Rant: Attention Texters

in the last week, I've been the recipient of two separate wrong number SMS threads.

The first one was mildly amusing, because I was being wished a "happy gay day!!!" to celebrate the right for same sex marriages in California (something I'm 110% in favor of). In addition, the texter was pretty funny, who thought he/she was texting a cousin and we had an amusing dialog until he/she found out that I played golf - which essentially killed the thread.

The next misdirected SMS thread sounded like it was intended to be spouse to spouse, with one spouse bitching about what the other one want to list for their car, which was being sold in front of their house. Despite raising the initial "huh?" flag, the text kept on texting, including some repeat sends of the same messages. Finally I had to get a little more explicit - and ask who this was. In response, I got a brief, and subtly terse, "Sorry - wrong number". Needless to say, I took the opportunity to scold the sender for carelessly spamming me multiple times.

Here's the gist of the scolding adapting for a more general audience. If you have enough of a handle on your gadgets to be chipmunking messages from your phone, you should be able to create address book entries. I'm not proposing anything CRAZY like actually synching your email contacts with your phone, but just manually entering them in your phone - or saving captured numbers. Neither of these messages were "first time wrong numbers", but directed towards acquaintances.

Now, my sweet Mrs. Jones doesn't have a well developed contact list in her phone - but my sweet Mrs. Jones doesn't text either. It's pretty simple. Don't waste my data account because you don't know how to use your gear. Don't be a noob. I can only imagine this was some idiot, texting in traffic, the same type of guy who keeps all of his files littered on his desktop instead of in folders, with filenames that do nothing to identify them. The type of guy who emails out uncompressed 8MB jpeg attachments of his dog. And his dog is ugly. The type of guy who forwards "10 ways to know you are from Raleigh, NC" (like people wouldn't know where they are from without an unfunny, Jeff Foxworthy-esque collection of local, self-directed cliches).

Don't waste my phone plan, my hard drive, my inbox, or my time with your luddite approach to "newfangled gizmos". Rant over. Seacrest out.