I remember plenty of annoyance in those days! My friends' families being on the phone for hours and making it impossible to reach them. Having to get off the internet so someone could make a call. Having whole systems to make sure the people got important messages in a timely manner whenever they got home. Having every call need to take place in a central room of your house where you were usually in the way of other people. Having to make sure someone was near the phone/in the house if you were expecting a call.

It's not a constant annoyance, but if anything there were more annoyances in the 90's around phones than having people call me to speak to my sibling.

Things are not annoying when you know there is no other more practical solution.

>What you call "annoying AF" was reality for many many years and yet people were not constantly annoyed..

It might have been a reality pre-00s ─ today if you want to play out any Jason Bourne fantasies, they will not be considered just annoying but suspicious, as your number gets intrinsically linked with somebody else's activities.

It was a different time. The cost of communication is near zero, so if you can’t be bothered, people get annoyed.

I would say this demonstrates that the cost of communication is not near zero.

I just don't think most "people get annoyed" by such things, definitely not "annoyed AF", besides some very impatient people who'll always find this or other reasons to be annoyed.

> 'The cost of communication is near zero'

You mean the 'cost of interrupting other people while they are in the middle of living their lives' is near zero. On the other side of the coin, the cost of being constantly interrupted by beeping, buzzing, ringing, and jingling of every asshole in the county who calls/text on a moment's whim, and gets annoyed/offended when I don't instantly respond, is not zero.

Likewise, the cost of being constantly surveilled by intelligence agencies and evil corporations is definitely nowhere near zero.

I live completely off the grid. Far from giving a fuck about how offended/inconvenienced others are by my lifestyle, I purposely disconnected from all of those people. Life for me is much better now.