The robo callers have won and altered the cozy civility of phone conversations and personal communication perhaps forever. That awful phenomenon along with texting have kinda' made the whole enterprise of spontaneous, un-screened voice to voice contact obsolete; the absence of other social interactions in which we so casually and easily once participated have followed.
The other day however, either in a moment of weakness or letting down the guard, or maybe because I was expecting a call, when the phone rang I thoughtlessly picked up the receiver and naively said "hello." Crazy, huh? In truth, it may even have been a foolhardy, impetuous descent into morbid curiosity, a sort of devil-may-care rashness that caused me to act so spontaneously and incautiously.
After a brief silence and quite a bit of static on the other end- a condition which made me think the call emanated from far, far away- before I was able to hang up a voice managed to identify itself as "John from Loan Obligations." John, the archetypal ordinary American guy, calling from Loan Obligations, a phrase intended to strike fear and loathing into the heart of anyone who is not currently in the one percent. I mean, who has ever not had a loan? And even if you were lucky enough to be debt free, you never could be quite relaxed with the lingering, ubiquitous specter of identity theft that hovers over us all and fuels ads on late night TV. The horrible thought of even more obligations that you may or may not even know about, designed to evoke images of millennium debtor prisons; Dickensian work houses twenty-first century style as you try to straighten things out.
So I've sworn off answering the phone, although the scammer's hook to get you engaged did seem kind of funny. Loan Obligations. Clever. Not as clever though as "Existential Angst." Think about it. This is John calling from Existential Angst. I dare you to talk to me in 2019.
Thanx for the reminder, been meaning to sign up for NOMOROBO, sounds like it's worth a few dollars a year to prevent the angst!
ReplyDeleteFrom Diane, May 18, 2019
ReplyDeleteTexting, robocalls, scary-sounding “companies “ like “Loan Obligations” calling, identity theft (a major modern bogeyman) , all creating thoughts of millennium debtor prisons and modern work houses. It’s all here. I totally related to this piece and the humor of it made me enjoy the ridiculousness of something that is always just a source of aggravation. The last sentence is a riot.