At Joseph’s Calleja concert last week, cameras were occasionally getting close-up shots of the glitterati sitting on the front rows. And as they filled the big stage screens, we learnt one thing: that our Prime Minister and our Leader of Opposition share a nasty habit – they are both phubbers.

Before you quit Cecilia Malmström’s Facebook page and rush over to mine to rage at me, I’ll quickly let you know that phubbers have nothing to do with fibbers or blubbers, or with any other word.

This ph-word was freshly coined last month – filling an aching gap in the language which was sorely missing. Phubbing is the act of snubbing the person you’re talking to by looking at your phone instead of paying attention.

Tsk, tsk, both Simon Busuttil and Joseph Muscat were seen at times busy texting/tweeting/facebooking instead of giving their undivided attention to the Spectacular! Spectacular! on the Granaries.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, shall we? We are all guilty of glancing at our mobiles every now and then. But to paraphrase George Orwell, some are more phubbers than others.

I have a dear friend who lives with his face buried in his mobile phone screen. Whenever we lunch, he’s always reaching out to check his online world. At some point I stop talking.

Phubber Friend (staring at the phone “No, no, go on, I’m listening.”

Me: “How can I when you’re answering your mail?”

Friend: “You know I’m multi-tasking.”

Me: “You know I want undivided attention when I’m talking.”

Friend (grunts and puts down mobile “Okay…”

Five minutes later phubber friend absent-mindedly picks smartphone again; I get book out of bag and start reading; friend looks very, very offended; he stashes mobile phone away; he makes sad, puppy eyes, which make me laugh; finally I get undivided attention.

He is not the only phubber I know. There are the more frustrating kind: those who start chuckling half way through a conversation, and you think ‘hurrah, I’m funny’, only to be told: “Sorry, just saw this funny status on Facebook, har, har, har”.

I am scared for the future of politeness

Or those with whom you try and have a conversation and they are busy scrolling down their screens and then pressing their mobiles in your hands: “Have you seen this – here, read it”.

Even worse: the phubber couples. They sit at restaurants across each other checking their social media statuses and taking photos of their food, all the while, never uttering a single word. Argh! I want to get up and confiscate their gadgets and make them look in each other’s eyes and tell each other one hundred times: “Let’s talk face to face”.

Finally, I no longer feel like I am the lone ranger in this crusade of mine. Alex Haigh, 23, from Melbourne, Australia, last month set up a website campaign called Stop Phubbing. Maybe he lives close to the Ta’ Pinu shrine on Melbourne city hill – and this has to be one of those other miracles.

If you log on to stopphubbing. com you’ll find out that 92 per cent of repeat phubbers go on to become politicians (hah! see Muscat and Busuttil above). It also tells us that New York City is the phubbingest place on the planet, followed by L.A., London and Paris. Clearly he needs to come to Valletta, lunch hour.

In the UK, a YouGov survey reports that 27 per cent of people would answer their phone in the middle of a conversation, and 37 per cent feel it’s ruder not to answer a message than to phub your live friend. Our National Statistics Office is still counting, but I’d say more than 57 per cent of Maltese do that.

Why is it that we cannot resist the sound of an incoming text? Or the lure of a potential e-mail?

Telegraph journalist Harry Mount has the answer: “The main reason you reach for the phone is the eternal human triumph of hope over experience. When your phone starts ringing, there is always the slim chance it’s a tearful Cameron Diaz, calling long distance, saying, yes, she has to admit it, it’s you, it was always you.”

Of course, it’s more likely that incoming SMS is from BOV, alerting me that €50 have been withdrawn from my account. (And is it just me that every time I get that text, I momentarily forget it was I who withdrew the money from the cash point and I panic?).

An SMS seems to give us eternal hope that our life is not the low-key one it really is, and therefore strips us off of all our willpower, and we don’t mind being rude.

I am scared for the future of politeness; I am mostly scared that one day people will start preferring an emoticon for a real smile.

Start today, don’t phub while reading this.

krischetcuti@gmail.com

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