Some years ago there was a silly game, the topic was to make friends with "phone number neighbors" whose phone number is just one digit away.<p>I gave it a try, texted $(my_number + 1) and said "hi, you're my phone number neighbor, our numbers are very similar. What's up?"<p>Their reply: "who are you and how did you get my number?"
> For example, a bundle may provide 200 minutes of calling during a 7-day period for a discounted price. To avoid losing unused minutes, we learned that as people near the end of their bundle’s time period, some use available minutes to call back unusual numbers in their incoming call-log, which they had not answered.<p>This probably explains the reason for the accidental social ties.<p>I lived in a country where mobile phone calls were expensive relative to wages. Much of the time you'd receive a call that only rang once. The caller would hang up after only a single ring. This signalled they wanted to talk to you but didn't have enough "talk time" left. If the caller was a contractor or someone on your payroll, they would almost always employ this tactic to keep their costs down.
<i>Connecting through a wrong number is relatively straightforward, but involves multiple steps. First, an individual dials a number incorrectly. This may result from writing a number down incorrectly to begin with, or simply mis-keying a number in the phone, each of which can stem from low levels of literacy, as noted by our respondents. Furthermore, the likelihood of these errors may be increased by the common practice of using a friend’s phone when one’s battery is dead. Second, the receiving party answers the phone in a specific language, signaling to the caller something about the receiver’s identity. Third, the error is quickly identified. Fourth, the parties either end the call swiftly or they do not. In some instances, individuals may chat for a while, especially (but not exclusively) if the receiver answers in Maa. Maasai social institutions can help members, who may be far from each other geographically, find common ground and mark their social position relative to each other.</i><p>...<p><i>During our interviews, participants regularly received calls and nearly always answered the call, generally stepping away from the group until the call was over. This happened dozens of times over many meetings. And on a few occasions, the individual returned to the group and announced that the call was a wrong number.</i><p>...<p><i>During one meeting, a respondent received a wrong number call from another Maasai he had never met, and over a short conversation learned that their fathers were brothers. It was an astonishingly timely example of what we had been discussing. (That cousins would not have known about each other is not necessarily unusual in a society where polygynous families can be very large, and extended families exponentially so.)</i><p>This is great. The "Results - qualitative results" section is particularly worth reading
Random connection died with the uptake of social media. I remember in the early 2000s, chat programs like ICQ, AIM, and MSN Messenger permitted random connections, and it was fairly common for strangers to make chat requests from a genuine motivation of curiosity. For me, those online connections led to real connections around the world. Nowadays perhaps this niche is filled by online gaming
One of the most surreal moments of my life was walking in the bush in Tanzania near a village, two maasais passed by on a motorbike, stopped, took out a mobile phone from the folds of their red garment, took a picture of me without saying a word, and left.<p>At the time, smartphones were not common and I was somewhat surprised that all maasais had cellphones (non-smartphones, usually). But of course I now understand that they're essential for a society that doesn't have any other form of connection (no landlines, so fast adoption of mobile, and also poor roads and no postal service).<p>And of course, it must have been much more surreal for them to see a random white young man walking alone in the middle of nowhere near their village.
This might explain why scambots routinely try this approach on messaging apps (Telegram/Whatsapp/you name it). As in, send an absolutely out-of-the blue message like a table reservation, wait for the predictable you-got-the-wrong-number reply and use that as an inroad to strike a conversation.<p>To me it always seemed like such a dumb attempt to lure people in, but perhaps other cultures might honestly read this as a genuine social relation.
Something like this happened to a roommate of mine back in the day. A female ended up accidentally calling him, and he took it as an opportunity to flirt with her. They ended up dating for several months.
> ... the conditions under which wrong number connections (WNCs) are made;<p>> Working in 10 rural communities in Tanzania, we conducted 16 group interviews with men about ...<p>> Nine separate interviews with groups of women revealed that women do not create WNCs<p>Wow.