Ringtones
Cidu Bill on Jul 7th 2010
Choosing my new phone’s ringtones for family and friends — and admittedly I put a lot more thought into these choices than I probably should — it occurred to me that this can be a remarkably passive-aggressive operation: after all, the person calling you is the one person who will probably never know what ringtone you chose for him.
Not that I would ever assign an insulting ringtone to anybody, but how easy would it be to have your brother-in-law’s phone calls accompanied by Beck’s “Loser”? And come on, who doesn’t know somebody they’d like to associate with Pink’s “Stupid Girls”?
And then there’s Lily Allen’s ever-popular “F*** you, f*** you very, very much.”
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones | 26 responses so far
Kate C Jul 7th 2010 at 11:48 am 1
My mom’s ring tone for me is “La Cucaracha,” which is just baffling.
Becky Jul 7th 2010 at 12:27 pm 2
Kate, maybe she has the utmost confidence that you’d survive a nuclear holocaust…
My family/friends tend to show off the ringtones they pick for people. For example, my sister has the Metal Gear Solid codec tone for my husband and was so proud of finding it that she showed it to him immediately…
DavidF Jul 7th 2010 at 12:30 pm 3
Have you considered Mr. Waturi from Joe vs. the Volcano?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLDMqPBeKQ
Proco Jul 7th 2010 at 12:53 pm 4
I’ve been using the refrain from “Love Her Madly” by The Doors for my soon-to-be-ex-wife.
Sili Jul 7th 2010 at 01:22 pm 5
Mine just buzzes.
CIDU Bill Jul 7th 2010 at 01:57 pm 6
My personal favoirite ringtone is the one I chose for my younger son, who’s a graphic artist and also a member of his school’s strings orchestra: Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
My brother, whose book Creepiosity just came out, gets the chorus from “Boris the Spider”: “creepy crawly, creepy crawly…”
Keera Jul 7th 2010 at 02:16 pm 7
My ringtone is whatever I a) can identify as my phone ringing because I usually think it’s somebody else’s phone (so my Nokia quickly got a new ringtone while my Sony Ericsson has its default) and b) doesn’t annoy me. Haven’t bothered to assign separate ring tones to different callers because I just don’t get that many calls. On my old Nokia I had CCR’s “Down on the Corner”. I miss that.
Kelps Jul 7th 2010 at 02:19 pm 8
I have a friend who programed Fat Bottom Girls for his wife’s calls, without her knowledge.
Har, har… until one day he left for work, accidentally forgetting his phone on the kitchen counter. She was at home, didn’t know he forgot his phone and called his cell.
Oops.
Cidu Bill Jul 7th 2010 at 02:25 pm 9
I mostly have separate ringtones for parental reasons: If one of my kids is in the wind somewhere, and I’m driving, I’ll pull over somewhere to take the call. If it’s my neighbor calling to chat, it can wait.
Elyrest Jul 7th 2010 at 02:45 pm 10
My phone doesn’t do separate ring tones, but I doubt I would use it even if it did. Like Keera I don’t get all that many calls to make a difference and if I did have different ones I would get confused. For a while I had Carol King’s “I Fell the Earth Move”, but I finally got rid of it because it always seemed to scare me (and others) when my phone rang. I was also starting to hate a song that I previously loved so that cinched it.
Kevin Madden Jul 7th 2010 at 02:56 pm 11
My friend and I used to have this one mutual friend who we liked OK, but he could be really annoying sometimes. We each set his ringtone as this loud annoying warning siren.
Arvy Jul 7th 2010 at 03:42 pm 12
You hit the nail on the head with the passive aggressive thing.
The ringtone when my mother calls is “Mother” by the Police.
Well the telephone is ringing,
Is that my mother on the phone?
Telephone is ringing,
Is that my mother on the phone?
The telephone is screaming,
Won’t she leave me alone?
The telephone is ringing,
Is that my mother on the phone?
It cracks the other members of my family up.
Cidu Bill Jul 7th 2010 at 04:04 pm 13
The ringtone I have for my mother probably qualifies for an Obscurity Award: a clip from the song “Momma, Momma, Momma” from the Broadway play “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”
But Arvy definitely wins the Passive-Aggressive Award
Karen Jul 7th 2010 at 04:21 pm 14
My husband asked me to assign him “A British Tar” sung by Jean-Luc Picard (as played by Patrick Stewart) for his ringtone. So whenever he calls I hear, “Ahem. A British tar is a stalwart soul/As free as a mountain bird…” Which is kind of baffling since he is not British. But he does love to sail.
His ringtone for me is, I think the Cylon beat from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. So apparently he thinks I am a Cylon. Heh.
Minor Annoyance Jul 7th 2010 at 04:38 pm 15
I once thought it would be clever to have a whoopee cushion ringtone. People would give you some space as you answered it.
buzz Jul 7th 2010 at 04:50 pm 16
Denis Leary’s “I’m An A[ir]hole”
Dan V Jul 7th 2010 at 04:59 pm 17
My phone just rings - that way I can hear it across the room. But one of my co-workers has Dino’s bark (from the Flintstones - Ab-bab-bab-bab-bab) as his wife’s ringtone. Passive-aggressive? Maybe, but it always gets a laugh.
Tim Jul 7th 2010 at 06:49 pm 18
Only my boss and my daughter have a separate ringtone on my phone right now. The boss is the complete “Harvey the Wonder Hamster” by Weird Al, only because it was the only music clip I had that was short enough to be a ringtone. Really low on the priority list. My daughter, Sam, has a clip from Looney Tunes: “‘Morning, Sam. Oh, good morning, Ralph.”
Keera Jul 8th 2010 at 12:33 am 19
Minor A (heh) @15, a co-worker has the sound of a shaver as his ringtone, and has baffled and amused many when pulling out his ringing cell phone and then pretending to shave.
No Hombre Jul 8th 2010 at 01:09 am 20
Dismayed to learn that my sister assigned same ringtone to me and her daughter.
Have requested “Mars: The Bringer of War”
She will answer sooner.
Gilgamesh Jul 8th 2010 at 06:26 am 21
My phone uses rings (remember the noise the phones that sat on your desk and were tethered by a cord made?). I found some open source MP3s of sixteen different styles of ring sound and massaged them with the Audacity program before loading them on the phone.
I really dislike music as ring tones because the volume most set their phones at, plus small tinny speakers, equate to a cringe worthy fuzzed out mess making me think I would rather be eating live frogs.
Powers Jul 8th 2010 at 08:49 am 22
I also dislike music as ring tones. But then, I only turn on the cell a couple of times a week.
pepperjackcandy Jul 8th 2010 at 02:02 pm 23
So far, I’ve only been able to find a way to set separate ringtones for people in my contacts list and people not in my contacts list, not for specific callers.
But it helps, because my instant reactions are usually, “That’s someone I know; I should probably see who it is,” and “I don’t know who that is; I can let it go to voice mail.”
Molly J Jul 8th 2010 at 03:12 pm 24
When I get a text, it is almost always from one of my kids. My text tone is Charlie Brown’s teacher (wah-wah-WAH-WAH-wah…) which is kind of perverse. Now it’s not how the kids hear grownups, it’s how a grownup hears her kids.
The Bad Seed Jul 8th 2010 at 09:48 pm 25
Arvy #12 - Love it, may steal it! Right now Mom gets Ernestine saying, “One ringy dingy… TWO ringy dingy…” because she loves Lily Tomlin.
One of my less-trustworthy friends gets Creep by Radiohead: “…I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo…” but he doesn’t know that. My company’s Health & Safety Nazi gets air raid sirens with a very loud and official-sounding voiceover shouting, “Warning! Warning! It’s the wife! It’s THE WIFE!” My boss gets a whole verse of, “You’re mean one Mr Grinch, you really are a heel. You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an eel. Mr Grinch, you’re a bad banana with a greasy black peel”. which brings me and everyone else who works with him endless delight.
George P Jul 8th 2010 at 10:54 pm 26
I use my phone a lot, but it’s mostly for work, and my ring tone is a ’50s-’60s mechanical phone. I found the sound online and tweaked it into a ring tone. I also have a ’30s mechanical tone, but it’s too tinny.