More on the "geek humor" thing.

[prog]

OK, look:

Your Super Mario ringtone is stupid because it's you waving your default cultural nerdier-than-thou penis around for everyone to admire.

My monster-encounter-music-from-Dragon-Warrior ringtone is way better not just because it is significantly more obscure, but it actually makes sense in the context of an incoming phone call. It is a reasonable attempt at cleverness that makes me smile once in a while, versus me standing up and shouting HEY GUYS I LIKE THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS AND PAC-MAN every time someone calls me. Which yours is.

Maybe what I really have a problem with is the overuse of empty tribal markers with no attempt to get under them. Mm.

Comments

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

hey, don't nick the name of my mix tape as an insult!

You have to admit

[prog.livejournal.com]

That was a totally awesome stealth troll.

[popecrunch.livejournal.com]

My ringtone is a snippet of a Deep Forest / Peter Gabriel cover of a Macedonian folk song. I'm not sure what that says about me.

[katre50.livejournal.com]

My ringtone is the one sound on the Treo that actually sounds like a ringing phone and not chirping insects in a rainforest playing a mandolin.

Which means every other Treo owner uses it, too. Anytime someone near me with a Treo gets a call I start checking my pocket.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm with you! A mechanical bell is what phone ringers are supposed to sound like!

(Granted, it makes about as much sense as the 110 Baud teletype noise we hear whenever a computer screen on TV updates, or the 1960's electromechanical pinball noises always dubbed over a visual of somebody playing a current pin, but it's hard to unprogram cultural norms.)

[prog.livejournal.com]

The standard foley for "someone is playing a video game" is still a sample of either Donkey Kong or Pac-man playing on an Atari 2600, circa 1982. I most recently recall hearing it dubbed over a visual of a boy playing something on a (thoroughly modern) Game Boy Advance on an episode of "Lost". Excellent.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew what my ringtone -was-. I know it must be part of some popular (or semi-popular) song, because it just has that sound to it. I picked it because it was the least offensive of the pre-installed tones. And I thought even I would get tired of the rooster crowing ringtone, nifty as it was to play a couple times.

What I really want is a RINGtone. You know, like a phone ringing? Or chimes, or a subdued trilling. Why is that so hard to get?

I like the idea of ominous music playing as a ringtone, though. Yes. That's appropriate.

And "empty tribal markers" - hmm. I think that maybe expresses something I find intolerable about the so-called geek crowd, but haven't been able to fully figure out.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

My old roommate worked at MIT network operations, and he had the campus police programmed to ring in as the "Dragnet" theme. Baaaam-ba-ba-BAH! There's trouble! Perfect.

His girlfriend, though, rang in with "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", which I found more than a little cloying...

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

There's a running gag in the Genshiken manga series (about a bunch of Japanese geeks) regarding the characters recognizing each other's ringtones - the more obscure the anime series they're drawn from, the better. One character "wins" by having a song from a band that only existed in one movie or something.

My ringtone is Nokia's "Nostalgia.mp3" which actually does sound like a ringing phone.

[misuba.livejournal.com]

I must now confess to having investigated sources of MP3s from the video game Strider for ringtone purposes. I don't even remember the music from Strider, I just remember thinking it was good. The Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion music is completely burned into my cochlea, but there are depths of referential twee to which I shall not sink.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

My current default ringtone is a few opening bars from the live version of Steely Dan's "Peg".

But... I dunno, now I want a ringtone that consists of you screaming "HEY GUYS I LIKE THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS AND PAC-MAN". :)