When I was 19, I had friends from high school who were still younger, and one of them was my friend Julie who had helicopter parents (she would have been 17-18). I was doing security at an event where the radio headsets we had were super-shitty, and the guy running security was a dumpster fire on his own. Julie's parents forbid her from going to the event, and grounded her to her room. Then her dad called the hotel where the event was being held, was told Julie had "run away" to this event, and that I was somehow responsible. Given she was a minor, the event runners were understandably concerned, although they were frustrated that Julie's dad was unable to describe her in a way that was useful: "Asian, wearing black, or a tee-shirt, or something. Ask Punkie where she is." So they contacted the head of security to find me on my rounds to see if I knew what this crazy man was talking about. The head of security said "okay" and did nothing.

At some point, the head of security was fired for a variety of reasons, and this increased the level of miscommunication. Meanwhile, Julie's dad was calling every few hours, demanding to know where his daughter was. And soon there was a concerted effort to find me, which was complicated because of the communication issues. By the time someone found me and the connection was made, my response of, "I have no idea, Julie said her dad forbid her coming here," was not what they wanted to hear, and met with skepticism "You're not hiding her, are you? Like she ran away with you in some tryst? She's 17 and you're 19, that could have legal ramifications!" No. We're platonic friends, I don't know where she is. if I tried to bonk the poor woman, she'd clobber me.

Meanwhile, Julie's dad finds Julie in her bedroom, right where he left her. Julie later told me that she was ignoring her dad calling for her, and didn't "come downstairs" like he demanded because she assumed it was a trap to get her punished for leaving her bedroom while she was grounded. So naturally, her dad assumed she wasn't in the house. Because he called for her and she didn't answer.

Poor Julie. Her parents were crazy-nuts.

I remember this one. Someone else lost him, but he knew where he was and wanted to be there.

We really need to go ahead and rip the band-aid off with the telephone network. "Even the small amount of meaning these digits used to have has been lost to time with cell phones and VoIP technology so any user can contact any other user appearing to be any rando with no authentication making the system rife for scams and fuckery and we have no plan to fix it. Participation is as mandatory as we can get without a constitutional amendment."

"Help! I'm trapped in the mountains! I'm freezing and starving to death."

"I understand, sir. But for a small fee of just $30 a month, your computer can be protected from viruses."

Sounds like the average lemming! One of us!

I have set my phone to silence always, I don’t want to answer anyone in my free time 🤷🏻

I get the logic. If it's some random ass number and you're stranded with no charger, why waste time on what might be a spam call? That and I don't want one of the last things I hear to be someone talking about car insurance

Fucking spam has ruined another communications medium.

unfathomably based behavior

Sometimes places call me and it already has their info despite them not being a contact I have saved. Like they have a name not a number, and even a pfp that isn't a colored circle with a number or letter in it. If I was lost and got a call from the fire department that said it was the fire department I think I might pick up.

I don't know how that system works tho. Do you have to register somewhere? Like the opposite of the old white pages where you had to opt out instead of in?

Absolutely me, lol

"I may die but I have principles" -the hiker probably

But seriously, there are people that are in an emergency that do not make rational decisions at the moment.

I could see them doing that just because they were trying to conserve battery power, however, if they were still getting a signal, couldn't they have still used their map, and thus, weren't really lost? Or was this in the Dark Ages, before smartphones guided us to the light?

Life imitates meme.