[HN Gopher] How Maasai agro-pastoralists form and use accidental...
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How Maasai agro-pastoralists form and use accidental social ties
(2021)
Author : wallflower
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-02-04 14:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ecologyandsociety.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ecologyandsociety.org)
| catherinecodes wrote:
| > For example, a bundle may provide 200 minutes of calling during
| a 7-day period for a discounted price. To avoid losing unused
| minutes, we learned that as people near the end of their bundle's
| time period, some use available minutes to call back unusual
| numbers in their incoming call-log, which they had not answered.
|
| This probably explains the reason for the accidental social ties.
|
| I lived in a country where mobile phone calls were expensive
| relative to wages. Much of the time you'd receive a call that
| only rang once. The caller would hang up after only a single
| ring. This signalled they wanted to talk to you but didn't have
| enough "talk time" left. If the caller was a contractor or
| someone on your payroll, they would almost always employ this
| tactic to keep their costs down.
| throwaway848492 wrote:
| When I was a student (around 1998/99) I had to buy a mobile
| phone, but could not afford a subscription.
|
| Fortunately we only pay for outgoing calls in my country,
| otherwise it would have been too expensive.
|
| I bought a prepaid sim card, that had an expensive cost per
| minute (almost $1). I would call my parents landline once, as a
| signal to call me back.
|
| It's one of the main reasons why SMS was the preferred
| communication methods between students, because calls were too
| expensive. This habit continued when we grew up, and now almost
| nobody calls each other. I guess the phone companies didn't
| think of that scenario...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Back in the early 80s (before caller ID), we'd use a collect
| call. "Do you accept the charges from <XYZ>?"
| "No." <then place a call to a known number in the other
| direction>
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I made a collect call (~several states away) home when I
| was a kid and didn't have a cell phone. I forgot all about
| that. I feel old now. I remember my dad had to accept and
| kept it short to reduce costs even though I'd been away for
| weeks.
| jsnell wrote:
| I don't get it. If the collect call from A to B is
| accepted, B pays the cost of the call. In your scenario B
| instead calls A directly... and B still pays the cost.
| Where's the savings here?
|
| (And there's a pretty clear downside to this. What if it's
| an actual emergency from a different phone than the
| standard. E.g. the only time I can remember answering a
| collect call, it was my sister calling from a foreign
| hospital after a serious accident. Trying to call back at a
| different number wouldn't have been great. I guess you
| could have a protocol involving multiple collect calls, and
| hope that there's no record that the first one was
| rejected.)
| woleium wrote:
| Collect calls carry an additional operator fee, unless
| rejected.
| myself248 wrote:
| The A-B collect rate might be $3/min because collect
| calls carry absurd, insane, incomprehensibly whackass
| surcharges.
|
| The B-A call back rate might be $0.20/min because it's
| just a normal call, not subject to the above fees.
|
| There's the savings.
| sokoloff wrote:
| "Collect call from Bob Weaddababyeetzaboy" :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxhTnWrKYs
| failrate wrote:
| We had more subtle encoding, but important messages could
| be sent by collect calls that would definitely be
| refused.
| M_bara wrote:
| Back in the day ~23 years ago. A telco that had just launched
| started providing voice mail service. Normal outgoing call
| rates were about .5 usd per minute. The newly launched voice
| mail service was free. So university students found a new
| trick to call their friends, flash your friend (single ring
| signal to say that they don't pick up their phone), hang up
| and call again, let it ring till it goes to voicemail, leave
| a long message, hang up and wait for the reply. Obviously
| it's not full duplex and latency was high but what the e heck
| it's free. The telco killed it within 2 days... and then we
| started having fun with all those smsc Center numbers from
| all over the world...
| em-bee wrote:
| in some places this works even when the budget literally zero.
| that is without any money i can call someone, and let it ring
| until i get the message that i don't have enough money. but the
| receiver gets the ring and can call back. it makes sense,
| because it will encourage someone to spend money to make a
| call.
| bbsz wrote:
| I forgot about it. Yeah. I had my first cell phone around 2000
| and everyone was doing that. In my country outgoing calls were
| free, charges to the caller were only applied after receiver
| accepted (answered) the call.
|
| I remember some of my friends being "famous" for doing that all
| the time for every single call, operating the mobile at like
| 5$/year. The whole thing had it own jargon.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Random connection died with the uptake of social media. I
| remember in the early 2000s, chat programs like ICQ, AIM, and MSN
| Messenger permitted random connections, and it was fairly common
| for strangers to make chat requests from a genuine motivation of
| curiosity. For me, those online connections led to real
| connections around the world. Nowadays perhaps this niche is
| filled by online gaming
| pzmarzly wrote:
| This was indeed the case, but I recall that even in late 00s
| there was already a spam problem with this mechanism.
|
| OTOH over the years (especially during covid lockdowns) I got a
| few messages from strangers on FB Messenger and Snapchat, and
| usually replied to them, and it was fun. However, it was always
| caused by some FB post/comment or Snapchat story that I posted
| before. Still, I guess if you have enough bored people, they
| will find a way to socialize no matter the medium.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Please stop spouting these grandiose claims.
|
| Go on Facebook, enter a local group and interact with posts and
| become active in the community. After a while either people
| will contact you or people will be nice towards you contacting
| them.
| Iulioh wrote:
| You know, i think the problem is in the numbers.
|
| The internet is too vast and the people are too
| interchangable, i have beed banned for stupid reasons in a
| few comunities.
|
| I think a lot of people knows how easy is to be banned from
| reddit from certain subreddits for example for...no reason?
|
| I personally think that permanent bans should not be a thing
| if not for really specific, grave and repeatet reasons. timed
| bans (even really long ones) i think are way more effective
| for incentivize anyone to change behaviour (creating a new
| account after begin banned is the preferred solution to a
| perma ban)
|
| We lost a lot of humanity in the process.
| kredd wrote:
| I don't ever recall being banned from anything anywhere.
| Although I've heard how some subs ban you if you're part of
| some other specific sub, and that's weird.
|
| That being said, I don't get the logic of wanting to be
| part of a community that actively doesn't want you. If I'd
| get banned from anywhere, I'd just move on. But I am still
| 100% supportive of banning as some people have genuinely
| ruined previously fun communities.
| Iulioh wrote:
| >I don't ever recall being banned from anything anywhere.
|
| Depends on how many communities you contribute to and how
| much I guess
|
| That being said, I don't get the logic of wanting to be
| part of a community that actively doesn't want you. Bans
| are not a vote from the comunity, is often an individual
| or a bot that does the ban
|
| >If I'd get banned from anywhere, I'd just move on. But I
| am still 100% supportive of banning
|
| Ban=new account
|
| Suspension=wait it out and effectively get a punishment
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Were these communities using Reddit ?
|
| It seems to be basically designed to make netiquette hard
| (more charitably : they designed it by assuming that people
| would give up on netiquette, which does seem to happen as a
| community gets larger).
|
| It's one of the reasons I'm boycotting it now, but also
| being wary of too similar looking alternatives like Lemmy.
| kjqgqkejbfefn wrote:
| The claims is not as grandiose as your demand for it to stop
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Just like family and friendship groups, Facebook groups are
| silos like local areas, hobbies, political leanings etc. ICQ
| requests really were surprising connections
| melagonster wrote:
| MoRPG is not popular in current world. I trust most of people
| just want social media.
| Rygian wrote:
| Some years ago there was a silly game, the topic was to make
| friends with "phone number neighbors" whose phone number is just
| one digit away.
|
| I gave it a try, texted $(my_number + 1) and said "hi, you're my
| phone number neighbor, our numbers are very similar. What's up?"
|
| Their reply: "who are you and how did you get my number?"
| netsharc wrote:
| I met a girl whose birthday is the day after mine, and the last
| 4 digits of her phone number was also mine +1.
|
| Sadly she turned me down when I asked her out.
| jojobas wrote:
| That was a near miss.
| jbaber wrote:
| What shell are you using? For bash, that's got to be $((
| $my_number + 1 ))
| Rygian wrote:
| It was pseudo-code :-)
| tetris11 wrote:
| I always titter when I see arithmetic in shell operations.
|
| In Python, one would merely do: export
| mynumber="+4912341234123" python3 -c "import pip;
| pip.main(['install', 'phonenumbers']); \ import
| phonenumbers; x = phonenumbers.parse(\"$mynumber\", None); \
| x.national_number = x.national_number + 1; \
| print(x)"
|
| Just plain and simple, really.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would assume this was a spammer/scammer trying to verify if
| they could reach a real person at my number.
| Rygian wrote:
| Even if the originator phone number was indeed one minus
| yours?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I'm especially wary of unknown callers if they share
| the first 6 digits of my phone number. I don't think I have
| ever received a legitimate phone call from one.
|
| The whole one digit away thing could easily be a tactic a
| scammer uses.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I get the occasional call or message from numbers with the
| same area code and exchange as my number, and they're
| universally spam. If I saw one that was one number off mine
| I wouldn't think "oh, somebody's having fun, I'll answer /
| text back", I'd think "huh they're bothering to fake more
| digits now."
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I got a call from a spam caller who spoofed the caller ID to be
| $(my_number - 1).
|
| They said "hi, you're my phone number neighbor, our numbers are
| very similar. What's up?"
|
| My reply: "who are you and how did you get my number?"
| Rygian wrote:
| At that point, any reply back from the original sender just
| proves them to be legitimate (ie. able to receive messages on
| the originator phone number, so not spoofing it).
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > ... the conditions under which wrong number connections (WNCs)
| are made;
|
| > Working in 10 rural communities in Tanzania, we conducted 16
| group interviews with men about ...
|
| > Nine separate interviews with groups of women revealed that
| women do not create WNCs
|
| Wow.
| smeej wrote:
| I can guess a couple reasons for this:
|
| 1. Women tend to have stronger/closer "RNCs," or actual face-
| to-face communities.
|
| 2. Women have a good reason to be more wary of connecting with
| strangers under unexpected circumstances than men do.
| lou1306 wrote:
| This might explain why scambots routinely try this approach on
| messaging apps (Telegram/Whatsapp/you name it). As in, send an
| absolutely out-of-the blue message like a table reservation, wait
| for the predictable you-got-the-wrong-number reply and use that
| as an inroad to strike a conversation.
|
| To me it always seemed like such a dumb attempt to lure people
| in, but perhaps other cultures might honestly read this as a
| genuine social relation.
| soneca wrote:
| I started to get a lot of simple _"Hello!"_ and that's it, from
| unknown numbers on WhatsApp. I block without replying, but I
| can see how a lot of people would reply returning the greeting
| and asking who they are.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > As in, send an absolutely out-of-the blue message like a
| table reservation, wait for the predictable you-got-the-wrong-
| number reply and use that as an inroad to strike a
| conversation.
|
| I thought that was "active number farming". If so, a human
| replying is the end goal.
| user_7832 wrote:
| If you go to r/scams or r/scambait you can see their full
| script. It's sometimes funny, but apparently a lot of these
| scammers are being held literally captive in a foreign country,
| and apparently some of them have had their kidney taken. They
| are held until they manage to recover their "ransom" amount
| through these scams.
|
| Here's an NYT article:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/my...
| mtreis86 wrote:
| My current goto response (which anecdotally seems to work) is
| to empathize with them and call out their situation for what
| it is. At the very least if their supervisors find I'm trying
| to support (radicalize) them they'll take my number off the
| list. Something like "I know you're a scammer and I hope
| you're safe, I hear ya'll are often enslaved"
| dylan604 wrote:
| > ya'll
|
| what is this word that is being contracted here?
| anjel wrote:
| "You all"
| dylan604 wrote:
| you all => y'all
|
| *this is a pet peeve. it could easily be a typo, but
| there is a large portion of people that believe the
| proper contraction is ya'll for some strange reason.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Interestingly, I remember trying to connect (with some success)
| to random @hotmail.com emails using MSN messenger, back in the
| early 2000s.
| scottmcdot wrote:
| Are the Masaai Wrong Number Callers (WNCs) calling other Masaai
| or just anyone in the East African region?
| tempaway74641 wrote:
| Mostly other Masaai, if the person answering speaks their
| language they are more likely to chat. See the "Qualitative
| results" section of the article.
| tempaway74641 wrote:
| _Connecting through a wrong number is relatively straightforward,
| but involves multiple steps. First, an individual dials a number
| incorrectly. This may result from writing a number down
| incorrectly to begin with, or simply mis-keying a number in the
| phone, each of which can stem from low levels of literacy, as
| noted by our respondents. Furthermore, the likelihood of these
| errors may be increased by the common practice of using a
| friend's phone when one's battery is dead. Second, the receiving
| party answers the phone in a specific language, signaling to the
| caller something about the receiver's identity. Third, the error
| is quickly identified. Fourth, the parties either end the call
| swiftly or they do not. In some instances, individuals may chat
| for a while, especially (but not exclusively) if the receiver
| answers in Maa. Maasai social institutions can help members, who
| may be far from each other geographically, find common ground and
| mark their social position relative to each other._
|
| ...
|
| _During our interviews, participants regularly received calls
| and nearly always answered the call, generally stepping away from
| the group until the call was over. This happened dozens of times
| over many meetings. And on a few occasions, the individual
| returned to the group and announced that the call was a wrong
| number._
|
| ...
|
| _During one meeting, a respondent received a wrong number call
| from another Maasai he had never met, and over a short
| conversation learned that their fathers were brothers. It was an
| astonishingly timely example of what we had been discussing.
| (That cousins would not have known about each other is not
| necessarily unusual in a society where polygynous families can be
| very large, and extended families exponentially so.)_
|
| This is great. The "Results - qualitative results" section is
| particularly worth reading
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Something like this happened to a roommate of mine back in the
| day. A female ended up accidentally calling him, and he took it
| as an opportunity to flirt with her. They ended up dating for
| several months.
| martopix wrote:
| One of the most surreal moments of my life was walking in the
| bush in Tanzania near a village, two maasais passed by on a
| motorbike, stopped, took out a mobile phone from the folds of
| their red garment, took a picture of me without saying a word,
| and left.
|
| At the time, smartphones were not common and I was somewhat
| surprised that all maasais had cellphones (non-smartphones,
| usually). But of course I now understand that they're essential
| for a society that doesn't have any other form of connection (no
| landlines, so fast adoption of mobile, and also poor roads and no
| postal service).
|
| And of course, it must have been much more surreal for them to
| see a random white young man walking alone in the middle of
| nowhere near their village.
| sillystuff wrote:
| Everyone needs a phone for M-PESA (electronic money transfers
| are huge in E. Africa). In Kenya, I met people with multiple
| phones-- a phone for normal calling/texting on a cheaper
| provider, and one with Safaricom just for M-PESA (Safaricom
| exclusive there [at least, at the time]).
|
| My son and I never saw other muzungu, outside of tourist areas,
| while traveling overland by matatu/dala dala/minibus and probox
| across E. Africa / the horn (other muzungu seemed to all be
| traveling via organized tours-- or, at least, never by public
| transit like we were). Lots of villagers wanted photos with us
| when we stopped. It is an odd feeling to be the center of
| attention.
|
| Most of our interaction with Maasai was just across the border
| from Tanzania inside Kenya in villages surrounding the Maasai
| Mara. Everyone we met was super nice. Although that was our
| experience pretty much everywhere in Africa except some large
| cities (which we tried to avoid anyway).
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