[efitz]

Many of us here grew up in the answering machine era where leaving a message was normal, expected behavior- when phones were not carried on your person.

[ghaff]

I'm always struck in these threads how much variation there is. I doubt I receive one SPAM/scam text or phone call a week. It would seem weird that I'd want to make myself potentially unreachable to avoid the odd junk. I guess if I got multiple per day I'd need a different strategy.

[letitbeirie]

Ironically back in the answering machine era you could screen your calls as they were coming in, short-circuiting this entire loop.

[sentientslug]

And what's old is new again, both Android and (newly) iPhone have live voicemail screening features!