I've never understood people doing this. Why not just answer the phone? It takes 1 second to realize its spam, and you hang up, without risking ignoring your friend or a new doctor's office, and without touching voicemail. I don't like getting these calls either, but 90% of the damage is interrupting what I'm doing, getting out the phone, and looking at the screen.
I can only imagine that for some people there is some sort of visceral unpleasantness with hanging up on telemarketers or something and they'd rather ignore the call.
As for why I don't answer the phone in general, the idea that someone thinks they can commandeer my undivided attention for _any_ amount of time is offensive to me. I respond to IM/email quickly enough that I'm confident I won't miss anything urgent and unlike voice, those media are asynchronous and won't interrupt whatever I'm doing.
But you're participating in the framework that permits such commandeering by carrying an addressable cell phone. Society's general expectation is that someone who volunteers to buy and operate a voice-enabled phone is willing to be called.
Why not buy a data-only SIM if you disagree with that fundamental premise?
- Being able to call out is handy for interacting with antiquated infrastructure at e.g. banks, government agencies and cable companies.
- There are times when I'm willing to receive scheduled calls from e.g. my accountant, my bank (fraud checks) or phone number verification for online services.
- Being able to receive SMS is handy for verification and notifications of things like Amazon deliveries and Lyft pickups, while not being intrusive.
- I haven't found a data-only SIM that gives me unlimited bandwidth.
And I disagree that "someone who volunteers to buy and operate a voice-enabled phone is willing to be called", despite it being the norm in the past. A phone is no longer the voice + SMS device that it once was (and when it was, I would have agreed with you). It's now a small, convenient and easy to use computer, that just so happens to have a phone built in (and impossible to acquire without it).
Plus there's the fact that many official forms require a phone number of some sort, and it seems less evil to provide a number you own but don't answer than a random one.
Theoretically if someone were to knock, I would check through the peephole and then decide whether to open the door. If not, I'd tell them to leave. If they decide not to leave, I would contact law enforcement, regardless of the knocker's intent.
Alternatively, use a google voice number, turn the apps on only when you need to call / receive a call.
Unfortunately this doesn't work. If the number itself has ever been used before (it has), it's already on a bunch of lists. Many banks and credit card providers will also share it with marketers.
It's significantly more effort than necessary when you don't recognize a #.
Not sure what all these calls were accomplishing.
So I eventually started messing with them. Just wasting their time for a few minutes, acting clueless, until either they hung up or I got tired of it and told them I'd keep wasting their time if they kept calling.
Then in one call after I messed with them a few minutes, they said "Thanks for playing <my phone number>, you will continue to receive phone calls."
Let that sink in.
They knew I was just wasting their time, they knew how many phone calls they had made, they were fine with me wasting their time.
The flaw in their plan was identifying my phone number when they said that. I had 3 or 4 numbers going to my cell phone (Google voice, an old home number via Asterisk). This call came while I was switching from Verizon to Project Fi on my Google Voice number, and they identified that they were calling my Verizon number. I loved Project Fi, so I cancelled my Verizon number.
Pity the foo who got that number assigned to them.
Your spam filters probably catch the occasional false positive. This is pretty much the same tradeoff.
It's NOT ignoring your friends if you don't pick up the phone every time they call. Regardless, my friends numbers are in my contact list. Crazy huh?
I might leave a meeting to ask my mom why she's calling in the middle of the day, but I'm not going to answer my phone for an unknown number and I'm mostly pretty annoyed by anonymous calls. They're very clearly a second class citizen for my attention.
I don't know but ignoring a call feels very unsatisfying. It keeps gnawing at me.
