Gen Z Is Being Weird About Answering The Phone, And Other Things The Internet Talked About This Week

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5 days ago

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Welcome to Only Good Internet, where I give you a little bit of good internet content, as a treat.
I want to talk to my fellow millennials for a bit, here (Gen X, you too). Because I came across this tweet this week:
…That Gen Z answers the phone and doesn't say anything. Apparently, this is a thing: Zoomers will answer the phone and, instead of saying 'hello,' they'll wait there silently for the person calling to speak first.
Now, as a millennial, my first thought was, 'What the f***?' But after reading some replies from Gen Z, it started to make more sense…a lot of them are concerned about spam calls (which, let's be honest, are like 90% of the calls we get these days) and how the bot on the other end is waiting for you to say 'hello' so that it knows there's a real person at this phone number, and it can therefore keep spam-calling you. There were also some concerns from Zoomers about AI stealing your voice with these calls and using it to scam your relatives.
Obviously, the only way to fight back is to use a voice changer — you know, like in Scream — to answer your calls. Throw off the bots, terrify your friends, win-win.
This is the cutest dang thing I've seen in a while:
'Sir, there's a situation on platform 2!' 'Don't tell me…'
u/liberty4now / Via reddit.com
'Yes, sir, it's a Level 5.'
I always like to finish every week by leaving you with a little something that I can't get out of my head. This week, it's all about this thought: