Had some thoughts of some key words and concepts that define a lot of people's thoughts and actions in this generation, after I heard a woman my age tell the staff at a taco spot yesterday "I feel like this burrito has sauce in it and I asked for no sauce"
Awkwardness, anxiety, and avoidance
This is some bullshyt theorizing from me, but here is the formula, encounter "awkwardness", avoid to reduce anxiety.
That's reasonable, but I think starting with millennials we started obsessing over "awkwardness", the idea that things were awkward, mostly I think for social media posts, but soon everything was awkward. he double texted me", AWKWARD, "He wasn't in the group chat, but he like came to the party" AWKWARD, "That server like looked at me for a second and just like it was so awkward"
Labeling everything as awkward led to more behavior that avoids it, even when, it's NOT really that awkward or uncomfortable, it became so. I have been watching more closely the amount of people who walk with their phone out, to avoid almost any interaction. "we had to like walk next to each other for a second, it was so awkward"
which brings me back to the phone convo. Think a lot of phone call avoidance is based in the idea that you can't instantly control how long a convo goes, most people have time for a 30 seconds or 2 minute phone convo, but to tell someone, "hey I have to go, lets talk later" takes some social grace, and yes is just slightly awkward. People will send 17 texts to reach the same conclusion of a 17 second phone convo.
"omg they called me it was so awkward"