Fair warning: If you go to a party and there’s a basket by the door demanding you leave your phone behind so you can be “more present” during the proceedings, you have every right to steal one and leave the party forever. Because much more dangerous than the trend of people using their smart phones to check Facebook at parties is the trend of people telling you what your relationship with technology should be.

These Smugness Baskets have been around for a couple years now, but they made a major push over the holiday season (especially on Facebook, because how else would you find out that it’s not cool to use Facebook?).

This blog post is a perfect example of how this phone shaming is supposed to work. These hosts are concerned that…

If we didn’t draw attention to our addiction and have a call-out kindly asking everyone to be present and in the moment, we’d all get carried away and lose the day to our love, uh dependence, on technology.

We’re obviously not addicted to technology if you can just cure it with passive aggressive notes. “Hey, Uncle Greg. Didn’t you see the sign? Please leave your heroin in the basket by the door. I want you to be present tonight.”

You’re not saving Christmas anyway. If people are rude with their phones, they would have been rude without them. The same people who check their email while you’re having dinner also check the score on the TV, and you didn’t put your TV in the basket. These are the same people who clip their toenails in other people’s bathrooms and merge without looking and brag about how much they’ve been going to the gym recently. People who suck are going to suck whether they’re at a LAN party or an Amish Hoedown.

I’d much rather talk to somebody who’s checking his e-mail on his phone than a party host who’s got his head so far up his own ass he can check his own kidneys.

Alex is a moderately attractive comedian and Internet celebrity. He writes about philosophy, robots, travel, and himself.

14 replies on “I Won’t Leave My Cell Phone In Your Stupid Basket”

  3. Whoever wrote this, please, I’m begging you, text and drive, a lot, please. You owe it to society, you 12 year old girl in a hairy man suit.
    Anyone that defends the position that people should spend more time looking like they’re telling nonverbal cyberghost stories, who cries inside when someone asks him to put down his fucking phone and engage with meatfaces, please, text and drive and text and drive and text and drive and let us reap the benefits.
    Thank you.

  5. I think you’re misunderstanding how putting things in a basket works. After you put your phone in there, the wives pick out the phones at random and then fuck the owner of the phone.

  7. Text and drive? He can’t text and drive and text and drive and text and drive now, someone stole his damn phone because he put it in a basket.

  9. Wow! Anybody who ever did that at a party I went to would promptly be told that, no, I would not put my phone in any basket and what a dumb idea that was. I would be offended and I would think the host was a total condescending jerk-off.

  10. But the ability to escape socially awkward situations through my phone gives me the courage to go to parties in the first place 🙁

  11. Yeah, giving up your phone at your host’s request is really tough, isn’t it? Next thing you know they are going to ask you to take your shoes off when you walk in the door. Jerks.

  12. What if you want to keep your phone on hand so that you can answer it in case your babysitter calls – do you have to stand by the basket the entire night?

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