Gen Z is bringing back landline phones because they think they look ‘cool’: ‘I love to twirl the cord’

No one is "bringing back" landlines. What a fucking retarded claim to make.

This seems like a dumb tiktok trend or some shit. It's hard to get by in this world without a cellphone

But I just wish anyone would still want to talk on the phone. I love chatting with friends for an hour or so on the phone but everyone hates it now. Quick random texts just feel so much less personal. Ah well

Think about it - corded phones died because we needed to walk around and talk. I mean, you all remember how ridiculously long some of those cords could get so that people could do light chores. Then wireless landlines became a thing (and I swear the audio quality seemed to drop) and as cellphones became more predominant they were almost phased out entirely - certainly phased out of necessity.

But now two decades or so later we're just in one spot all the time again. If we're not at work we're at home and if we're not cooking or cleaning we're probably just in one spot (likely at the computer or the TV). So it makes sense to me, although I do wonder how much of this is more of a micro trend than Gen Z bringing back landlines lol.

I bet there are dozens of people doing this.

Sometimes I wonder if some companies or groups are paying to publish "news" about genz using this or that, as a way to promote their stuff. It looks to me as a good and cheap tactic, since some younger people would look into the "trend", trying not to miss it, while some older people would look into it trying to stay "cool" and not look out of fashion.

But then I think again, and it looks like too much of a conspiracy theory. Why does my brain do that?

They are fun to slam down when you want to hang up on someone

bundled in our internet is a landline....so we found a vintage rotary phone and hooked it up. We can receive but not call out. It's awesome.

Not as strange or pointless as it might seem at first glance, I'm reminded of this article from years ago comparing the experience of a modern phone with the old handsets: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/why-people-hate-making-phone-calls/401114/

What does Gen Z suffer from even more than the rest of us? Loneliness, isolation. So using a phone that is designed with physical comfort foremost is a way of reclaiming a sense of social connection and physical touch ("reach out and touch someone"), even when distances between callers are great. And touching the cord, again, a way of feeling the connection with the other person, which in a world of wireless devices isn't possible -- there's nothing there but empty space. It's not just about twirling the cord.

This isn't to suggest there are no benefits to smartphones, and others here suggest earbuds to improve call quality and ergonomics. But the fact is modern smartphones are designed to do many things OK-ish in compromise, but nothing so well as the other devices they replace (phones, TVs, calculators - remember those?, flashlights, keyboards, etc etc.)

I don't get why millennials and older generations mock zoomers for these trends. What's wrong with enjoying old technology and childhood nostalgia? People are so needlessly petty when it comes to younger generations and their interests.

Article and trend aside, I actually do miss landlines... I have to do the "boomer" thing of talking on speaker phone with my phone out in front of me because no matter what I do putting my flat cellphone up to my ear is just impossible to hear and exceedingly uncomfortable. I miss the ergonomics of a real phone.

Can we possibly have a better source for this "story". Because that one's not reliable.

Although in reality it's not really a story is it

My wife insists on us having a landline. She doesn’t know she’s running a SIP phone over the internet connected to a SIP trunk that has a local area number. She’s happy. I get to kill our landline.

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Man there's something about talking on a cell phone that makes me feel like I have to yell, and thus, hate talking on them.

As I remember land lines, they never felt that way.

I don't miss landlines. Can't take the friggin landline with you wherever you go. (Affordable) Cell phones were the game changer.

My landline have been turned off completely.

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The GOAT.

The optimal phone is both corded and wireless: it has a receiver corded to a base piece with a traditional dial, but the base piece is wireless.

Might last a day or few if it's even true. Just like how they were all ditching smartphones for Nokias recently.

I'm starting to view fads as a form of annealing. To knock ourselves out of local maxima, humans have an predisposition for finding a reason to go back and try old stuff again. If there was something useful to it, it'll be reflected in the tools they create. I guess rebellion in general is just as evolutionarily useful as conformity. The Exploration/Exploitation dichotomy.

You wanted to say that some gen Zers buy novelty Bluetooth headphones that look like a phone with a cord on it, right? Also: who still had a cord in the 2000's besides super important business ppl?

There was a fashion about 30 years ago in the UK to convert old-style rotary phones so they worked with DTMF touch tones. I had a rather excellent original candle-stick style phone. Got lost in a move somewhere. Retro is always cool

I can kinda understand the feeling. My personal land line phone as a teen (cuz my bedroom had a phone line) was like the old 1800's style rotary phone where the mic was stationary and the hand unit was just a cup for your ear. It felt fancier.

That AI is going to get really racist, really fast, judging from the muck I saw on Reddit.