Thursday, December 28, 2006

Cultural Observations: No.1, Phonophilia in the UK

English phones
Passengers on a UK train indulging in the national pastime.

What is it with the English and their phones? Stand one of them alone in a room/train/bus for more than 30 seconds and I guarantee they will pull out their mobile. Sometimes a phone call results but mostly they fiddle. I'm not sure what they do: check messages? check texts? write texts? web surf? play games? all of the above? Possibly they have cooler phones on the other side of the Atlantic or they've become more adept at SMSing (which seems to have just caught on here: I think the US is about 6 years behind Europe on this particular fad). Whatever it is the behaviour seems quite compulsive and much more evident than in the American counterparts. If you have any theories on this social phenomenon please feel free to speculate below.

P.S. And in case you were wondering it was I who took the photo of the above two gentleman with my own phone: they were clearly too absorbed in their telephonic twiddling to notice what I was doing!

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