PACman PROPAGANDA ???

PRIVACY BOOTHS ?

Privacy – a quiet concept that is relatively non-existent today.  Reality T.V.—was it the catalyst for the sudden shift from protecting personal moments from public scrutiny to an uncontrollable desire to over share more than anyone wants to know?  In an age of the Kardashians, CCTV, satellite surveillance, and an entertainment news cycle that is obsessed with a prurient invasion into others’ lives, it is understandable that any expectation of privacy seems antiquated today.  I am not willing to give up mine so easily.  However, I’m afraid I may not have a choice!

Phone booths had a great purpose: A person could conduct a private telephone conversation in a public space without being overheard by others.  Not only was the caller’s privacy protected, but the surrounding public was spared the noise of their intrusive conversation.  Today there appears to be a trend, particularly among females, to expose others to their personal telephone conversations in stores and other communal spaces.  Recently, I have been forced to hear about someone’s bouts of diarrhea, a daughter’s sex life, a husband’s infidelity, a heavy menstrual period, and a myriad of mundane accounts of dramas at home.  People tend to speak louder when on their phones.  Perhaps phone booths are an old invention which should return for a new purpose – protecting the rest of us!

When I asked a younger friend about this over sharing phone phenomena, she was shocked to learn that having an open telephone conversation on her blue tooth for the entire time she was shopping could possibly bother anyone else.  In her mind, the conversation was just between the two of them.  She had never considered that others were being forced to hear everything she was saying.  She felt it was her right to talk on the phone out loud if she wanted to and didn’t care if strangers absorbed the content.  I then asked how she would feel if all the customers in the store were simultaneously talking on their phones for extended times, and she indicated that the feelings of others had never entered her mind. Again, the idea that her conversation was invading another’s space never dawned on her.  She was functioning in her own space, as if no one else existed outside of her world.

I have tried to imagine the cacophony of sounds that would be created if everyone at a movie, everyone in Nordstrom’s, or everyone in a gym were talking out loud on their phones at the same time.  The noise would be deafening, if everyone exercised their right to carry on extensive telephone conversations while in shared spaces.  Of course, I am not expecting grocery stores, shops, gyms, or dressing rooms to be treated like libraries. However, I also do not think that other patrons should be bombarded with uninvited loud monologues by inconsiderate people who think they need to multi-task chat while in stores and gyms.  Movies, shopping, and exercising were once considered simple diversions from the busyness of life.  Now it seems that there needs to be an added distraction of carrying on phone conversations while participating in supposedly relaxing activities.   If you wanted to talk on the phone to your best friend for thirty minutes, why didn’t you just stay at home or try to find one of the new privacy booths that were recently erected as an outcome of this article?