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Speaking of making a person.. at this startup I worked at years ago (before LinkedIn existed), it was a tiny shop and we were all maxed out time-wise. It was fr

Speaking of making a person.. at this startup I worked at years ago (before LinkedIn existed), it was a tiny shop and we were all maxed out time-wise. It was frustrating when we had to deal with incredibly persistent salespeople that wouldn't take no for an answer, and others that preyed on our time relentlessly for no apparent reason. So as a joke we invented a fake employee with a fake name. I think his first name was Joe. We gave this person an email address and I made a voicemail recording for him. When a time-waster was bugging us we'd tell them to contact Joe, "who is in charge of that" and provide the contact info. What started off as a joke ended up saving us a fuckton of time, effort, and hassle. For some reason Joe's incredibly upbeat and douchy sounding voicemail message was like manna from heaven for the relentless salespeople that refused to stop calling. It was an interesting social experiment of sorts. Joe was essentially a /dev/null bucket and never responded. But it worked. This lasted for years and was really beneficial for us. Harder to pull off these days, but not impossible I imagine!

gilleain 4y ago
> Harder to pull off these days, but not impossible I imagine! Chat-gpt + text-to-speech? Seems like AI-employees who 'handle' marketing calls would be quite possible. Of course, then the marketers make their own AIs, and it will end up with the majority of phone calls being robots talking to robots.
- Carioca 4y ago
  It's all fun and games until the chat-responder inadvertently buys the product. And when/if you reveal the deception, the other company sues. In AI court, obviously, where it will be decided by an AI judge
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    It's OK, the AI court is biased in favour of the AI, so the other company doesn't stand a chance :)
    - justinclift 4y ago
      > the AI court is biased in favour of the AI When both sides are using AI's for the call, that's not going to work. ;)
ghaff 4y ago
Somewhat inadvertently, as I largely stopped coming into the office well before COVID, I basically turned my work phone into a black hole. It's the number I give on contact forms but I haven't even known how to check voicemail for years. I do have my cell phone in my internal contact info but the culture where I work is that pretty much no one makes a voice call to anyone out of the blue. And I'm very selective who else I give the number to.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  I still have a Google voice number for that. I occasionally have to remember to tell friends that it isn’t my real number… I think the voicemail message may even say that.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Isn’t this wasn’t all support calls are now days?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
paleotrope 4y ago
I wonder if this is going to change with time. Most people of a certain age remember a time when answering the phone and talking to the other person was a social more. This is the social courtesy that telemarketers and scammers have been using for years now. But there's another way. Just hang up on them. I know it's considered hostile but it's just an outdated social more at this point.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  I try to find this balance between recognizing the humanity of everyone I interact with and not allowing this respect to be an attack vector. Over time, I have shifted more towards ignoring salesman in front of a store, not replying to messages and hanging up on a call as being things I'm okay with doing. I don't always give courteous attention anymore. I'm fine with giving nothing ("ghosting" as the kids say) and only giving active rejection if it's really needed. To your point, I think it will shift in a different way over time. Gen Z can't imagine hanging up on someone on the phone, they can't even imagine signaling to the other person they don't want to be on the call anymore (aka saying "goodbye"). But they don't end up on endless phone calls. They just never pick up the phone. Have you ever been in young person's home when someone unexpectedly knocked at the door? It could be Tuesday afternoon and their whole body takes on this dread like they're realizing their life has suddenly turned into a slasher film. I don't mean "kids these days are destroying society". They have other ways to connect than just showing up where someone lives. But I wouldn't start a business selling vacuum cleaners to the next generation of homemakers door-to-door.
  - chops 4y ago
    The misanthrope in me has almost completely taken over when dealing with incoming sales calls, and I've almost completely abandoned the idea that anyone calling me to sell anything is worthy of the "humanity" label. The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent. The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.
bambax 4y ago
> before LinkedIn existed It's surprisingly easy to make up a LinkedIn profile. I have one that has over 50 connections. Many sales people accept connections requests, and some non-sales people do as well. It just goes on from there. I use him for looking up people without leaving a trace, and it's generally great fun to make him do posts on various topics. I didn't put much effort in it though (for example, his photo is just a random stock photo, not anything AI-generated). I wonder how many virtual people exist on social networks.
cstross 4y ago
And then again, if you really hate your telesales callers, put them on hold with some hold music like this: https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss Explanation of how/why they came up with it here: https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/it_helpdesk_creates_oh_hold_hell/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/it_helpdesk_creates_o...

gilleain 4y ago

> Harder to pull off these days, but not impossible I imagine! Chat-gpt + text-to-speech? Seems like AI-employees who 'handle' marketing calls would be quite possible. Of course, then the marketers make their own AIs, and it will end up with the majority of phone calls being robots talking to robots.

Carioca 4y ago
It's all fun and games until the chat-responder inadvertently buys the product. And when/if you reveal the deception, the other company sues. In AI court, obviously, where it will be decided by an AI judge
- scrollaway 4y ago
  It's OK, the AI court is biased in favour of the AI, so the other company doesn't stand a chance :)
  - justinclift 4y ago
    > the AI court is biased in favour of the AI When both sides are using AI's for the call, that's not going to work. ;)

ghaff 4y ago

Somewhat inadvertently, as I largely stopped coming into the office well before COVID, I basically turned my work phone into a black hole. It's the number I give on contact forms but I haven't even known how to check voicemail for years. I do have my cell phone in my internal contact info but the culture where I work is that pretty much no one makes a voice call to anyone out of the blue. And I'm very selective who else I give the number to.

dwighttk 4y ago
I still have a Google voice number for that. I occasionally have to remember to tell friends that it isn’t my real number… I think the voicemail message may even say that.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Isn’t this wasn’t all support calls are now days?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

paleotrope 4y ago

I wonder if this is going to change with time. Most people of a certain age remember a time when answering the phone and talking to the other person was a social more. This is the social courtesy that telemarketers and scammers have been using for years now. But there's another way. Just hang up on them. I know it's considered hostile but it's just an outdated social more at this point.

travisjungroth 4y ago
I try to find this balance between recognizing the humanity of everyone I interact with and not allowing this respect to be an attack vector. Over time, I have shifted more towards ignoring salesman in front of a store, not replying to messages and hanging up on a call as being things I'm okay with doing. I don't always give courteous attention anymore. I'm fine with giving nothing ("ghosting" as the kids say) and only giving active rejection if it's really needed. To your point, I think it will shift in a different way over time. Gen Z can't imagine hanging up on someone on the phone, they can't even imagine signaling to the other person they don't want to be on the call anymore (aka saying "goodbye"). But they don't end up on endless phone calls. They just never pick up the phone. Have you ever been in young person's home when someone unexpectedly knocked at the door? It could be Tuesday afternoon and their whole body takes on this dread like they're realizing their life has suddenly turned into a slasher film. I don't mean "kids these days are destroying society". They have other ways to connect than just showing up where someone lives. But I wouldn't start a business selling vacuum cleaners to the next generation of homemakers door-to-door.
- chops 4y ago
  The misanthrope in me has almost completely taken over when dealing with incoming sales calls, and I've almost completely abandoned the idea that anyone calling me to sell anything is worthy of the "humanity" label. The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent. The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.

bambax 4y ago

> before LinkedIn existed It's surprisingly easy to make up a LinkedIn profile. I have one that has over 50 connections. Many sales people accept connections requests, and some non-sales people do as well. It just goes on from there. I use him for looking up people without leaving a trace, and it's generally great fun to make him do posts on various topics. I didn't put much effort in it though (for example, his photo is just a random stock photo, not anything AI-generated). I wonder how many virtual people exist on social networks.

cstross 4y ago

And then again, if you really hate your telesales callers, put them on hold with some hold music like this: https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss Explanation of how/why they came up with it here: https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/it_helpdesk_creates_oh_hold_hell/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/it_helpdesk_creates_o...