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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Programming
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What's wrong with Beeper?
Nothing objectively, it just sounds so stupid to me that I have an irrational aversion lmao
(This is not an insult, I just had a realization that I think might affect you)-- do you know what the name comes from?
Years ago there was a thing called a beeper before everyone had cell phones. It was a one way paging system-- you'd give your friends your beeper number, they'd call it, type in their phone number, and their number (or whatever they dialed in) would appear on your beeper. You'd then use a landline phone to call them back (early versions of the system had no text or reply capability, only numbers and only one-way).
I always thought it was a cool name. But thinking about it I realize someone less than maybe 25-30 years old might literally have never encountered such a device. Much like a 5.25" floppy disk or rotary dial phone, they went out of style years ago and a young person might never have encountered one.
Curious if that's you?
You know, I probably should have looked into this... yeah, this is me lol. I've seen floppies and we had an old rotary phone, but I've never heard of a beeper. It still sounds weird but at least there's a reason.
It's all good. Like I said, no insult at all. There's no reason why you would ever have encountered a beeper, it's one of those things that once SMS came around everybody just collectively decided to move on from. Unlike floppies or rotary phones there wasn't some continued use for it.