Can Bluetooth Decrease Mobile Phone Rage?
from the common-sense-too-hard? dept
It seems like barely a few days can go by before we have another article asking questions about mobile phone etiquette. The latest one, from the Wall Street Journal, wonders if Bluetooth headsets change the equation. Some people are complaining that the tiny wireless headsets make it much harder to realize if someone is on the phone, leading to some embarrassing situations where people are confused over who is talking to whom. Apparently, the wireless nature of the headsets makes them even more inconspicuous than their wired predecessors, which people (apparently) have grown used to. This seems a little ridiculous. People using these headsets need to be aware of what's going on around them. An example in the article is a man using a Bluetooth headset to have a suggestive conversation with an ex-girlfriend... while standing in the supermarket checkout line. What kind of person thinks that's the right place for such a conversation? That's not a question about the Bluetooth headset, but about someone with incredibly poor judgment about the appropriate place to be having that kind of conversation. Still, towards the end of the article, there's one very interesting point: apparently, some users of the Bluetooth headsets say that people get much less upset at them, than when they would just talk directly on a phone. The hypothesis is that the people who were angry before, now simply assume that you actually are talking to people around you. Either that, or they just think you're a crazy person talking to yourself, and feel it's better to avoid you completely.
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