5 Ear-Splitting Sounds of the Past Gen Z Will Never Have to Endure
We by no means live in a quiet world. We’re constantly interrupted by boops and beeps, most unfortunately with tasks attached to them. Still, most manufacturers and tech companies have now at least figured out how to make those noises not actively grating. For millennials, there was a time when it seemed like any piece of technology was required to shriek like a dying vulture in order to serve its purpose.
Here are five sounds Gen Z should feel lucky that they’re spared from…
Dial-Up Modems
Ah, the classic. If you’re younger, and you’ve ever snuck onto the internet after your bedtime, just know that you’re unknowingly benefitting from the beautiful silence of high-speed internet. In the days of 56k dial-up, if you wanted to go online to check the score of a game or send a singular e-mail, you had to agree to endure what felt like an endless series of robotic shrieks. If you’d had to sacrifice a live chicken every time you wanted to go online, I think it would have been more peaceful.
I’ve never been able to understand why people find white noise soothing. Maybe it’s because, to me, white noise is the unexpected and horrible sound that would wash over me if I was unlucky enough to flip past a channel that didn’t exist on my parents’ television. There was no kind message that said something like, “Sorry, we’re having trouble playing that content!” Go to a forbidden channel and your TV would start screaming at you in its frightening, fuzzy sort of language, while blasting your eyeballs with static.
Emergency Alert System
Even if you were on a proper channel, enjoying perfectly normal television, you still weren’t out of the woods. If it was deemed time, usually late at night when you were trying to watch something on lower volume anyways, your television would suddenly become a converted air-raid siren. “THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM,” the screen would read, and the noises blasting out of your TV’s speakers certainly implied the same.
Personally, even though it said it was only a test, it usually was actually an emergency because my mom was about to be furious that I was still awake watching Comedy Central late at night.
Phone Ringing
With everybody but Boomers keeping their phones on perma-silent, calls and messages are received via subtle vibrations. We have the entire world’s catalog of music to choose from for a ringtone, and still people prefer not to hear it. Be thankful that we’ve moved on from the original sound of a ringing telephone, which sounded more or less like a fire alarm with a bit of rhythm. Back then, if you decided to let a call go to voicemail, you were in for about 10 seconds of pain for that privilege.
‘Butterfly’ by Crazy Town
I’m telling you, this was inescapable. It was the nonconsensual soundtrack of an entire generation.
