This thread made me think that Sims is mirroring life with the incessant "car insurance" robocalls that aren't even about car insurance but are just checking to see if anyone answers to they can sell the fact that it's a working number, to other spammers. That has trained us all to stop answering our phones at all.
In the game, I get sick of the phone ringing every 5 minutes. Have been getting some "Hey person I barely met, should I spend more time with this other person you barely know?" calls, and for now they are novel, but I bet 2 months from now my Sims phones will be on silent.