Wednesday, September 16, 2009

How to feel old?

You eavesdrop on a conversation between three teenage girls.  Last night I overheard the neighbour's daughter, aged 15, bleat to her friends that her mum has taken her cellphone off her until she can pay back the $60 bill.  But this is the bit that made me eavesdrop:  she's on a plan where she pays $10 for 2000 texts.  The $60 comes from the extra 300 texts that she sent over her text plan.  She sent 2,300 texts in four days.

I'm feeling very old now.  How can anyone possibly text that much?  And presumably her friends are on the same plan.  Where do they find the time to do this?  Her friends were texting even as they were having a bitch about the mum (while the cellphoneless teenager looked on forlornly, like it was the end of the world).  Presumably they weren't texting each other.  Or were they?  Say you take out the eight hours sleep per night, I calculate that as .... I can't work it out because the number needs an engineering level calculator.  So I then can't work out how many texts per second that is if you also take out the hours at school (assuming they can't use their cellphones at school).  I'm feeling old and curmudgeonly.  It seems like a hell of a lot.  

Is picking up a landline really so, like, last century?!?

4 comments:

Libertyscott said...

It's bizarre Kapiti is so small, she could walk or bike to her friends.

Reminds me of a skit Russell Brand did remembering when you arranged to meet people, had no cellphone and if the other person didn't turn up, you just had to go home. Oh yes.

Dinther said...

2500 / 4 / 16 = 36 text messages every hour.

Roughly one every two minutes. during a 16 hour period for 4 days uninterrupted.

Opinionated Libertarimum said...

Thanks, Dinther. For some reason, the mathematics on this one eluded me. Can I blame the sense of feeling old?

Mark.V. said...

Teenager's need to txt reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek, they need to be constantly in touch with their friends and they feel isolated if they cannot instantly communicate with them.

I, on the other hand, being comparitively old, quite like being alone with my thoughts.