The Mumble Trend
Previously, I posted two different articles about unintelligible voicemails I received from people about my books (see below for links).
Basically, in both of those messages, the speaker seemed to stumble and mumble their way through key things like their name, who they worked for/represented, the exact concept they were trying to pitch, but not much else. Ironically, I could almost always make out my name, the name of my book, and their callback number with much more ease than the rest of the message. I chalked them both up to possible communication issues where the speaker's first language isn't English, bad phone connections, or a combination of the two.
However, recent events make me question if this isn't just an unfortunate set of circumstances specific to those messages but perhaps a new trend designed to encourage recipients into calling.
Let me explain.
The first message (The Mysterious Voicemail) arrived on 3/15/2024. The second message (Another mumble (voice)mail) arrived on 7/24/2024. As I write this article, the current date is 8/14/2024. So from the first "mumble message" to today is 5 months. In those 5 months I have received messages on the following dates that all seem to share these characteristics.
- 03/15/2024
- 06/21/2024
- 07/23/2024
- 07/24/2024
- 08/07/2024
- 08/08/2024
- 08/13/2024
That's 7 phone calls in 5 months where I can hear my name, my book's name (usually mispronounced), and a callback number almost clear as a bell but in each message their name, their employer's name, and what they're trying to sell just sounds like absolute gibberish. I find it suspect that I got 7 calls from 7 different numbers that included a mix of male and female callers that all somehow managed to get the same aspects of their message spoken cleanly but at the same time could not clearly indicate their names or their employers.
Had this only been encountered in a call or two here and there then I might chalk it up to bad phone connections, but with this being the consistent trend I'm hearing in all of these calls I can't help but now think it might be intentional. For someone like me who researches a group who contacts me before really engaging them (usually to tell them to leave me alone), having those key details inaudible makes it impossible for me to research them without engaging them first.
Essentially, I'll have to call each of these unknown people back and request that they email me their information since I can't hear what they're saying. Then, if they email me, I can research them. But there's little I can do about putting their information on my website otherwise. All I have in most cases is a phone number, that most don't point back to an identifiable company, and nothing else. Most of the messages I can't even make out a possible name of the caller, much less their employer.
Given that I make it a habit to document the interactions I have with these groups and others are doing it more and more, it would limit their exposure to such online databases and listings if they intentionally disguise their names until additional steps are initiated by the target recipient. Perhaps they guess those of us who research and document such interactions are either too scared to busy to call them back to get more details for our posts?
Admittedly, I have yet to call back the more recent callers in my list. I try to return their phone calls in the middle of the night to avoid anyone answering the calls. I'll leave them a message just as they left me and my message will be clearly spoken with a clear request of how to proceed with communicating with me. From there, it'll be up to them if they want to take that next step.
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