Like most millennials who don’t actually use their phone for phone calls, Eric Jett missed the “golden age of the booty call”:
“What are you up to?” read many a late-night text message during my years at Oberlin College. The text was a feeler, a thin, transparent antenna, projecting out into the night. While during the day, such an innocuous message could be followed up by any number of requests or offers, at two o’clock in the morning, it could mean only one thing. But unlike the analogue booty call of yore, which required at least a semblance of tact and care — “How have you been?” — the booty text is a Boolean expression, a true or false question, a gambit to be either declined or accepted. It is the ring — in that awkward moment between the caller ID and SMS — not the call.
Another casualty of smartphones? The ability to slam a receiver:
Hanging up on someone is a physical act, a violent one even, one that produces its own pleasure by discharging acrimony. Like the model 500, the flip-phone supports hang ups because its form is capable of resisting them; because it can survive the force a hangup delivers. Just try to hang up your iPhone or your Samsung Galaxy. I don’t mean just ending a call, but hanging up for real, as if you meant it. For a moment you might consider throwing the handset against a wall before remembering that you shelled out three, four, five hundred dollars or more for the device, a thing you cradle in a cozy as if it were a kitten or a newborn. Everyone is a milquetoast when a smartphone is in their hand.
The Dish 