Ringtones
Nick recently brought up the subject of ringtones, and it got me thinking on the matter. Most of us now rate novelty ringtones about as highly as we do animated GIFs and Channel 5—their moment has passed and we’d be better off without them—yet the psychology of ringtones is potentially an interesting subject. We all make assumptions about people based on appearance, accent and so forth—but what impression is made by our choice of ringtone?
I’ve never purchased a ringtone, as being a nerd I’ve always been able to program them. For a long, long time my phone rang to something approximating “Submit Response” by The Chemical Brothers, before “Cars” by Gary Numan. These days, my phone just rings. Ring ring, ring ring—and that’s it. But what, if anything, does this say about me? At a job interview, for example, had the prospective employee forgotten to silence their phone and quite suddenly it blurted out the theme to The Muppets, what impression would that give? Would the interviewer even be aware that they were impressionable to such a thing? Would that impression be different were the phone to play Beethoven’s Ninth?