October 26, 2021

Now, I know the feeling... I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the number... but this is ridiculous.

"Colorado hiker, lost for 24 hours, ignored rescuers' calls because hiker didn’t recognize the number/The hiker told rescue officials they had wandered off the trail and could not find their way back" (Fox News).

By the way, were you confused about the number of hikers? Based on that headline, I was. You can count on Fox News to do woke pronouns, even at the cost of clarity. You never find out whether this was a man or a woman. In addition to they/them approach to pronouns, we get "The person started hiking" and "the subject ignored 'repeated phone calls' because they simply didn’t recognize the number."

These were official rescuers, not private citizens mobilizing for the task. Given the present-day habit of phone users declining to answer unknown numbers, they ought to have a way to use caller idea to display their identity. 

40 comments:

Fernandinande said...

They is a man.

Skeptical Voter said...

Ah but if "official" rescuers had a way to display a "safe" caller ID, how long would it take before robocallers were able to spoof that ID?

Of course it's also possible that some who venture out in the wilderness are sufficiently clueless that they don't know they are lost.

PM said...

A lost hiker cannot deal with a call to renew his car's warranty which is about to expire.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Another example (like any more are needed) that pronoun terrorists create problems for society. That headline is literally violence.

Yancey Ward said...

My pronoun is none.

Iman said...

“Water! … Water! (ring, ring) who’s calling me? ‘Unknown Caller’… Spam Risk! … water! WATERRRRRRR!!!”

mikee said...

I have a spam blocker on my phone. And now I worry that a blocked call might have been from one of my many subcontractors or their workers, calling me about legitimate business. That said, I'd even talk to someone calling about a lower rate on my credit card were they able to reach my cell phone in such a situation, simply because the spam caller might contact help on my behalf. Although I draw the limit at calls about extending my car warranty!

Enigma said...

This is -- oddly -- both a story of evolutionary natural selection and a common Christian critique of dysfunctional bad attitudes. We can either learn from those who came before and we can learn through cause-and-effect science. Both were lost on this being, and others today.

- Natural selection: Poor socialization leads to extreme mistrust and inflexibility. This is a textbook example of not being adaptable, per Darwin's central thesis. Missing core functional social skills leads to death. No saving = no babies = fewer future people like this unknown gendered being.

- Christian critique: A person is stuck on top of a house during a flood and prays to God for salvation. One boat comes by and the person declines rescue, as they have faith that God will save them. Another boat and a helicopter come by and the stranded person declines again and again. They then die. Upon being resurrected they ask "God, why didn't you save me?" The answer is "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

Take away: We are in an era where many lack either scientific or traditional moral training. They have the mental abilities of a barnacle stuck to a ship constructed by the ancestors. We are on the cusp of an extinction event for all such people...unless they've found a way to reproduce themselves alone with their smart phones...as they dare not identify as firmly male or female nor "do the deed."

Yancey Ward said...

I am just glad Howard made it off the mountain alive.

Leland said...

On tech side, I don't think cellphones use caller id (CNAM) at all. Rather, they only provide an ID by correlating the calling number with your contacts. Caller ID is a capability for landlines in which the switching system provides the identification to the ringing phone. I know this wasn't always the case but appears to be so now. An AT&T discussion on the issue says the usual "there is an app for that".

R C Belaire said...

Would it be so difficult to use a first name, and even if one says "not actual name to protect identity", the reader/listener would know (1) it's a single individual, and (2) individual is male/female (geez, can I even use those terms?)

JK Brown said...

Or leave a message. I always listen to the message, even to delete the background noise or last half of the car warranty spiel.

Joe Smith said...

I get it...but just think how pissed he/she/it would have been if it was a car warranty or pay-your-student-loans call : )

If they had died, they'd be in the lead for Darwin Award winner...

Didn't know Fox was kowtowing to the mob...and yes, a verifiable caller ID should be provided to official rescuers for those without flip-phones.

Temujin said...

Clearly this is a case of Darwin's theory trying to play itself out.

This pronoun game- and it is a game- is preposterous in so many ways and this just illustrates an easy one. How do you report on an individual when you're referring to an individual as 'they'. Language was developed to communicate, not obfuscate.

gilbar said...

well, i have to say;
that Personally; him doesn't answer your phone, because she doesn't recognize my number

Actually, when them is lost in the woods, is a Good time to not worry so much about things like her pronoun usage; or even my caller id. If he is lost in the woods, she should Really think about answering my phone, even if i don't know the number her is calling from.... They life might depend on him picking up

gspencer said...

"Hmmmm, I know I'm lost. And little bit panicked. But not so panicked that I'm willing to give out some personal information that might get me on a call-list forever."

Likely votes Democrat.

CWJ said...

"...they ought to have a way to use caller idea to display their identity."

Do we know they don't? I agree that it's a good idea, but I can certainly imagine people, including this particular "them," thinking that it was a scammer trick. Me? I'd even talk to a telemarketer's call center in the slim hope I could talk them into trying to get me help.

BTW, what was wrong with "their" phone that they didn't call for help themselves. I get "access denied" when I try to click through so I don't know anything past what's contained in Althouse's post.

WK said...

Often when the pronoun used is they, it seems the smarter one is not the one quoted in an interview.

Michael K said...

Awww. That darned Fox News using pronouns, just like Slate.

Vance said...

He figured that since he was hiking, he didn't have a car to extend the warranty on?

Jake said...

This hiker sounds like a moron.

rhhardin said...

I don't answer my phone at all. It doesn't ring.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

1: The hiker is an idiot
2: Leave a message. "Hi Julie, this is the XXX County rescues service. If you're lost or need help, please call us back at ..."

Anyone who ignores that deserves what they get

animal lover said...

This is a true story. A friend of mine who is active in the horse show world was in Las Vegas for a horse show. We live in Colorado. She kept getting phone calls saying it was from Mesa County Coroner. She was a judge at the show so she was really busy and wrote it off as prank calls. It was not. It was the coroner calling to notify next of kin that her only daughter had been killed in an auto accident. We were all devastated by the news.

cubanbob said...

As the great Ron white says, you can't fix stupid. Ignoring unknown calls when you are at home presuming it's a usual scam call is one thing but being lost in the woods for day and not answering possible rescue calls is just plain Darwin Award stupid. Maybe rescuers need to text as well as call these types of morons.

Lucien said...

So the callers wouldn’t leave voicemail or text messages, or mailboxes were full, or the hiker wouldn’t read texts or listen to voicemail, or what?

My name goes here. said...

Should the hiker have answered the call(s)? Yes. But should the reducers texted as well? Also yes.

Bruce Hayden said...

Screening calls can be a problem. As a general policy, I don’t answer my phone if the caller ID is suppressed. Better than 95% of those calls are IP calls coming from somewhere else in the world, with totally bogus source phone numbers. I know this because I often respond with a text message that requests their name and company (easy on an iPhone and IPad), and get an error message in response. Or sometimes I get an irate response from some poor slob, whose number was appropriated by the spammer.

Then, every once in a while, I will run into a real call without Caller ID that I really should answer. And, yes, sometimes from government agencies. If I respond to a call with my canned text message, I will usually get a response from individuals. But government agency calls usually use switches and switch boards that discard incoming text messages. If they don’t leave a voice message then, they are SOL with me. Sorry - you are calling me. You should accurately identify yourself. If you don’t, it’s all on you.

tommyesq said...

Two things:

(1) he may not have answered because his phone was nearly dead and he didn't want to waste its last bit of battery on a spam call;

(2) (saw this on Facebook) - if you ever get lost and are running out of battery, change your voice message to a call for help and as much about your location as you know - even if the phone is dead, callers will get your voicemail prompt.

gadfly said...

Fox's woke pronouns are as bad as the auto-spelling corrector that generated:

"they ought to have a way to use caller idea to display their identity."

Clyde said...

The hiker is an idiot. If you are lost in the wilderness, turn off the Silence Unknown Callers on your phone. Unless, of course, you want to stay lost.

Mikey NTH said...

You are lost in the woods, yet close enough to a cell tower to get a signal.

"Hello 911, I am lost in the woods but I can get a signal from a tower to call you, which should narrow down where I am..."

Narayanan said...

r u lost as ID for rescuers should do the trick

now let us speed dial the 80 million who voted for Joe Biden

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

My iPhone blocks calls from rideshare people calling to tell me where they are (sometimes they are not where the app says) but calls from legit 100% spammers get thru. It's infuriating.

Lurker21 said...

Do the reporters not know if the hiker was male or female, or are they just unwilling to say? Probably the first, but it makes for very strange reporting.

retail lawyer said...

Ann, what difference does it make? Boys and girls are the same, except girls are better. Bet on boy for not answering the phone, girl for getting lost in the first place.

Karlito2000 said...

I have hiked to the top of Mt Elbert several times. It is a heavily traveled trail as it is one of the easier treks to the top of a 14teener. To get lost on that trail takes a dedicated kind of stupid. One a pretty summer day there will be a hundred or more hikers at the top of the mountain and many hundreds more down the mountain trying to make it to the top. I can't imagine how you could get lost on this trail.

Bunkypotatohead said...

The hiker didn't request help, and doesn't appear to have been in distress. Just wandering around until he found his car.
The hotel reported him missing, but he wouldn't have known that.
Unless he answered his phone.

Rocko said...

The Five on Fox News made fun of the lack of old-school pronouns when discussing the story.

Bruce Hayden said...

Elbert, the tallest mountain in CO, is rated one of the easiest 14ers to climb. It’s not really that steep, as 14ers go. Our father took us up, or really just me all the way, when I was maybe 15, and my 3rd brother maybe 10. Except that #2 and #3 brothers didn’t quite make it (I’m the oldest). #2 brother got altitude sickness. What’s funny there is that he has climbed over 40 of the 14ers by now, mostly solo. In his early teenaged years, skiing, he would sometimes get altitude sickness too (esp when we were in Ski School at Berthod Pass, the Highpoint on US 40). #3 brother was just not strong enough to make it up Elbert at that age. Funny thing there is that we didn’t get Altitude sickness that day, but the two of us have had, and are susceptible to, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE). Be very careful of camping above 10k feet, and esp if you are exercising hard at higher elevations.

Talking Colorado’s 14ers, we now have 4 generations who have climbed Longs Peak, west of Estes Park. My grandfather took my father up, then he took me, in turn. But then my 5th brother died in a climbing accident, and my acrophobia worsened. So I really didn’t want to take my kid up that mountain. We had all attended camp by Estes Park, and all except my 4th brother climbed Longs Peak while in camp, and that was when my kid climbed it for the first time. I expect the next generation will follow in those footsteps - I have already committed to paying for camp, if they ever get around to kids.