Before most of us locked ourselves into The Isolation Booths That Are All Our Lives Now, I used to get a lot of spam phone calls. A lot of spam phone calls. Tons of spam phone calls. Vast quantities of spam phone calls, many of the robotic variety. Others were live human beings who were, you kind of assume, unable to find real jobs.
Simultaneously with me confining myself to my quarters, the calls largely stopped. Both kinds. Instead of getting seven every one day, I was getting one every seven days or thereabouts. I was curious to know why and I still am.
Pondering the matter, I decided that it probably had nothing to do with the fact that most folks in this country were isolating. You'd think if anything, the opposite would true. You'd think those evil, evil people who sic their spammers on us would say, "Hey! Everyone's home and a lot of them are bored and lonely! Good time to bombard them with sales pitches!"
And then there's the fact that so many folks' incomes suddenly stopped and unemployment soared. You'd think a lot more people would need the income they'd think (wrongly) they could make from those ads that engage them to make calls on commission. But no. I didn't get a single call from someone who wanted to install solar panels all over me and my house.
My theory — and I don't have any certainty in this — was that phone companies had instituted some controls and technology to suppress spam calls and the latest move just happened to coincide with us all deciding to let GrubHub feed us. But lately, the spam calls have been creeping back — I got two this morning — so I'm now less certain of that theory of which I was not certain at all. Anyone got a better theory?
