How old are you?
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Twitter user still on X: "I wrote about why Obama let phone companies abandon their pay phones and what that means for the future of Democracy. Read it in the Atlantic!"
Bluesky: "read this interesting article I came across in the Atlantic about how payphones will help us in 2028!"
LinkedIn: "I'm proud to announce my new start up to help deliver telecommunications to the unphoned. We discovered an unmet market of people who can't afford the latest iPhone so we are going to install booths in third spaces that rent access by the minute."
HackerNews, same user: "check out this new startup revolutionizing communication using crypto and AI! I got it all going this weekend thanks to Claude"
Ham radio social net:
"Yeah. That was a great time meeting for coffee at the diner this morning. Did you see that everyone's talking about payphones? I used to work for Western Electric in the adjacent department. You remember Roy, the old club president? Yeah. He designed the dial mechanism. What a hoot that guy was."meshtasticore-verse: "dyk my uncle, the HAM, used to work on pay phones? i wrote a python script to let me use one as a T9 keyboard to send this msg."
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How old are you?
@galacticstone i think i sent an email from a payphone once
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Thank you, I was going to expand on the joke , I am certain that is Instagram summed up.
@IrrationalMethod @lapt0r @galacticstone In Norway we have 100 old school public phone booths placed around the country. They're no longer operative, but they at least serve as a reminder of a different time. I'm also quite sure somebody has at least one in their living room (of course tinkered with, so that you can make calls with it), and the odds are fairly low that they have a presence in the Fediverse.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone Used all 3 within the same year... The future didn't happen all at once.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone
Why is there no option for people who know these but never used them because they had no one to call?Also make sure I do not get my hands on a rotary phone, since then, I will need something to mod that and fear it will get expensive (just imagine calling someone via Signal/<Other thing that is better than plain phone line> but using your rotary phone to dial the number of your contact).
Don't think to have much use for a payphone kind of rotary dialling phone though ... Too large. -
How old are you?
@galacticstone
Im missing "I've used a operator only payphone" -
@IrrationalMethod The results are definitely going to be skewed.
It's funny to me, because when I first found the Fedi and Mastodon back in 2018, I operated under the mistaken assumption that the demographic here is much younger than me (I'm 56).
Over time, I discovered that many Mastodonians are my age or older.
There are far more AARP members here than I originally thought. 🤪
@galacticstone @IrrationalMethod
May I propose the option of age bubbles on Fedi? 'Cause there are plenty of people around my age too (around 20), but maybe due to how following works on Fedi there is little interchange between age groups?
Although I would also assume that Fedi is older than most would expect, since many young(er) people are pushed toward other social media things through social pressure. -
How old are you?
@galacticstone not a payphone but I grew up with a rotary phone -
How old are you?
@galacticstone
I *own* a payphone. -
How old are you?
@galacticstone This should have been a multiple choice. I've never seen a card-swipe pay phone without a dial, but am not sure whether it's because I'm Gen X or because I'm American.
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All of these users are middle-aged millennials, at least in my head, but the age doesn't matter.
I have used a touch tone payphone, but it was never a regular part of my life.
(I am a middle aged millennial, but I don't have any pay phones in my living room - I am fairly certain I have more than one mutual here who does.)
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Someone I know (wink wink) back in the 70s stole the touch tone keypad off a pay phone because at home they just had a rotary one.
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Twitter user still on X: "I wrote about why Obama let phone companies abandon their pay phones and what that means for the future of Democracy. Read it in the Atlantic!"
Bluesky: "read this interesting article I came across in the Atlantic about how payphones will help us in 2028!"
LinkedIn: "I'm proud to announce my new start up to help deliver telecommunications to the unphoned. We discovered an unmet market of people who can't afford the latest iPhone so we are going to install booths in third spaces that rent access by the minute."
HackerNews, same user: "check out this new startup revolutionizing communication using crypto and AI! I got it all going this weekend thanks to Claude"
X: "grok, when did payphones become woke?"
Mainstream press outlets: "Why is everyone talking about pay phones? This new start up, named after a minor LoTR character, thinks they will change the world."
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@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Someone I know (wink wink) back in the 70s stole the touch tone keypad off a pay phone because at home they just had a rotary one.
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Worked great until they almost got arrested...
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@Wyatt_H_Knott @galacticstone And the Witchita Linesman, is still on the line...."
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I have made a call on a rotary payphone without paying.
The coin mechanism in that payphone depended on the dial. If you held a dtmf dialer up to the horn and dialed the payphone never started charging money.
(Last century)
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How old are you?
@galacticstone Listening to coin dropping down the depth of steel payphone and then spinning rotor - that was fun
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I was Alexander Graham Bells second call.
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Tiktok: "look at this cool thing I found in the back of this restaurant, it's like an old cell phone, but it's mounted to the wall, it only makes calls
and you share it with other people!"Reddit: "help, wtf is this thing?"
Mastodon: "oh cool. That's the unique one that was made by Western Electric to supports both pulse dialing and tone dialing depending on the jumper behind the keypad. The logo is for a phone company that went bankrupt after 3 months and is now part of Verizon. I have three of them in my living room."
Facebook: "oh the good old days! I still can't believe Obama banned payphones!"
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I own a rotary phone from the 1940s that has a ringer I assume was designed for the civil defense. That is, you can hear it ringing down the block. The phone appears to be made of Bakelite. I'm not at home or I'd post pictures.
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Would you like to purchase a pay phone? I have one.
@HopelessDemigod @IrrationalMethod I don't think that's what was meant by "payphone"...
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Tiktok: "look at this cool thing I found in the back of this restaurant, it's like an old cell phone, but it's mounted to the wall, it only makes calls
and you share it with other people!"Reddit: "help, wtf is this thing?"
Mastodon: "oh cool. That's the unique one that was made by Western Electric to supports both pulse dialing and tone dialing depending on the jumper behind the keypad. The logo is for a phone company that went bankrupt after 3 months and is now part of Verizon. I have three of them in my living room."
Facebook: "oh the good old days! I still can't believe Obama banned payphones!"
And on YouTube there's a whole channel devoted to ancient telecom works, but it's run by somebody at least one if not two generations younger than me.
