Are your friends spending more time looking at their phone than at you in social situations? Are you spending more time checking your Twitter feed at dinner than chatting with your companion? These are two classic phubbing situations — and one website wants to bring an end to it!
Phubbing, that is “the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention,” is getting some spotlight after a website StopPhubbing.com has called out these etiquette criminals. You know the kind — they are scrolling through Facebook while you wait for your appetizer to arrive or sit at a sporting event checking hashtags.
The site playfully asks for your help in ending the phubbing epidemic — showing pics of celebrities in the act of phubbing and asking for pics of your friends. They even provide poster downloads for businesses to post that declare no phubbing is allowed. You can also email your friends (they’ll get it right away, they are looking at their phones all the time, after all) and call them out on their mobile obsession.
Time reports the site is the work of Australian grad student Alex Haigh, and a rush of traffic brought the site down earlier this week.
“I never expected this in the slightest. It’s one of those things that regardless of where you are, everyone has experienced it,” Haigh told the Melbourne Herald Sun.
