Some of these calls are likely robotic, seeking to leave a sales/political message on the answering machine. We get stuff like that every day, probably because our phone number is in so many places. Sometimes these calls come in at night, which is creepy, but we turn the ringer off on the phone in the bedroom, anyway.

I think, too, that some call systems are looking for the voice of a specific gender before starting up a message.

Except in rare cases, nobody is stalking you. On our caller ID we either get no number of a number absurdly out of state, like NYC.

The fun calls lately have been from the computer that sounds like a human and can interact with you to some degree.

I've finally started interrupting and saying, "Can I ask you a question?"

The response is, "Certainly!"

"Who was the first President of the United States?"

I get one of two answers: "Why would you ask that?" or "That's probably something you could look up on Google."

I thrown another question at the system. Maybe a third.

Finally I'm told to either hang on so someone else can help me or I'm told that I'm clearly not interested in their product (usually home security) and they take me off the call list.