Awww, this is gonna be good. But wait: "Closing date January 24th." Year-long competition, or is that a typo?

A typo indeed :/

February 24th it is!

Two research subjects in a (paid) group interview situation, each, in turn, took (apparently) important business calls without any "excuse me for a moment" - simply glancing at their phones during the interview, answering the call, rising, and then leaving the room. I have at least one of these instances on video.

I'm sure my story isn't uncommon.

Recently my wife (married for just over a year) an I have taken in a 16 year old family member as a foster child. While mostly the experience has been quite favorable we've certainly noticed our sex life settling down rather abruptly.

However we do what we can to keep it going and such. The last month has been particularly stressful with troubles from a rebellious teen and job demands tugging different ways I find myself working on all coasts and at home quite a bit.

One day while working at home after a long trip away and trying to keep from the stresses at the office I joked with my wife that she should come home for lunch. To my delight, she was more than happy to take a long lunch.

It was fantastic until my Blackberry began ringing. Of course, I ignored the interruption until it immediately began ringing again. The only time they ring twice is because a server has exploded. At that point I might as well have been in the office. Every bit of the stress I was trying to keep away from for a day came back and the rare mid-afternoon rendezvous was all but over.

Reluctantly I checked my messages only to find a low priority piece of impatience waiting for me.

We haven't had sex since. :[

I can't take the credit for this. I'm posting because it's unlikely Future Perfect and Eyechild would know each other. But here's a great post on anti-social mobile use, with plenty of London flavour and humour. Wicked graphic too:

http://theeyechild.blogspot.com/2008/01/other-peoples-music-on-bus.html

I think the most annoying thing is phones that are left ringing without anyone picking them up. I've seen this happening quite a few times because the owner of the phone would prefer not to answer, but is not aware that the ringer can be silenced without actually declining the call (which many consider offensive). However the same thing often happens when someone is not near their phone in order to pick it up.

I remember an amusing example of such an occasion, it was during a school trip in Greece around 1999. At that time mobile phones were still quite new in Greece (especially in the hands of high school students), most of them were not configured by default to switch to voicemail after a couple of rings, and at that time most ringtones were still annoying electronic-like buzzing sounds, or monophonic imitations of some classical music track.

So our whole class was visiting a museum an listening to some lecture on Byzantine history, when a phone starts to ring and would not stop. Turns out its owner was out to visit the toilet. After 20 or so rings, a disgruntled elderly teacher, having no clue how to silence the phone, went outside and buried it in a flower pot, thus hoping to silence the noise :)

I remember from my days of college(bachelors) days in India, Reliance launched CDMA phones (reliance to reliance free calls).

We four guys had two Reliance phones :) and with the power of free calling, we always had pranks in our mind.
[calling some random people with random names and random professions and noting down numbers of girls with sweet voice and willing to talk. for e.g calling a girl and telling her she had won a prize and asking her address for delivering the prize].

But the best part was, In the middle of night we use to dial two random numbers and place the two phones in 69 position(with one receiver on others speaker).

When the victims( I feel guilty doing that but couldn't resist due to fun) use to pick up phones, they were all asking the reasons to the other party, why calling them in the middle of night. The other party was also asking the same reason very innocently, As if the other guy was culprit.

To further spice up their conversation we use to speak up some slang in the middle of conversation. Which further heated up their conversation. We did it a number of times and will fall laughing on the floor, as the conversations were very funny, people threating each other with all kind of means, and to some people it was just incomprehensible,its beyond words to explain their comments.

orgasm ringtone: http://www.break.com/index/orgasm-ringtone-prank.html

Well, sorry for this but if you want examples of anti-social behaviour with mobile phones it's not going to be just lightness and laughter...

The Madrid train bombings were effectuated by a bunch of mobile phones, right? Calling up a number to trigger a bomb: that's certainly anti-social. Maybe outside the scope of this competition, but all too real, unfortunately.

For a milder but alarmingly injurious example, we have the [CIA's?] bugging of the Greek Prime Minister and about 100 Ministers, army chiefs and politicians, during and after the Athens Olympic Games 2004, all engineered via the Vodafone network. This was so anti-social that Vodafone and Ericsson were eventually fined squillions of euros for negligence... the mobile phones at the heart of the system were found to be sending recorded messages to a tape-recorder somewhere around Langley, Virginia, which is not even in Greece, apparently.

Just to completely over-emphasise the point, a mobile phone in the "wrong" hands can be even more damaging than that famous "useful tool", the hammer, if used with malicious intent.

Market research group in Beijing - 8 or 9 paid respondents. Through the course of the 90 minute session some of them didn't even bother getting up to excuse themselves. Just took the call while sitting on the couch, in the middle of everything.

I eventually had to tell them, through the translator, that their phones interfered with the camera and that they had to be turned-off completely. That seemed to do the trick - so from then on, we just announced that at the beginning and it seemed to work.

In a tube station, two young lads, in baggy pants; surprisingly loud & clear rap music out of one of their cell phone: “Fuck the system before the system fucks us! [ad lib.]” An old annoyed lady whines louder then the music, then yells: “Stop it!” Tube arrives, the youngsters get up, and she finally exclaims, in front of the whole tube: “Fuck the system or be fucked? That's the options? Well, I see you have chosen, you faggot, with your pants down! Enjoying it?” and she spanks him.
I'm not sure she was aware that rap has been accused of homophobia. I guess we should get used to grannies who were young in the sixties.

Oh, and I already have a pair of AudioTechnica—supposedly better then the Bose, so I'll let one more person enjoy the bliss of a quiet downtown.

Oh—and I teach to Chinese people, and I have to tell to David: I completely relate to his experience; for some odd reason, they won't let anything interfere with their cell phone. Any body knows why? — Or how to curb that without a camera?

I define anti social behavior differently, but the most telling example I can provide is that my girlfriend told me she loved me for the first time in a SMS message when I was driving to Chicago. I've told this to people and half think it's awful and the other half totally get it. Two years later, we're still telling each other we love each other over SMS (and in person).

We've had numerous interviews situations where the participant's switch their attentions between us and, well, remote others. One particularly adept young Korean lady was sending out texts without any noticeable loss of eye contact with us. Though far from anti-social.

> Madrid

Death is pretty extreme anti-social. Though to be harsh, not based on a first hand experience, or was it? And on the same thread - IEDs in Iraq. Where does anti-social end and malicious /lethal start?

My personal preference is for subtle, yet infuriating.

I gotta say taking the call from your mother while in mid coitus takes the cake. I think I had a Freudian moment.

Well, I don't know how anti-social, but this guy was really annoying: I went to the cinema to watch Amenábar's film "The Others". A phone rings several times, the owner is not worried in turning it off, ashamed as the majority of us would (or should) be. For my stupor the individual ANSWERS the phone in the middle of the session, explains that he was in a movie theater, then says which movie he was watching and then proceeds to repeat very loudly what the person on the other side of the line kindly told him: the end of the movie. I won't spoil for those who haven't seen it and will not try to explain how tragic this was. But for those who have, you get a picture of how much popcorn was thrown onto this unfortunate person.

I teach at a college, and I had this student that would fall asleep from time to time (it's a darkened auditorium, so you can't blame the kid too much). One day I noticed he woke up because someone had texted him, and I suspected it was a friend waking him up. So after the third or fourth time, I stopped class, took out my mobile in front of the class and called the sleeper. His phone woke him up, and I've never had a problem with a student falling asleep again, despite the dimmed lights, ever since...and it has been several semesters now.

Many festivals in India, begin with a huge gathering of people reciting prayers along with priest, who conducts this ritual of worship. It is not surprising these days to see people getting interrupted by phone calls..but what's ironic/funny is that the ring tones they have downloaded are 'prayers' themselves!

slightly upperscale hibachi restuarant in pittsburgh, pa

two attractive, hip young 20 something looking ladies sit down at the same table as my party.

i can't help but notice their conversation falls into lapses of silence during the dinner.

then i realize that they are both taking breaks from each other, the hibachi chef, and their food to covertly pull out their cellphones.

who knows who each of them were texting? family? boyfriends? girlfriends?

i suppose who's to say they were being antisocial? one might argue they are really hypersocial- connected to others even at a distance, able to slip in and out of physical and digital and cellular conversations with the discrete push of a button.

i'm not sure they fully appreciated the hibachi though.

I'm an avid runner living in Bulgaria. Bulgaria is in the EU for an year now, but still, the label "Eastern" is more in tact for it than "European" country.

When I train for marathons I do my long runs in my grandparents' village - Maglizh - which is in the heart of the Balkans. I often take a week off to do running in the mountains, but still many of my colleagues call me from the office. So, I always carry my phone with handsfree to answer the incoming calls while running and to listen to music.

When I dash out of the village I have to cross it entirely. There's a local phenomenon called "sedianki" (it translates as "seatings") - places on certain streets where the locals gather to exchange gossip and to gather their sheep and goats from the shepherds.

When I initially passed every "sedianka", the villagers we're looking at me almost scared. I must admit, look strange for local standarts - running tights (funny for a man), synthetic jacket, head scarf, sunglasses and almost invisible handsfree.

The next day, while passing, the locals started to make cross signs with their hands. It is the same ritual as when you enter or leave the local eastern-orthodox church.

The next day - they started talking to me and looked almost agressive.

I went back to Sofia (the capital) and came back next week, quite amazed by the locals.

When I came back a week later, my grandmother was looking angry at me...

"You must stop running and talking to yourself. I had to explain to the locals that you're not obsessed by demons. They were planning to call the priest to stop you on your daily mad runs", she said.

So, running and talking on mobile in Bulgaria is not a good idea. Some of the locals may consider you obsessed and may take action.

I got three stories:

a) After a popular finnish artist, Kirka, had died it upset many middle-age fans. At Korso railway station, I witnessed a 200 kg drunk, middle age man acting very aggressively towards other people. I observed the situation unfold for few minutes. The drunk was trying to download Kirka music to his N70 mobile phone from a local mobile music store - with no success. This got him very upset. Fortunately he had succeeded in downloading Kirka ringtone. Seeing an agressive 200 kg drunkard singing karaoke with N70 mobile phone on Korso Railway station is a sight that i'm not going to forget.

B) Probably everyone has head of someone getting dumbed by his girl-boyfriend with SMS. But get this: my friend received similar message from his wife, after 10+ years. Telling him the she had a new one, and it was all over. I kid you not!
It is just cruel to which extent technology allows us not to discuss with others.

C) This story is not necessary about antisocial mobile phone usage, but about utter public humiliation, thanks to mobiles.
I was trying out a new mobile phone with GPS.
While waiting for my friend, i heard a natures call. I stepped out of car, put mobile to my pocket, and headed towards a restroom nearby.
It was one of those big, open toilets with row of small cabins next to each other. One of those places where everyone can hear every little sound. I selected a cabin, locked the door and unzipped. Next, the mobile on my jacket pocket shouted "After 200 meters, turn right!", in a clear, loud british accent. My hands being occupied, there was little i could do. This is the state of the society - utter humiliation by machines.

(Some rights reserved, gonna blog about these later)

The 'chib' - (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chib) Scottish slang (Mainly Glaswegian) for any blunt object that can be used to hit someone with. Basically 21st century antisocial Glaswegians equivalent to the cavemans club.

Recently, whilst attending a gig at the infamous Glasgow Barrolands, and going through the normal obligatory passing through the metal detector then 'pat down' search where apparently a cadburys cream egg is contraband. I observed one 'clourful gentleman' get rather annoyed at the other slightly inebriated 'colourful gentleman' in front of him. This eventually led to him brandishing his steel clad nokia 6300 and "setting aboot him", blood was spilled on both his face and the phone whilst his girlfriend screamed "what are you doing, youve just got that on contract"....the other man attempted to retaliate but his phone was of inferior construction and he lost the phone joust...only in Glasgow

The cell phone has quickly replaced the landlines. I mean, when you're calling someone, even though you know that this person is at home, you'll call his (or her) cell phone, because this makes almost 100% sure that you'll reach the right person. This attitude kills the opportunity of talking to the people that lives in the same house of your interlocutor. That's kind of sad especially when it's an old friend whose family you know and consider also friends.
For example whenever I call my brother, I dial his cell phone, so I rarely get to talk to his wife, which is also a good friend of mine. It's not that I need to talk to her (if i needed i would call her too) but it would be good to have her answering the phone once in a while and chat for a little.
In this new era, you don't get to "discover" new people, just by making a phone call to someone's house. You don't have to deal with "unknown" people to get to whom you want.
That's what I've been noticing here in Brazil.
I hope I made myself clear.

Perhaps it's my youth, but I find Fernando's landline nostalgia extremely amusing. I wonder if, when I grow older, I will wax poetic about my cell phone; how one had to hold it their ear to listen, and speak aloud to be heard. I wonder if I'll miss the physicality of its rumble, the personality of its ringtones, the privacy of withholding thoughts simply by biting one's tongue. I wonder if I'll ever miss the amusement of being able to overhear half of an argument while riding on the bus, or of being able to overhear any conversation at all.

A few antisocial mobile use behaviors experienced, some of them are annoyingly returning:

- Plane landing.
When the plane lands everybody turn instantly its mobile on, all beeping for the national carriers welcome message. Everybody shouting out loud: "I've just landed"

- Train trips.
Loud conversations, often interrupted by louder "I'm entering a tunnel, can't hear you!"

- Funeral/Wedding Ceremonies.
The mobile rings the latest joyful ringtone (Mika's tunes a bestseller for season 2007). It does happen more often than you could think of.

- Office.
Having to listen to that 'so cool' ringtone while your colleague is away. Several times a day.

Not a bad selection for half way through the competition - keep 'em coming.

Voting starts on the 24th February - I'll post a reminder.

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Last school day of the year. The graduating seniors are each presenting their final projects to a small mixed group of teachers, younger students and parents. These are formal presentations made in very small classrooms - the students are nervous, the parents proud and attentive. Well... almost all of the parents. One parent's phone begins to ring. The parent reaches into a pocket and rather than turning off the phone, answers it, and proceeds to hold a long conversation in a normal tone of voice, still seated, while the other people in the room look on in shock, and the student speaker gamely tries to keep her presentation going over the continuing interruption.

This was a moment when I was acutely aware of how people can use phones to demonstrate personal power in abusive ways. That parent could have not taken the call, or if it was urgent, excused himself and taken the call outside the room. To proceed anyway showed disregard for everyone present, for the academic ritual involved, and for the young and nervous student and her parents.

Greece seems to be a common theme here, which triggered memory of a situation that happened to me while speaking at a conference in Greece about years ago - the FT SE Europe Telecoms Conference to be exact. I was part of a panel where panelists took the podium one at a time to give a 20 minute talk. Attendees in the audiences of the conference, as close as the first row, had been taking and making calls during presentations all day, many without being either discreet or even quiet. The audience was peppered with "neh...oxi...kala...tsk, ti krima!" and similar intimate monologues.

However, when I got up to talk, one of my fellow speakers on the dais took a call, right then and there during the panel not 10 feet from me, in front of an audience of hundreds. I was so stunned I just kept going but couldn't suppress a grin. Fantastic. Telecom execs leading the way.

Anti-social story: this one will 'ring' familiar to the ears of anyone living in India. People playing their ringtones over and over again, in places ranging from small tea shops to more expensive Coffee places. This is a highly thrilling rituals amongst 'cool guys' and sly mens who are craving for attention.

Now, there are subtleties worth mentioning about this phenomenon. It gets particularly annoying when:

1] The guy has only 10 bipbipblip kind of ringtones and happens to be:
a) The guy who sells tickets in the bus and has nothing to do - the ride is a one and a half hour one.
b) The guy [strangely it is a "very-guy's thing"] happens to be the watchman/guard who sits just outside the office and mistakes his ringtone list for a music playlist of some sort.

2] The guy [again] has a fancy mp3-friendly-phone, which he proudly uses as a "seduction tool", playing speaker-saturated love songs to impress the girls around.

In India really, i think that the only 'etiquette' attached to the phone is the price tag... People take calls and message while talking to you, call you for coffee and take calls which last till the order is taken, till the coffee is drunk, till the bill comes. Faculties walk out of class to take calls...

Then there are OVER-SOCIAL attitudes one who also do without.
I'm sure this has happen to many many girls living in India. But being a foreigner living here doubles my exposure to such situations:
A bunch of [jobless] guys.
A camera phone.
A (white) girl walking alone on the street.
>> Before you ca react one of the guy walks or stand next to you as if he knows you [some have enough guts to hold you] while his friends take a picture... Be sure the guy will show it to his friends and claim he went out with you :(

The joy of technology!!

in helsinki, it's not rare to get into a discussion with a homeless alcoholic when using the subway, the bus or the tram. i usually don't mind having the conversation, but sometimes the person is just too troubled or behaves aggressively.

if i want the situation to stop and the person to leave or direct his attention to someone else, i often pretend to have an incoming phone call which i answer. i put the phone to my ear and look to another direction from the drunk. never have i been interrupted and never has the person, who has been talking to me, waited for me to finish the call - they always move to the next person in line. whenever i do this, i feel so ashamed of myself.

Another anti-social use of the phone (potentially leading to the infamous "ASBOS", anti-social behaviour-orders):

A few years ago the British media coined a term for a new fad among (south london) youth: HAPPY SLAPPING.

Somebody would physically assault another person, often a complete stranger. The whole scene would be filmed with a camera-phone.

Videos of these attacks would be often dubbed with music (often grime) and be watched on mobile phones and shared widely for entertainment.

This aggressive "trend" was surely dramatized by the tabloids, but it did happen to me once while riding a bike at high speed. No fun.

Check the the wiki-article or search youtube for videos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping

This is actually part of a routine by an Irish comedian called Daragh O'Briain but I think it is worth posting.

He claims to have great fun setting the alarm on his mobile phone to sound like a ringtone and to have it go off while he is on the Tube or other underground transit systems. When is happens, everyone in the carriage immediately reaches into their pocket to check if they have reception. He then proceeds to have a pretend conversation with someone on the phone while everyone else starts waving their phones around trying to pick up a few bars and tries to see what kind of miracle phone he has that works hundreds of meters underground.

For added fun he likes to do it near the City and loudly pretend to receive news of some financial disaster while all the be-suited young titans of industry in the carriage freak out and try to get their phones/blackberries to work.

I recall back in my university days protesting about the early closing hours of one of the libraries. There was a bank of lockers near the reception lending area of the library and we filled the lockers with phones and rang them constantly to annoy the librarians/staff as a form of protest. Childish I know and hardly the stuff of ’68 but what can you do? There is nothing a librarian hates more than phones ringing. I recall we went out of our way to select the most annoying ringtones possible. I think La Cucarahca was the winner.

Probably the most amazing example of anti-social behaviour I've seen involving a mobile phone was actually by someone who wasn't present at the time - they were at the other end of the line.

I was doing a one-day pistol shooting course (of all things), taken by a lovely middle-aged fellow who had flown in from another part of the country to take the course.

Things started off normally, and the class went through all of the usual safety demonstrations and instructions. As the morning progressed though, I noticed that he was always taking phone calls in the gaps between sessions, and would often appear to have trouble ending the calls.

Over lunch he disappeared into his car and spent almost the entire time on his mobile. Not particularly sociable behaviour, but something which didn't worry me too much (I was with my partner anyway).

It was after lunch when the behaviour became really anti-social. He answered the phone during a session, after apologising to the class. We could hear muffled conversation going on, and then he left the phone line open and sat it down on the table, before continuing to teach. Around a minute later, the call ended. We were all mystified.

Only a few minutes later, the phone rang again, and he again agitatedly spoke to someone on the other end of the line, and this time held the handset up to a (male) member of the class and asked them to speak (!). The call ended almost immediately, and he gave us an explanation.

His wife had significant trust issues with him. She was convinced that he was cheating on her, and would constantly either call him, or require him to call her, in order to verify that this was not the case. Going away for a day was not helping the situation, and during the day the frequency and duration of calls increased.

He was remarkably calm about the whole thing, mainly because he was used to it - he said it had been going on for the past couple of years.

Essentially, his mobile acted as a way of preserving his marriage (and his wife's mental state) but at the expense of him developing relationships with other people. In his line of work, this made things difficult - and most definitely anti-social.

From our end, viewing the situation, it was hard not to feel sorry for him - we didn't mention anything to the people who were operating the course, as we didn't want him to be penalised for the anti-social behaviour of his partner.

- M.

Certainly one for many of the recent web 2.0 rate a VC sites that have popped up lately (http://www.thefunded.com)

recently when working with a startup company during my summer holidays from art school, we worked closely with a VC to try and obtain investment, this was all going well and we were close to a very acceptable deal for both parties when one day without prior warning the two MD's of the company who hired me got an sms txt from the VC,

It was an investment offer,

no it was an investment offer via a txt,

it was an investment offer via a txt that was an insult to all the previous discussions and the offer that was expected

now here's the clincher: it was not only an insult of an offer recieved via sms, but it was in TXT SPEAK, not that dissimilar to a 13 year old girl txting her friend. "100k 4 50%"

needless to say the offer was rejected, not by a reply to the sms but via good old fashion snail mail and signed.

Holding a mobile while driving with one hand.
Or texting with two hands while driving. No laws in Canada against it. Not really anti-social just socially irresponsible.

As a young man about town in Vietnam (2000-2007) i would always get the one ring from females. They call and let it ring once so they appear as a miss call and they expect you to call them back. Unless its an already agreed upon way to get someones attention or a coded message its really annoying, especially when everyone that hears you get the one ring knows you just got one ringed.

I hope I am not too late to participate but I want to try.

My mother-in-law's funeral in Kenya back in 2005. it is a Presbyterian Christian ceremony so there is a priest and a couple of church elders at the front of the church leading proceedings. The elder's cell goes off and I kid you not, he proceeds to take a maybe 3 minute call right there telling the person of the oher end "we are having the ceremony right now" or something to that effect.

Even worse, maybe 15 minutes later, the pastor's phone goes off. (This is the guy leading the funeral service!!).

While living in Greece many years ago, I was vacationing at an island near Turkey. During dinner, everyone, particularly the Greek men, were all on their mobile phones in heated discussions with an air of importance meant for everyone to hear. Halfway through dinner, a fellow dinner fell to the floor suffering from an apparent heart attack. All of a sudden, no one was on their phones. At first, I thought this due to the shock of the moment but as I called out for someone to call the equivalent of 911, one brave soul shouted out "All of our phones are fake - and there is no phone close-by! What do we do?" Chaos ensued but the unlucky individual did survive.

I vote for Sachin Gaur's story.

Steve gets my vote please.

Thumbs up for Elenko.

I spend a lot of time watching plays at a nearby theatre, where at the beginning of every performance the (same recorded) voice reminds the audience to switch off their mobile phones during the performance. A ringing mobile phone in the middle of a performance disrupts everybody's concentration - that of the audience and the performer. But of course, a lot of people put their phones on silent instead.
But the silent mode is never really silent. what about the bright light from the mobile when there is a call? Oh how that gets on my nerves! Dont people understand how visually interrupting that is!
Infact, its surprising why mobile companies havent thought of a 'theatre mode' - a mode that lets u keep the phone on with audio+visual silence.
A suitable picture to send would have been one of a blinding light (on the lines of the winning entry)..but cant find one... :)