A few number threads have been making my head itch lately, all crammed with apologetic users making rather silly requests to "please call back" and "please call me again", and sprinkled with publishing of private data. Clearly these are not Americans making the misfired pleas. Their origins are quite particular, often African.
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-011-593-0500 -- re: Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-011-593-0692 -- re: Harambe Youth Employment Accelerator
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-012-358-9999 -- re: City of Tshwane, purpose unknown
The first Harambe thread got my attention 2.5 years ago and much later prompted a somewhat exasperated rebuttal.
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-011-593-0500/2#p770254829157561164 (11 Sep 2014)
The ones for Harambe Youth and Tshwane have been getting noticed this Summer. What once seemed anomalous is now forming patterns of misuse of this website. Last month I began studying international mobile phone culture to resolve the riddles posed. Early findings follow, subject to revision.
In sub-Saharan Africa and parts of India, the mobile phone is pretty much the only available tool for voice contact and internet access, and network time is not cheap for people living in a stunted economy. The cost is quite burdensome when you see that people are commonly carrying either multiple phones or multiple SIM cards to switch networks on the fly. Relatively frugal SMS is relied upon heavily, even to convert websites to text.
People in this region observe phone protocols which Americans would find annoying at best and the Japanese would find appalling all week long. Almost no place or time is off limits for receiving calls and sending SMS. Movie screenings, classrooms, meeting halls, funerals .... few spaces are sacred, apart from those already deemed sacred before little glowing gadgets came to each hand. In some areas there is almost no form of delayed voice messaging used or available. Nigerians, for example, insist on direct contact if they can't meet personally. But the first thing I learned has made me read these threads full of plaintive users differently.
The region is known for a widespread practice of abandoning phone calls within a couple rings to avoid the prohibitive costs of fully using the various mobile phone networks. Much of Africa terms this "beeping", Nigerians call it "flashing". Indians and Pakistani call it the "one-ring", apparently not in the same sense as costly fraud calls from the Caribbean. The meaning conveyed by the peekaboo calls varies greatly according to who makes them and how many times in succession, like a crude mockery of Morse Code. Some peekaboos need no response, saying "thinking of you" or "I will be tardy". The rest boil to "I wish to speak but need you to pay for the call".
Businesses and information services encourage this behavior, permitting people to "beep" or "flash" to prompt an automated return call for anything from a bank account balance report to general medical advice. One hotline set up in Ghana to combat the spread of HIV was named, I swear it's true, "Text Me! Flash Me! Call Me!" Is anyone else now thinking of the title theme to "Kim Possible"?
Those of us in America who still recall a telecomm monopoly state once deployed analogous strategies, usually quite awkward, to avoid punishing long distance charges. Probably the teaser call made a comeback as many areas fell under deregulated duopoly. Long ago I think my own house assigned an "I'm OK" code to inbound calls which abandoned at two rings. The tear duct moistens for the primitive days of landlines without Caller ID and predictive dialers.
In the present, the phrase "missed call" or a variant term is widely applied to these abandoned calls once received. You study those threads and the phrase is seen frequently: "I got a missed call", "I missed your call", "I received your missed call". This I find semantically confusing, since you can't "miss" a call you never stood a chance to answer.
If we are to take any of those pleas for more phone calls as genuine, they suit a scenario where call recipients can't afford to return voice calls, but they can send text messages for cheap or free. "Missed Call" recipients mistake 800Notes for one of those handy "beeping" or SMS services which circumvent access fees. Page upon page of bad examples of how to use an open complaint site result.
On the other hand, a few weeks back I identified suspicious patterns in the "call me back" pleas in the Harambe Youth thread. No one pleading in any "missed call" thread seems at all concerned about the chance of Caller ID spoofing or false urgency or other fraud signs.
https://800notes.com/forum/ta-ad3a0e441bcbb61 ... 176727236878527 (18 June 2016)
I haven't yet chosen sides. The study continues as time allows. I should probably point to the once perplexing thread which first spurred my culture shock inquiry. How could I not react to all that begging of "don't flash me"?
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-767-275-9424
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