Cellphone Psychology: You Are Your Ring Tone

More sad news on the technology front: That trusty euphemism, “you are your car,” has been eclipsed by a new window to the soul, the cellphone ring tone. Although this may offer temporary (and illusory) guilt relief to those who suspect that their Hummers are a sign of moral deficiency, this new cultural taste barometer isn’t much rosier.

If we are indeed our ring tones (as many of us seem to want desperately to be), then apparently most of us are not only hard of hearing but also extremely annoying. What else could explain the obstreperous and often discordant sounds emitting from people’s pants and purses? What else accounts for the fact that global revenue for ring tone purchases last year exceeded $3 billion?

The ring tone craze comes from the same irritating human impulse to assert our uniqueness that engenders personalized license plates, check designs featuring dolphins and unicorns and any number of other customized expressions of individual flair. In some cases (such as ozone-raping Escalades whose plates read “LuvYoga”) these expressions are merely embarrassing and painfully self-contradictory.

But the cellphone ring tone is setting a new standard in narcissistic raucousness. Now that the simple, land line-style ring and the formerly ubiquitous 13-note Nokia theme are about as fashionable as the Ford Taurus, people are engaged in a round-the-clock game of one-upmanship. If my neighbor’s phone blares out the theme from “Aida,” how can I possibly resist the urge to drown him out with a polyphonic file of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (the dance mix, naturally)? Of course, this would require going into my house and calling myself, because few people have my cellphone number, but it would be worth it just to see him cower in envy.

Lest this sound like a frivolous rant of the “I sure am sick of Tom Cruise” variety, I must point out that ring tones have been big news lately. Last month it was reported that a ring tone called “Crazy Frog Axel F” made it to No. 1 on the British music charts, beating out the Oasis song “Lyla” in an upset worthy of a California gubernatorial race.

And in the Philippines, phones are ringing with what is believed to be the wiretapped voice of President Gloria Arroyo -- snippets of a conversation that allegedly prove her complicity in voter fraud. The two-word mega-hit, which repeats the phrase “Hello, Garci” three times (catchy, huh?), refers to a conversation between the president and senior election official Virgilio Garcillano.

Government officials say the phone call was taped illegally and then doctored, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of people from downloading it and even (I swear) turning it into a horn for cars and buses. (Let’s hope we don’t adopt a similar technology in this country. We have enough aggression on the freeways without the help of horns that blast phrases like “spreading freedom throughout the world.”)

According to Billboard magazine, which since October has been ranking the most popular ring tones along with hit records and singles, the most frequently downloaded ring tone this week is “Just A Lil’ Bit” by rap artist 50 Cent. This is followed closely by “Wait (The Whisper Song)” by the Ying Yang Twins. As someone who once spent three hours trying unsuccessfully to download a monophonic version of “You’re So Vain” (I saw this as hilarious and very “meta”) onto a phone into which I have yet to figure out how to program my friends’ numbers, these options are about as relevant to my existence as the contents of Kim Jong Il’s wine cellar.

If cellphones themselves are not public nuisances enough, conspicuous ring tones represent the final frontier in telecommunicative noise pollution. I can’t help but notice that there’s a direct correlation between the newness and hotness (and often awfulness) of the ring tone and the volume at which its user sets it.

It’s not the simple chimes and beeps that charge their way into our eardrums like air raid sirens emitting from Fendi bags. No, the real offenders are tones like “Crazy Frog Axel F” and the Super Mario Brothers theme and, as evidenced by the preferences of the construction crew working next to my house for the last year, a particular muffled cacophony I’m told is called “La Tortura.” You can say that again.

Noise aside, what really irks me about these ring tones is the same thing that irks me about so many of the needless consumer items that purport to be vehicles of self-expression. Like personalized license plates and unicorn checks, they do more to strip away our individuality than to showcase it. Personalities have a way of sagging under the weight of strenuous efforts to show them off. And judging by the vast majority of one-sided cellphone conversations I’ve overheard, most of us can’t afford to lose anything more in the personality department.

In other words, it really doesn’t matter that I didn’t manage to download “You’re So Vain.” What my ring tone can’t say for me, my conversations will.