The PopCulteer
October 10, 2025

I hate getting calls from telemarketers. I have made no secret of this fact.

Eleven-and-a-half years ago, I came up with a fun way to mess with the folks who cold call you and pester you at all hours.

I’ve also warned you about telemarketer scams.

And I’ve taken my battle to stop being interrupted to my front door.

Lately, it’s gotten worse…so much worse. One day, a couple of weeks ago, I counted over 30 telemarketing calls. It got so bad that I was just grabbing the phone and screaming “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” at the top of my lungs.

Startled the hell out of my sister.

I have explained in the past that years of being responsible for the health of various relatives put me in the hard-to-break habit of always answering my landline on the first ring. Even when I no longer had caregiver duties to worry about, my life as a freelancer meant that I couldn’t really afford to miss a call.

This latest round of over-aggressive telemarketers broke me. I finally did something that I should have done years ago. Something that I had foolishly resisted for far too long.

I moved my Caller ID unit from across the room to a spot on my desk that is right in my line-of-sight.

I realize that anybody else would have done this a decade or two ago.

I should also mention that I also have a cellphone. I don’t use it much because Myasthenia Gravis does not play well with a touchscreen. Late last year I dumped AT&T, moved to Mint Moble (with zero regrets) and got new phones for my beautiful wife and myself.

I’m now paying one-sixth what I had been, and get much, much better service.

But I still don’t text. It’s just too hard for me. I use the phone when we travel, mostly as a camera, and sometimes to navigate, but I just don’t text, much to the irritation of many of my friends.

Since I got my new phone, I have not taken it off airplane mode. It does not ring. If it ever made the noise it would make if I got a text, I wouldn’t recognize it anyway. I’d just wander around the house like The Beverly Hillbillies trying to figure out why the music was playing every time somebody rang their doorbell.

Spam calls on my cellphone are not an issue. When I mention over 30 calls in a day, that’s just on my landline. I mainly keep this number because it’s been in my family longer than I have, and I keep it as a landline mainly due to a combination of laziness and inertia.

So…I finally decided to partake in the technology that’s been around more than thirty years and stop answering every call that comes in. Unless it’s someone I know, when the damned thing rings, rather than ignore it, I just lift the handset an inch or so and put it back down without saying anything. I know I should just not pick it up at all, but then it rings and rings, and sometimes they leave crap on the voicemail, and by then my concentration is thoroughly destroyed, so this is quicker and easier, if less efficient in warding off robocaller mojo.

With my new normal, I have learned a few things.

First of all, almost every bogus Medicare robocall lists as its origin some quaint little town in West Virginia which I have heard of, but have never been to, like Follansbee or Iaeger. I guess they’re gambling that I might know somebody there and pick up the phone expecting to hear from Uncle Horatio or Aunt Flamphart.

My favorite calls are the ones that proudly introduce themselves as “Possible Spam.” Thank you for the warning. Click.

I’ve only had one so far that was listed as “Pakistan.” I guess somebody at the office forgot to turn on the phone number spoofer that day.

While I still startle way to easy when I’m in deep concentration, I have found that the quick hang-up lets me get past the interruption without being totally thrown off my train of thought.

Maybe someday, when the volume of calls drops from dozens per day to one or two a week, I may revive my old hobby of playing mind games with the instrusive disembodied voices with thick accents on the other end of the line, but for now, I shall simply wish them to the cornfield, like I do with internet trolls on social media.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular features and fresh content every day.