I dont even wait for it to stop. Ill answer, place myself on mute so they hear dead air, and then wait for them to disconnect on their own. Same number for nearly 20 years and only get spam calls about once a year when they try to probe my number again.

That is also because the only unknown numbers who call you these days are 99% scammers and 1 % advertisers.

It used to be expensive to call you. That’s why it was a pleasure to pick up the phone.

Now it’s so cheap that it’s more expensive to pick up a call in terms of your wasted time.

Robocalls

Those dudes at Sweetwater must be rich.

Usually it's just a scam/robocall, and answering will register your number as "active" causing them to bombard you with even more calls. It's not worth the risk when most people I know know to text me, not call me.

Lately I've been getting marketing calls with recorded messages.

And it's absurd to even wish I didn't need to have a phone.

And 0.1% important calls you weren't expecting but which will be a 3 hour wait on hold to return the call.

This.

I had one, didn't know what it said so i replied with something like "uhh, what?" And then immediately the audio quality changed and the voice was different as a human took over and what they said seemingly had nothing to do with the original message so i just cut them off with "not interested" and hung up

I actually screen all unknown numbers and ignore them. I've been suffering so many automated social engineering attempts that this is the only option. If you want to contact me, email me or text me first.

You wait for it to stop ringing before googling? I'm so offended I google it as it's ringing

You guys take unknown numbers?

I just put my phone on do not disturb and allow my entire contact list to get through.

That way it blocks unknown numbers

This isn't even a slight exaggeration.

I "torture" them for fun. And then torture John with a thick accent afterwards. Just a hobby.

I unfortunately need to take calls from 7nonown numbers fairly often. My goto for scammed is to pretend tonhave trouble hearing them for a few seconds, then just mute the phone and leave the call going instead of hanging up. I figure the extra minute they spend trying to get me to talk back is a minute they're not targeting someone else.

Enshitification of phones started shortly after