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[-] BillyClark@piefed.social 49 points 2 days ago

Seinfeld had an episode about cell phones, though.

I don't remember the exact plot, but I think it was Elaine called somebody about something serious, like expressing condolences for a death or something, and she called from a cell phone while she was out and about, instead of calling from a land line at home. This was seen as a faux pas.

[-] dwemthy@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

That sounds vaguely familiar.. did she have bad reception or something and her condolences came across as insulting as words got cut

[-] BillyClark@piefed.social 11 points 2 days ago

My memory was that she had bad reception, but that the call wasn't cut, and when she hung up, she thought she had done a good job until corrected by Jerry. But I haven't seen this episode in over two decades probably, so my memory isn't going to be exactly right.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

A non 212 phone number also a faux pas.

[-] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

This was seen as a faux pas.

That's because cell phone audio quality in the analog era was shit. Knowing that you'd be giving condolences with a hissy, staticky, distorted voice is kinda rude when a landline payphone isn't that far away.

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

It was more that the person you were calling meant so little to you that you made the call while you were doing other things. Back then calling someone was almost like meeting them for coffee, often you would pre arrange the rough time you would call, and you were both engaged in the activity because you had to be at home sitting next to the phone. There was a certain effort to it that would seem lacking if you just could pull out a phone while you were walking down the street.

[-] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

People weren't still scheduling calls in the '90s. We had answering machines and even voicemail by then.

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

In the early 2000s I was still arranging landline calls ahead of time with my friends because you couldn't use the internet at the same time as the phone.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

A good portion of houses in my country never received a telephone line. Straight from arranging calls between phone booths to mobile.

Before 1989, the state monopoly had an installation backlog of several years (you could only get a line fast if you were high up in the party or had friends at the telco), high monthly fees and was woefully behind on tech: there was no digital voice equipment on the whole network, while the US's Bell trunk network had all-digital audio by 1970. Even until like 1980, in regional towns of 30k-50k, they required you to speak to operators for out-of-town calls. After 1990, the company privatized but it was still prohibitively expensive to get a line set up, as so much money needed to be spent to belatedly bring the network into the digital era. The monopoly ended around 2000 and prices went down but by that point, people saw the dawn of mobile and didn't want to pay for a new phone line anymore.

[-] roserose56@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

It was the episode where Elaine gets a cellphone, and I think it was about the importance of when to use the cellphone.

this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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