People change. Sometimes we change for the better—we learn, we mature, we grow. But sometimes we lose sight of ourselves and the things we once loved, and sadly, the last 18 years seem to have erased a core component of the person you used to be: The possibilities for ringtone customization today would have blown your mind in 2005 but you just use the default vibrate.
Whoever you are now, you’re not the cell phone user we knew back then.
There was a time when a chirpy, 30-second ringtone of Linkin Park’s “Breaking the Habit” seemed to you the very pinnacle of human joys; when considering which $1.99 ringtone to spend your hard-earned allowance on felt as weighty a question of individual expression as could be asked. But were we to dial your cell phone number today, it would be no “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” or “Mr. Brightside” that plays—no, only a dismal murmur of tuneless buzzing would announce the incoming call. We almost wish we could blame this sad state of affairs on some distant abstraction like copyright law or corporate cost-cutting measures, but the awful truth is that you yourself are architect of the drab and lusterless world you inhabit. Your childhood dream of limitless ringtone possibilities has become magnificent reality, and you reject these blessings for the hollow silence of a life meekly endured on vibrate mode.
Imagine yourself back in 2005 finding a phone whose ringtone library was the very sum of musical creation, not just synthy approximations but the genuine articles from reggae to new wave to classical. Imagine learning that every contact could have their own unique ringtone: Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” for you best friend, The Strokes’ “Reptilia” for your dad, Daft Punk’s “Digital Love” for your special someone. Imagine your elation that the phone could even play a silly R2-D2 noise or the Metal Gear Solid codec sound for every incoming text message, and all of this for free with just the slightest effort! You’d have wept for joy. Well, such a miraculous phone sits at your side this very minute, but its possibilities are wasted on the tedious, zestless person you’ve become. You shrink away from any public celebration of your tastes and think of the prospect of Hoobastank suddenly blaring from your pocket on a crowded bus with shame instead of rapturous delight. And you abandon all this for what? Vibrate? The fucking DEFAULT vibrate?
It’s your gutless cowardice that should shame you, not the custom ringtones!
Sometimes, we dream of you coming to your senses and diving headlong into your phone’s ringtone settings with all the ecstatic awe you’d have felt in 2005, transforming the insectoid chittering of its default vibrations into a lush symphony of mid-aughts bangers as though you had lifted a curse. But alas, this will never be—you may wear the same face, you may even have the same phone number, but the person who once let calls ring so they could hear as much of “Take Me Out” as possible is dead. You slit their throat with a flick of your phone’s ringer switch to trade glorious music for the silence of a tomb.
It’s really too bad that things wound up the way they did. This age of infinite phone customization and constant robocalls would have been your paradise in 2005, but looking at you today, we see only a broken old fool languishing in a ringtoneless hell.
