They’re almost dead now, but holy shit is it taking a long time for them to die. And a lot of trees had to die before people finally decided okay fuck I guess no one wants these dinosaur books anymore. I speak of the phonebook.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: February 21, 1878--
The lasting legacy of telephone directories is companies like AAAA Moving Co., and Aardvark Pizza. No shit there is a pizza place near me called Aardvark and it was some of the worst dogshit pizza I ever tasted, and I imagine the only way they stayed in business was coming first in the yellow pages. Wait, this is about white pages. The fuck am I talking about?
On February 21, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut, the first telephone directory came into being a mere two years after Alexander Graham Bell said into his possibly stolen invention, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” in the nearby city of Boston. I need to clarify that Watson was in the next room and Bell could have just yelled Watson get your ass over here but that’s not the point of technology and that’s why when I see a funny meme I want to show my wife and she’s more than ten feet away I text it to her rather than get up from my comfy spot on the couch. Continues below …
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Anyfuckingway, it wasn’t a book. It was a piece of cardboard listing the whopping fifty people and businesses that had telephones. And it didn’t have any numbers in it. New Haven was just like yeah fuck it here are the fifty people and places with that new-fangled talky device you figure it out. The assholes didn’t even have the patience to list them in alphabetical order.
And how is this for a mindfuck? The word “hello” is actually pretty new, and it gained popularity because of the telephone. Except no thanks to Bell. He wanted people to say “Ahoy” when answering the phone. But the early phonebooks came with instructions so people didn’t talk into the wrong end (really), including instructions on what to say when picking it up, because “Who the fuck is this?” was deemed a bit rude.
Then, of course, that shit got out of control.
The books got club-a-baby-seal-to-death-with-it huge, and not only listed phone numbers but addresses, a stalker’s dream. You had to tell the phone company no I don’t want people knowing where I live goddammit. And the yellow pages had companies competing for who was listed first because when I want shitty pizza I of course think of ant-eating animals from Africa.
Although their distribution has waned considerably, phonebooks continue to be printed and distributed like these assholes haven’t yet heard of the goddamn internet. In conclusion, don’t call me. Text.
Get the book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.
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There were other uses for the telephone book. When I was a wee lad, my mother put a phone book on the chair in the kitchen, so I would sit higher than just eye level with the supper table. I have this theory that the telephone book inspired the Booster Chair for kids in restaurants.
"Ahoy...?" 🤣
I've always heard that the first thing he said was "Watson, come here. I want you." I always wondered exactly WHAT he wanted from Watson - a hankerchief, coffee, blow job? Anyway, your description is better I suppose. But maybe he wanted to see Watson naked !!! 🤔🤣🤭😆
I do like "who the fuck is this..." 😆