You know, cell phone users don’t annoy me much. I guess it’s because I use my cell phone so much myself. I know others frequently rail at those who use their cell phones in public places and bemoan the encroachment of these people “disconnected with society” on their sacred public space (if such encroachment is even possible). To me, chatting on the phone is not such a big deal… as long as you don’t scream, interrupt meetings, or do it at the dinner table.
What does irritate me is when people text, when they’re supposed to be paying attention to something else. Don’t get me wrong: I send over a thousand SMS messages every month. But I do have limits. Texting while driving? Hmm, with no hands on the wheel and no eyes on the road, I’d peg that a hell of a lot more dangerous than a voice call. Texting while walking? it makes you look pretty clumsy bumping into everyone.
Texting in front of a moving train? Stupid, and deadly:
CINCINNATI — A man sending a text message avoided being hit by a train going in one direction only to be struck by another train.
Witnesses told police the man was looking down at his cell phone as he crossed some railroad tracks around 9 a.m. at Township Road and Elmwood Avenue in Elmwood Place.
Luckily for the idiot but unluckily for the rest of us, the guy didn’t die it seems. he was taken to the local hopsital with “undisclosed injuries.”
I hope he was texting on an iPhone or something equally expensive, and I hope it was destroyed. Just to teach him a lesson. 🙂
My biggest gripe about texting is a rather hypocritical one because I feel it really takes away the personality, the human aspect, whatever you want to call it, from communicating with people. It’s just text, plain and simple, without any real feeling behind it necessarily.
Don’t you dare say emoticons are a substitute for that. =P
Also, I say I’m hypocritical on this because we all know that a solid fifty percent or so of my free time is spent in front of a keyboard, usually checking Instant Messenger periodically.
Anyway, tangents aside, it’s a damn shame no one had the presence of mind to take a picture of it and add amusing Internet phrases like, “This topic sucks and is now about trains,” “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!”, etc…