The irrelevance of the Yellow Pages

Dear Hipster: Welp, I got the new Yellow Pages the other day. But, why? I feel like it’s the biggest waste of paper in the world. I literally carried it straight from my doorstep to the blue bin without opening it. How do companies not get it that nobody reads the phone book? — Denis

Since you used it first, I’m going to use the one word that nobody is supposed to use, yet which is oddly appropriate in this case.

Assuming you’re under 60, the company that prints the phone book doesn’t care about you. They get that you don’t use it, but you might as well not exist in their eyes. This is just another example of the outsized influence that older consumers exert on the world, often without even realizing it.

It’s basically a microcosmic version of any given election, or the subjective assessment of whether or not the coffee is hot enough during the breakfast rush at the average diner.