A contact list actually seems to me like an abnormally bad example for other reasons, or I'm way more atypical than I think I am and everyone else curates their

A contact list actually seems to me like an abnormally bad example for other reasons, or I'm way more atypical than I think I am and everyone else curates their contacts far more carefully. For me, the proliferation of spam means I'm never going to answer an unrecognized phone number, and thus enter everyone I ever expect to receive a phone call from into the list. The vast majority of the time, these are things like contractors coming to my house, a hand surgeon I visit for one injury and hopefully only one injury, a shop I take my car to hopefully once and only once. Numbers I received a call from a few times, possibly more than a decade ago. The fact they're still in my contacts list says nothing whatsoever about my level of trust in them and doesn't mean other contacts, especially my actual friends, should assume anything about their presence except that I received at least one phone call from them at some point and I was expecting that call. That's aside from the fact that contact lists are not reciprocal. Adding a number to your list and giving it a name doesn't mean the owner of that number has added you to their list. There is no guarantee whoever is on the other end of that number has any idea who you even are. This is also aside from the fact that phone numbers can be reassigned. That's an argument that I and anyone else as cavalier about their lists as me should be removing numbers more often, but outside of a fairly short time horizon, there is no guarantee that the person who owns a number you have listed as "Bob" is still Bob. These issues aren't unique to digital contact lists, either. My wife pulled a book off the shelf a few months ago I hadn't opened in a very long time and found an old sheet of paper I'd written some phone number on, possibly 25 years ago? One was a very good friend from high school, a name I still knew and a number I still recognized as her parent's home number from the late 90s. The other, I have absolutely no idea. Probably some designated driver for a group of friends I was going to a party with who were going separate from me in case I needed someone to call if something came up. I may have never even called that number or received a call from it. Hell, how many contacts of people in their early 20s are someone you met in a club who gave you a fake phone number that happens to be some other person's real phone number? This bugs me to no end with all the apps out there for smart phones that want access to your contacts. Why? What significance do you think this list has? It's just a semi-random assortment of some sub-sample of all the people and organizations I have had some kind of fleeting and possibly one-time interaction with in the past quarter century. It doesn't imply I remember who they are, know them, or that I vouch for them in any way.