Even as telemarketing and survey/polling callers can be an annoyance and the scam calls are a nuisance that seems more persistent and widespread nowadays than in prior decades, the calls I have disliked the most are the fax machine calls that repeatedly call voice numbers and have the handshake noise running for 45-120 seconds and eating up voice mail space just as much. Fortunately, with visual voicemail records and more advanced call blocking and rerouting options, it’s essier than ever to not have time wasted by such things.

Some young people quite literally do whatever they can to avoid taking phone, voice or video calls and prefer everything communicated from afar come to them as text messages and/or email. But even with all this going on, the persistence of nuisance call-making parties seems to be on the most extreme level ever.