20 January 2005

Drunk Dialing

My parents were chatting the other day about "news" items each had seen recently. Mom was talking about the ways communications technologies have affected youth socialization, mostly focusing on email and IM. Dad was talking about some article in the Globe about how you should erase your ex's phone number from your mobile to make it more difficult to drunk dial him. Over at 2GD today, 0.5  talked about how sweet he is based on the people who drunk dial him.



The phenomenon of drunk dialing has been enabled recently by both the prevalence of mobile phones and the fact that most people keep their acquaintances' numbers stored in same. Scottoway the Luddite once commented that the ultimate evil of the mobile phone is to have to admit, "Shit, I got that girl's digits, but they didn't save properly in my phone." Interesting how I can remember all these numbers of people I knew in elementary school, but I couldn't tell you what any of the numbers are for my five closest friends right now.



0.5 also brought up a point about how he thinks people lose their societal inhibitions when they're drunk and thus their drunk persona more accurately represents their inner self. An interesting thought, but I think all inebriated behaviors are clouded by the additional effects of the state (e.g. increased sexual drive, depression, anger, lack of lucidity, poor brain function). In vino veritas, perhaps, but there's plenty of other grimness floating around in there, like the sulfites of society.



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