Declining speakerphone manners.

It's really something how people have just started speaking on speakerphone anywhere, at any time and anywhere. It's like socialization and social permission for this behavior has just exploded, in ways that were possible for years and years since everyone got smartphones, but it hasn't just happened until now, like, for some reason, it's just one of those things that some people started doing and then other people started doing it too, and then it just took off from there.

Like, I was kind of surprised twice over, on the last trip that I took to the city that I used to live in.

In the breakfast area of the place that I've been staying at and where I've never seen it before, suddenly there was a (young) (French) guy who had his speakerphone propped up as he Facetimed someone and ate his morning cereal, and then there was this (eccentric) (older) (tattooed) (bald) guy who was lingering over coffee after he had had his breakfast, just talking out very loud to his speakerphone about some very personal things with a close friend, including some homosexual experience that someone's husband had (?).

On my last day in town, too, I was on the subway to go meet a (scholarly) friend for lunch and project advice, and there was this (middle-aged) (Latino) man with his phone out Facetiming people in (Spanish) as the noise of children spilled out of his phone and filled the car, and then there was a (well-dressed) (hipster-ish) (black) guy sitting next to me who pulled out his phone and put it on speaker to deal with being late for some meeting, and then on my subway ride back from meeting my one (scholarly) friend, another (Latino) guy pulled out his phone to do speaker, and then, when I was on the train home that night, the guy sitting next to me did it, too, briefly.

I mean, it's like everywhere, it all just exploded.

Facetiming seems a bit prominent in this type of behavior, too...  That makes me wonder if some of this has to do with how people connected via Zoom during the pandemic, and brought some of that behavior forward, where video feeds have now replaced many phonecalls.

It might also have to do with that 5G shit that everyone talks about, where maybe processing times have increased and technologically enabled smooth Facetiming, whereas it wasn't a possibility on your smartphone, before?