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My sister’s former boyfriend used to carry a phone without a SIM. His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF.

My sister’s former boyfriend used to carry a phone without a SIM. His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF. Feel free to live off the grid, but please make sure you don’t leech off of those around you.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
The example doesn't quite seem to connect to the moral. Maybe he didn't want his mom to call him. If a third party calls you to inquire about me, why is that my problem?
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- plufz 7y ago
  Because you care about people around you and don’t want them to suffer because of indirect consequences of your actions...?
  - throwaway2_75 7y ago
    You guys have a warped sense of reality if this is suffering to you. Oh noo you had to answer a phone. Fu k me.
jakobegger 7y ago
> make sure you don’t leech off of those around you I think that's a toxic attitude. Picking up the phone for someone else every now and then is really not a big of a hassle. Obviously I don't know the whole situation, but in general I do think that one should be ready to do such minor favors for another human being without calling them a leech.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  I know someone who lives off the grid like this, they are also too cheap to ever pay their share of airbnb lodging (I will stay with someone else, oh you got it I come stay with you), too cheap to give a bit of scotch tape for taping up a box when clearing out their dead mothers house because they bought that tape for 2 euro, or finally too cheap to buy their own chewing gum when they have had all their other expenses paid (flight, lodging) to go to a wedding in Kiruna Sweden. on edit: changed some incorrect uses of to to correct usage of too.
  - dannyw 7y ago
    Sounds like they're just cheap; and the off the grid part doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      exactly the original comment was make sure not to leach, and someone else thought it was a toxic attitude, and I don't think it is too toxic an attitude - because there are people who are leaches after all.
      - ferzul 7y ago
        But there's being a leach, and there's trying to cope given a moral-philosophical decision not to use a phone. And you're not distinguishing them.
        anamexis 7y ago
        They aren't mutually exclusive.
        bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        Yes but there was the original comment which suggested that it was not nice to suggest not to be a leach, because that was a little bit much to assume, so I provided a counterexample where that was a reasonable assumption. Normally I would not expect, given that thread of conversation, that I should have to explain that my example was not meant to be a universal condemnation of anyone not having a sim card in their phone.
Vinnl 7y ago
This is really hard to do. I don't live off the grid by any means - there's a million ways to contact me, e.g. text message, calling, Signal messages, emails, etc. However, I don't use Whatsapp in a country where the vast majority of people does. I'm fine with missing things if people don't feel like using any of the methods I have to get in touch with me. However, instead of either not bothering or using one of the communication channels we have in common, people tend to ask my partner to relay messages to me. So short of starting to use Whatsapp (which I'd really rather not do, and which requires installing a different OS on my phone - and possibly get a data subscription as well), the burden is on my partner to either tell them to contact me directly, or to relay the messages. Any good tips for others ways of dealing with this are very welcome.
- hdkwowjdj 7y ago
  It's a social cost question, I guess. Your signal: I don't care enough about our communication to use WhatsApp, because of reasons that are obscure to 99% outside a tech community. Similarly, they don't bother to reach out to you on other communication channels, because they don't bother enough. The important thing to understand is, from your communication partners point of view, you create a burden without reason, so they work around it in (their) most effective way. I've been there and didn't support this or that messenger. By now I think, the only way to solve those kind of issues are i) sane laws that regulate privacy and communication security, and ii) trends that create a need for a new communication style - private, secure, and human (like, calling from time to time, find a better solution to ghosting, things like that). I'm convinced that we need positive incentives for that, instead of creating artificial burden.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    Oh yes, I wasn't trying to imply that any party was at fault here - just that the outcome is unfortunate. This isn't just limited to communications tools. For example, people might have dietary restrictions for non-health reasons (religion, environmental impact, etc) that others do not share or even understand. I don't mind accommodating those (to a limit) e.g. when picking a place to eat, but it is a burden placed on people around them. That's just the way it is, I guess, and I suppose all people can do is try to minimise the burden, and to be accepting of those placed upon you.
neiman 7y ago
> His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF. What you call "annoying AF" was reality for many many years, and yet people were not constantly annoyed..
- Rexxar 7y ago
  Things are not annoying when you know there is no other more practical solution.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  It was a different time. The cost of communication is near zero, so if you can’t be bothered, people get annoyed.
  - neiman 7y ago
    I just don't think most "people get annoyed" by such things, definitely not "annoyed AF", besides some very impatient people who'll always find this or other reasons to be annoyed.
  - guidance 7y ago
    > 'The cost of communication is near zero' You mean the 'cost of interrupting other people while they are in the middle of living their lives' is near zero. On the other side of the coin, the cost of being constantly interrupted by beeping, buzzing, ringing, and jingling of every asshole in the county who calls/text on a moment's whim, and gets annoyed/offended when I don't instantly respond, is not zero. Likewise, the cost of being constantly surveilled by intelligence agencies and evil corporations is definitely nowhere near zero. I live completely off the grid. Far from giving a fuck about how offended/inconvenienced others are by my lifestyle, I purposely disconnected from all of those people. Life for me is much better now.
  - ken 7y ago
    I would say this demonstrates that the cost of communication is not near zero.
- noirbot 7y ago
ulfw 7y ago
Yea that's by definition not "off the grid" anyway. It's like German getting out of nuclear power generation but then buying nuclear power from Czech and France, where power plans are literally at the German border.
janci 7y ago
Some time ago when mobile phones were very expensive one of my relatives carried SIM without phone.
Fnoord 7y ago
He could've just used a SIP client (plus e.g. WLAN, which does not even have to be on 24/7), and being the one who initializes the call. If he does it on a sane time, then he'll reach contact.
- beerandt 7y ago
  You presume that he wanted his parents to be able to contact him.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    I don't. My use-case, where you have a SIP client and WLAN, allows for you to be disconnected, and only connect when you feel like it. It is akin to Invisible mode on ICQ; and that was perfect for people who wanted to lay low.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      But why go to the trouble of that at all if you only want to make outgoing calls, and without giving people you call a return number to reach you.
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        People need your return number for voicemail (if you decide to opt into that; personally, I don't), and to recognize who's calling them. I know enough people who don't accept a call from a "private number" or "unknown number". I have my smartphone 24/7 on DND. I only feel/hear my vibration motor if I get a call. Sometimes, this causes me to miss phone calls, but in general it works well enough. It also makes me one of these people who isn't annoying in public transport or on yoga class.
tzjmetron 7y ago
> make sure you don’t leech Spot on. Nothing worse than feeling taken advantage of.
gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
That's on his mother not him. Maybe he did this specifically to try to have some breathing room from his mother?
IGotThroughIt 7y ago
You don't seem too impressed by those that make the choice to live off the grid...
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  It's great if you choose to do that. But if everyone else has to compensate to deal with your choices, like parents can't reach the person so they call their friends, you aren't really living off the grid.
- dngray 7y ago
  > You don't seem too impressed by those that make the choice to live off the grid... I don't think the author of that post is living "off the grid" at all. I am surprised nobody noticed that he mentioned he uses OKCupid. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/grindr-and-okcupid-sell-your-data-twitters-mopub-real-problem https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/grindr-and-okcupid-sel...
dzhiurgis 7y ago
We’ve recently got rid of roommates like that. They owned nothing and borrowed everything. Plus their ideology was that every corporation conspires to poison people. And they were heavy on drugs. And smelled pretty bad. Sharing is great when you put in something material in, not just try to be bubbly person.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

The example doesn't quite seem to connect to the moral. Maybe he didn't want his mom to call him. If a third party calls you to inquire about me, why is that my problem?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
plufz 7y ago
Because you care about people around you and don’t want them to suffer because of indirect consequences of your actions...?
- throwaway2_75 7y ago
  You guys have a warped sense of reality if this is suffering to you. Oh noo you had to answer a phone. Fu k me.

jakobegger 7y ago

> make sure you don’t leech off of those around you I think that's a toxic attitude. Picking up the phone for someone else every now and then is really not a big of a hassle. Obviously I don't know the whole situation, but in general I do think that one should be ready to do such minor favors for another human being without calling them a leech.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I know someone who lives off the grid like this, they are also too cheap to ever pay their share of airbnb lodging (I will stay with someone else, oh you got it I come stay with you), too cheap to give a bit of scotch tape for taping up a box when clearing out their dead mothers house because they bought that tape for 2 euro, or finally too cheap to buy their own chewing gum when they have had all their other expenses paid (flight, lodging) to go to a wedding in Kiruna Sweden. on edit: changed some incorrect uses of to to correct usage of too.
- dannyw 7y ago
  Sounds like they're just cheap; and the off the grid part doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    exactly the original comment was make sure not to leach, and someone else thought it was a toxic attitude, and I don't think it is too toxic an attitude - because there are people who are leaches after all.
    - ferzul 7y ago
      But there's being a leach, and there's trying to cope given a moral-philosophical decision not to use a phone. And you're not distinguishing them.
      - anamexis 7y ago
        They aren't mutually exclusive.
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        Yes but there was the original comment which suggested that it was not nice to suggest not to be a leach, because that was a little bit much to assume, so I provided a counterexample where that was a reasonable assumption. Normally I would not expect, given that thread of conversation, that I should have to explain that my example was not meant to be a universal condemnation of anyone not having a sim card in their phone.

Vinnl 7y ago

This is really hard to do. I don't live off the grid by any means - there's a million ways to contact me, e.g. text message, calling, Signal messages, emails, etc. However, I don't use Whatsapp in a country where the vast majority of people does. I'm fine with missing things if people don't feel like using any of the methods I have to get in touch with me. However, instead of either not bothering or using one of the communication channels we have in common, people tend to ask my partner to relay messages to me. So short of starting to use Whatsapp (which I'd really rather not do, and which requires installing a different OS on my phone - and possibly get a data subscription as well), the burden is on my partner to either tell them to contact me directly, or to relay the messages. Any good tips for others ways of dealing with this are very welcome.

hdkwowjdj 7y ago
It's a social cost question, I guess. Your signal: I don't care enough about our communication to use WhatsApp, because of reasons that are obscure to 99% outside a tech community. Similarly, they don't bother to reach out to you on other communication channels, because they don't bother enough. The important thing to understand is, from your communication partners point of view, you create a burden without reason, so they work around it in (their) most effective way. I've been there and didn't support this or that messenger. By now I think, the only way to solve those kind of issues are i) sane laws that regulate privacy and communication security, and ii) trends that create a need for a new communication style - private, secure, and human (like, calling from time to time, find a better solution to ghosting, things like that). I'm convinced that we need positive incentives for that, instead of creating artificial burden.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  Oh yes, I wasn't trying to imply that any party was at fault here - just that the outcome is unfortunate. This isn't just limited to communications tools. For example, people might have dietary restrictions for non-health reasons (religion, environmental impact, etc) that others do not share or even understand. I don't mind accommodating those (to a limit) e.g. when picking a place to eat, but it is a burden placed on people around them. That's just the way it is, I guess, and I suppose all people can do is try to minimise the burden, and to be accepting of those placed upon you.

neiman 7y ago

> His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF. What you call "annoying AF" was reality for many many years, and yet people were not constantly annoyed..

Rexxar 7y ago
Things are not annoying when you know there is no other more practical solution.
Spooky23 7y ago
It was a different time. The cost of communication is near zero, so if you can’t be bothered, people get annoyed.
- neiman 7y ago
  I just don't think most "people get annoyed" by such things, definitely not "annoyed AF", besides some very impatient people who'll always find this or other reasons to be annoyed.
- guidance 7y ago
  > 'The cost of communication is near zero' You mean the 'cost of interrupting other people while they are in the middle of living their lives' is near zero. On the other side of the coin, the cost of being constantly interrupted by beeping, buzzing, ringing, and jingling of every asshole in the county who calls/text on a moment's whim, and gets annoyed/offended when I don't instantly respond, is not zero. Likewise, the cost of being constantly surveilled by intelligence agencies and evil corporations is definitely nowhere near zero. I live completely off the grid. Far from giving a fuck about how offended/inconvenienced others are by my lifestyle, I purposely disconnected from all of those people. Life for me is much better now.
- ken 7y ago
  I would say this demonstrates that the cost of communication is not near zero.
noirbot 7y ago

ulfw 7y ago

Yea that's by definition not "off the grid" anyway. It's like German getting out of nuclear power generation but then buying nuclear power from Czech and France, where power plans are literally at the German border.

janci 7y ago

Some time ago when mobile phones were very expensive one of my relatives carried SIM without phone.

Fnoord 7y ago

He could've just used a SIP client (plus e.g. WLAN, which does not even have to be on 24/7), and being the one who initializes the call. If he does it on a sane time, then he'll reach contact.

beerandt 7y ago
You presume that he wanted his parents to be able to contact him.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  I don't. My use-case, where you have a SIP client and WLAN, allows for you to be disconnected, and only connect when you feel like it. It is akin to Invisible mode on ICQ; and that was perfect for people who wanted to lay low.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    But why go to the trouble of that at all if you only want to make outgoing calls, and without giving people you call a return number to reach you.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      People need your return number for voicemail (if you decide to opt into that; personally, I don't), and to recognize who's calling them. I know enough people who don't accept a call from a "private number" or "unknown number". I have my smartphone 24/7 on DND. I only feel/hear my vibration motor if I get a call. Sometimes, this causes me to miss phone calls, but in general it works well enough. It also makes me one of these people who isn't annoying in public transport or on yoga class.

tzjmetron 7y ago

> make sure you don’t leech Spot on. Nothing worse than feeling taken advantage of.

gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago

That's on his mother not him. Maybe he did this specifically to try to have some breathing room from his mother?

IGotThroughIt 7y ago

You don't seem too impressed by those that make the choice to live off the grid...

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
It's great if you choose to do that. But if everyone else has to compensate to deal with your choices, like parents can't reach the person so they call their friends, you aren't really living off the grid.
dngray 7y ago
> You don't seem too impressed by those that make the choice to live off the grid... I don't think the author of that post is living "off the grid" at all. I am surprised nobody noticed that he mentioned he uses OKCupid. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/grindr-and-okcupid-sell-your-data-twitters-mopub-real-problem https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/grindr-and-okcupid-sel...

dzhiurgis 7y ago

We’ve recently got rid of roommates like that. They owned nothing and borrowed everything. Plus their ideology was that every corporation conspires to poison people. And they were heavy on drugs. And smelled pretty bad. Sharing is great when you put in something material in, not just try to be bubbly person.