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I used to have the "courtesy" problem. Just couldn't bring myself to talk over them. I finally snapped when they called one too many times in the middle of dinner and wouldn't be put off. I got mad that time, but decided to switch gears.
From then on if I had the time I'd work on domestic things but keep the call going while feigning various cognitive and communication disorders. Things like "tell me more about...", "the hyena was crying, could you repeat that?", "what else is free? I know something's supposed to be free!" Or I'd ask for a minute to tell my wife, set the phone down and start repeating the offer completely wrong to my roommate who by then would be ROTF. Basically burning time. It seemed the calls were becoming more frequent, and I wouldn't be surprised if some were retaliatory, but by then I was enjoying it. Nothing made doing the dishes go more quickly.
Later, after moving between states and then with the DNC registry, marketing calls have dropped off to almost nothing.
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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