Champagne tastes on a beer budget.

"...Duke student Miriam Weeks became porn's Belle Knox by necessity." Oh, come on, that's a huge overstatement. Lots of people get through university without becoming porn actors. You can't say it was "by necessity" unless it was her only way of getting an education.

"Faced with either a degree from a less prestigious school or decades of crushing debt, a few hours of work on a porn set revealed itself to be the best way to avoid getting screwed"

... instead pays the exorbitant salaries of bureaucrats and exorbitant costs of sports stadiums.

Ugh. Screw that. If we said that kids (KIDS!! They are 18 fucking years old) who fail to declare a major within their first year, impacting their ability to graduate in four years, should not go to college... NO ONE WOULD GO TO COLLEGE except those rare people who know, at age 18, what they should be doing for the…

"You know what will convince these people I disagree with to think like me?"

You get old vibe? I get 12-15 year-old boy at home on summer break.

Fie! Fie! Thou hast cut me to the quick! Alas, I shall not be bang'd by yon internet person.

Talking is one of the critical things that separates us from other animals.

It sounds to me like it's not voice mail that's the problem in your life, it sounds like you have a really annoying friend! Thank you for your vent, I liked it.

Sheesh, go get a cuppa joe and take off the cranky pants. You know who doesn't sound charming? You.

Absolutely, it's inconsiderate! That's a generational divide, of course, because on the other side of it I've had people say, "You didn't leave a voicemail so I assumed I didn't need to call you back." I say, it wastes both people's time to leave a message.

While I don't think ALL voicemails are inconsiderate, I do hate the majority of them. Voicemails my employees leave me at work are great and useful. Voicemails from my best friend who lives across the country are also awesome (we have opposite schedules, so we chat back and forth via vm and I'm totally ok with it). …

I agree with you on all points here. Most phone use while driving should just be postponed until the driver is off the road.

I think it's a myth that young people don't know how to have conversations. Most young people I've met can hold a face to face conversation perfectly fine and hold eye contact.

Right there with you. I'll be 40 in a few months, firmly GenX, and I despise voicemail for the time suck of it. I'm staring at the red light on my desk phone right now thinking, "you couldn't have just emailed me, you fuckwad?" That light stays red for days.

I'm 44 and I feel the same way. But for me it has nothing to do with anxiety (my anxiety expresses itself in other awful ways) and everything to do with the time suck aspect, which makes me feel like a terrible person.

I hate voicemails. I always, always (irrationally) assume the worst. If it's a colleague, I know that they are telling me that I have irreparably screwed up. If it's a family member, then someone must have died. I have anxiety issues, clearly.

I'm 38 (almost). I was well into my 20s (early 30s?!?) before texting became ubiquitous. Yet I HATE voicemail. It makes no sense. I grew up with answering machines and voicemail. My social anxiety was designed for modern technology.

Oh, fuck yourself.