There’s nothing that renders you as instantly cool, desirable, and sexy as not needing something that everyone around you does. It’s not especially practical, and it’s certainly not efficient. But. It is kind of hot.

A flip phone represents the ultimate luxury: inaccessibility. The most alluring thing about people with flip phones is the vote of confidence they are giving themselves (and their social lives) by not giving people a 24/7 way to reach them, across multiple platforms. It’s like they have an innate trust that the people who really want to talk to them will seek them out, will still want to talk to them three hours after sending an email.

They can go off the radar without worrying that people will forget about them while they’re gone. And by not tweeting, Facebooking, and Foursquaring their whereabouts, they’re leaving their everyday lives open to interpretation. As if at any given moment, they’re probably doing something much cooler than we are.

Chiara Atik.