, or at least that’s what I’ve perceived from it.
Like with this article, they promote it as some kind of performance-enhancing life hack to not have an internet-centric phone, yet the person on the article is carrying three of them for different purposes. It just seems ridiculous. If you want to spend less time on your phone, uninstall the time wasting apps, set do not disturb on a per app basis for the ones you keep, and make a conscious effort to put your phone away. It just seems like a clumsy solution for not having self control.
But hey, that’s just my opinion.
I appreciate the thoughtful response - I haven’t noticed that trend specifically with BI, but have seen the general tendency you’re describing in media at large. For this specific article, I find the concept of a dumb phone more intriguing than “Lifehack: Eat Gruel!” Type stuff – see my other comment in this thread if you’re curious about why – but also did roll my eyes at the person who has three such devices for different purposes.
Thanks for elaborating!
No worries! It may be exposure bias, and I’ll be honest that the only BI articles I read come from here and there certainly is a certain slant. But from where I’m sitting, it really does seem like there’s a coordinated effort among so called ‘culture journalism’ articles such as this to push a certain normalcy of nothing I’m that I can’t help but wonder if there’s something funny about it. Perhaps it’s a sort of tin foil hat theory, but prescient in a really stupid way. This article in particular isn’t exactly a defining example, but more of a contribution to that nature. I dunno, I probably need to go to bed lol.
I’m all for reexamining how we use our time and I’m definitely trying to get myself off always looking St my phone when I’m not doing anything.
But why does that mean buying a new product? You can change your behavior by just not looking at those things. And when you do legitimately need to have your phone to check something, you can develop the discipline to do that one thing and then put it away. Just seems like the obvious move.
As somebody who has in recent years changed habits like this, I agree with you. But its a harsh change at first.
Turning off most notifications is a key step. It changes your mentality from reaction to your device to a proactive action at a chosen time. It’s a huge shift and well worth it.
Then I started turning my services off at times. No, I don’t need to take a call while driving or check messages in the store. That stuff can wait.
My overall logic is that I don’t need to make myself available to any and everyone at any and every time.
Sure, sometimes it bites me in the butt as far as convenience, however my quality of life has improved overall. I am very protective of my time and mental attention now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I highly recommend taking small measures to test the waters. Then increase as you acclimate to it.
I agree with you in concept, but I think in practice people struggle with the self discipline, and that’s kind of the fundamental problem with apps (and particularly algorithm-based social media). I’ve set timers to limit my usage of certain apps, including my Lemmy app, to encourage mindful use, but I can understand why someone might want or need more of an enforced limitation.
You might not replace your current phone with a “dumb” device, but when it’s time to get a new device eventually, you could ask yourself if less-smart device might meet both your functional and other needs.
Edit: I guess to me this is kind of like: why are people overweight? They can just not eat as much. And while that’s technically true - and advice I follow - it’s apparently not that easy for everyone. If it was, we wouldn’t see problems as pervasively as we do.
Paywall removed https://archive.is/9zoA9
Nope. Those are going to be fake dumbphones.
Yea, “dumbphones” is just a smartphone os with stripped out features but same spying
No. It’s just a fad
