Let Me Broadcast My Indviduality From a Selection of 30 Ringtones
February 23, 2005
Synthetic ringtone. Office phone ringtone. Ascending ringtone. Salsa ringtone. Soundtrack to Sega Master System puzzle game ringtone.
Yes, you’re stuck on the train, alone in the carriage with someone else undergoing the intense dilemma of selecting a ringtone on their new phone.
The Star Wars theme. The Simpsons theme. The Addams Family theme. The Fuckwit Who Wears Their Phone in a Leather Case on Their Belt theme.
The strain on their face is agonising. You want to hurt them in the neck and bellow that it’s not an act of sin to set your phone to silent-and-vibrate most of the time.
A Christina song. A Nelly song. A crappy 80s song remixed into a trance song remixed into a bad ringtone song.
Then - and you’ve sensed it coming a mile off - the ringtone with a name like “mosquito” or “blackboard nail orgasm”. The ringtone cancer that Nokia’s chucked in with sheer vindictive glee, knowing full well they’ll be torturing poor pricks like me who forgot to bring their walkman on that particular train journey.
A trill, shattering wave of sonic terror screams through the train carriage, the octave of which can only be matched by Australian Idol audition attempts.
Their head cocks to one side in deep thought: could this be the ringtone? The ringtone which will get them through the next week? Better play it again.
Somehow, it seems even shriller this time. Cockroaches now start falling from the ceiling of the carriage. In the next postcode region, scores of primary school children’s heads jerk towards their classroom window, sensing the dawning of a new Japanese cartoon catchphrase.
The Nokia owner grunts in vague satisfaction, then decides he’d better traverse the entire gamut of ringtones one more time. Just to be sure.
This is when your train stops due to signal failures in the middle of a tunnel, and you bite your lip, holding back gulping sobs.
