A rejection hotline is a phone number which delivers a pre-recorded message telling the caller that the caller is rejected by the person who gave the caller that number. This project was set up as a

practical joke A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...

by a Jeff Goldblatt From

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...

in 2001. Goldblatt says that after observing an awkward situation where a man approached a pretty woman and failed to get her phone number, he came up with the idea of a fake phone number as a subtle way of rejecting the date. While the

hotline A hotline is a point-to-point communications link in which a call is automatically directed to the preselected destination without any additional action by the user when the end instrument goes off-hook. An example would be a phone that aut ...

was set up as a joke, in 2002 a business, RH Brands, LLC was started based on the website humorhotlines.com. Soon the hotline started receiving millions of calls."Mastering the Art of Rejection"
'' The Torch'' Since then a number rejection hotlines were set up the United States, Ireland, Australia and Canada. In some major cities the number receives over 50,000 calls a day without any paid promotion whatsoever."Rejection Hotline does the dirty work"
/ref> humorhotlines.com facilitated numerous pranks across the country by setting numerous hotlines such as It Could Always Suck More Hotline, the Psychiatric Hotline, and the Angry Santa Hotline, which had been also receiving millions of calls. Most of them had nothing to do with "rejection". The classic rejection hotline says: "Hello, this is not the person you are trying to call. The person who gave you this number obviously did not want you to have their real number", and proceeded to list a variety of possible reasons for the rejection: "Maybe you're just not this person’s type … This could mean short, fat, ugly, dumb, annoying, arrogant or just a general loser", etc. There are several other numbers with various kinds of messages. While the hotlines were supposed to be a joke, their popularity shows they do fulfill a social function. The idea of a rejection hotline was the core of a Purim prank pulled by ''

The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the paper ...

'' in 2021."Netanyahu's repeated calls to Biden got directed to ‘rejection hotline’"
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'', February 26, 2021

References

{{reflist Dating Telecommunication services Bilateral relations Practical jokes