When was the last time you rang a doorbell?
Unless you’re a plumber or Amazon delivery person, it was probably ages ago. Many of us just don’t do it anymore – if you’re going to someone’s house, you message them from outside, and then they come and open the door.
You might press a buzzer if they live in the kind of flat where you can be buzzed in, but the idea of walking up to a door unannounced, going ‘ding-dong’ and waiting for someone to answer, just seems kind of alien.
It’s something we can’t believe we hadn’t pondered before, after seeing a tweet from Twitter user @youngandjoven (which had an impressive 600,000 likes).
Doorbells used to be a thing, though. That was how going to people’s houses worked – the world was a big adventure of ringing people’s bells and seeing who wanted to come out and play. So what’s changed?
Well, it’s easier than ever not to interact with people – and interacting with people freaks some of us out (we can’t even handle phone calls). What if they weren’t expecting us in that moment – and they’re busy, or not ready? What if someone’s asleep? Some people have babies, you know. Or need naps.
What if you ring the bell and someone you don’t know answers? In a generation doomed to rent forever (and in which nearly a fifth fewer people aged 25-44 can afford to live alone), everyone’s going to have flatmates, and you might not know them. It’s terrifying.
In the past, there was nothing to do when you got home from work or school but sleep or read, so there’d be a lot more hanging out in communal areas – usually involving ringing the doorbells of mates who lived nearby to see if they wanted to hang out.
Now, people sit in their rooms and converse with people who they know and like (or don’t know and like, cf. Twitter) on their phone, or laptop, or tablet. We have less face-to-face communication, so why would we ring the bell – risking having to talk to a stranger – when we could just key “Am outside” into WhatsApp?
And time is money. We’re busy – and it all adds up. If the idea is that you’re meeting someone at their house, then moving on somewhere together, why would you ring a bell? Just drop them a line when you’re exactly the distance from a certain point that it’ll take them to get there. Extraordinary efficiency that nobody needs to bring bells into.
If you’re the one being visited, doorbells aren’t great either. What if you need a shower or the loo or something? You can’t reply to a doorbell, but if someone texts to say they’re here and you’re still on the bog, you can tell them to hold on for a minute. The phone-less alternative is yelling at the top of your voice, from the toilet, “I WILL ANSWER THE DOOR IN A MOMENT, HANG ON”.
Odds are, the visit will have been planned on a phone, whether by text, WhatsApp, DM or email, and you’ll have that phone on you at all times.
Ultimately a ringing bell says nothing other than “someone is here”. That’s rubbish and unnecessary – a text tells you who that someone is, plus any other information they wish to impart. Like if they’ve brought beers. Much better.