"Let's suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." IN the 18th century, you would have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individual… - Steve Martin

"Let's suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." IN the 18th century, you would have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individually to each one of them. However, here in the third millennium, with our advances in telephone communication, it is possible to say "I am a jerk" to a thousand people at a time by forgetting to turn off your cell phone and having it ring during a performance of Death of a Salesman."