I have two issues with them; they are kind of on the opposite ends of a spectrum.

• Why do so many people use the same ringtone? I’d say that a ringtone allows one to express one’s individuality much more than any other customizable element in a mobile phone — yes, this includes all those fancy cell phone covers. After all, everyone around you hears your ringtone. I somewhat understand when an incredibly popular phone has very few options for, say, the sound of an incoming text message but most phones these days allow you to make your ringtone out of pretty much anything.
• Which brings me to another point — why do so many people use such terrible ringtones? A good ringtone is recognizable, or at least melodic, consists of relatively few isolated frequencies (including any kind of speech in a ringtone is a terrible idea–I do not understand why so many people don’t get this–is my sense of æsthetic just so different?), and simply not be obnoxious. If your ringtone sounds like a grumbling 80-year old pissed off because you just threw him in a really deep well with a bunch of snakes and TNT, you’d better find a better one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 19:50 and is filed under The Daily Badness, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.