bro this may shock you but there's a whole contingent of people out there who still pick up the phone when their friends call
and IME cats don't self organize into a herd, it's usually one person figuring out a time and place that works for everyone, unless you're one of those insufferable people who sends out a "when are you free" survey of checkboxes ;P
>there's a whole contingent of people out there who still pick up the phone when their friends call
That's increasingly rare. My elderly dad still uses voice calling pretty much exclusively and there's a friend who I'll exchange voice calls with. But I don't think there's a single other person who would call me out of the blue socially absent an emergency--and at least some of these are people I would have regularly called 25 years or so ago.
For that matter, no one at work would just call me on the phone either.
Seems the correct etiquette these days is to arrange a call days in advance at a time that will be mutually convenient. My younger self would never have believed this would be the case yet here we are?
The prevalence of messaging probably has a lot to do with it. "We still on for tomorrow night?" works fine as just a text. "Have time to chat on phone later?" seems to work pretty well too.
In any case, the goalposts for calling someone out of the blue have moved for a lot of people.
I went back to candy bar phone more than a decade ago and I barely use it.