[karatestomp]

Ten years ago "looking at a cellphone" was still universal shorthand for "is a dick" in fiction. So was "talking to no-one" (bluetooth headset) which carried a further meaning of "business douche" ("carries a cellphone at all" was shorthand for this for most of the 90s—see the movie Hook for an early example). Both are normal and common now.

Ten years ago much of the population still considered paying any attention whatsoever—any—to a cellphone in the company of others, maybe unless it actually rang (remember phone calls that weren't spam?), to be incredibly rude.

All that changed very fast over the following 5 years or so.

[mattgreenrocks]

The normalization of this behavior makes me incredibly salty.

Likely the same people that denigrated nerds for liking tech are now glued to their device while others are talking to them _in real life_.

[ghaff]

The only reason that 3/4 (conservatively) of the population isn't walking around with their Borg implant Bluetooth earpieces these days is that, in most situations, if something is actually important someone will send you a text. And, yes, I clearly recall when being affixed to a Bluetooth earphone was widely viewed as douchey behavior outside of certain circles because it implied the person was just waiting for a call that was more important than you.

This has pretty much been normalized as more and more people expect immediate response to whatever trivial whine they have.