🆕 Never Post! Ringtones and Customization: Summer Yapfest 2025

An episode-long staff round-table about device customization with special guest Meghal Janardan. 

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Hello friends. And welcome to the second annual Never Post. Good vibes, chill times, cool breeze, tight squeeze. Now you've got the shiveries. Summer break beach episode.

That's either wind or or waves.

Yeah. Hans, yours was scary a little bit.

Ominous beach.

That's a summer feels

And this year, it's Murder Beach. That's right. All the important arcs are on hold, and we're just here to flirt. Our usual host, Mike Ragnetta, is out on vacation. So what are we to do while out from under his watchful eye?

But kick back, crack some cold ones, and melt your icy hearts with a cool island song. That song, of course, is us yapping. Joining us in order, descending of how much they are a famed Brooklyn ceramicist are friend of the show, Meghal Janardan, reprising your role as the summer chatter.

Thank you. Thank you.

Georgia Hampton, who just by proximity to Meagle during their formative years must have at least touched famed ceramics.

That's that's so true, actually. I did have to go through all of that. So fine. I was I was gonna be so surprised by how we did that.

Hans Buto, who I believe at least owns a bowl.

Just cut my hands, hold it up to my face. He's pouring

So no.

Be wrong.

Alright.

And what about you, Jason? Where do you

fit?

I have never been in a room with a working kiln.

So I'm Have you ever been a ghost with someone who is in a room? Like

I said, we're just here to flirt. So last year, we did a deeply popular summer chat called the Sound Files of Summer where Magle came in and took us through a journey of our sound libraries throughout the years. This year, Magle has another thing she wants to talk about that'll bring us back through the arc of nostalgia back to this moment. But first, I wanna check-in on our music listening tendencies. Because like, we talked a lot about how we ingest music last year, how we put in our libraries, how we think about it, how and where we listen to it.

And then tons of people wrote in across like the next six mailbags.

Still right. They're still writing in.

Yeah. They're still writing about this. So we've had a lot of time to think about what we're doing. And I have certainly changed a lot of my behavior. Has anyone else changed the way they're listening to music in the intervening year?

No. Yes. Oh. We have a shameful no and an excited yes. Let's start with the yes.

Meagle, what are you doing differently?

I am listening to music.

We we love that. We do it. Okay.

So folks might remember that last year, Meagle, you you revealed that you just haven't been listening to music much.

Yeah. I think after that conversation, I was like, I need to actively try and get back into listening to music. And unfortunately, using Spotify, probably we'll try and switch off out of that soon. That CEO is doing some interesting stuff. But I just started to if I found something that I was like, oh, that sounds nice.

Right then and there, save it to a Spotify playlist. And then in the mornings, I'll be like, oh, I could put a podcast on but then at the same time, or I could listen to music. So slowly getting back into listening to music.

Is it feeling good or like still feeling like a like a an aspiration, like a chore? You're like, I should get back into this habit or are you like able to enjoy it again?

I think I'm able to enjoy it because I'm not putting pressure on myself to like know all the artists or like Yeah. I have to listen to music today or something like that. I'm it's just very casual and it feels like a little bit back when I was, like, 13 and can find some artists that I like.

That's amazing. I'm so happy that's happening. Yeah. Georgia, you have changed nothing. You refuse to reflect.

Okay. Listen. I I really enjoy the way I listen to music, like, to be honest with you, which is that I am very voracious in finding music from a variety of sources and immediately putting into a playlist and making new playlists that are sort of thematic Right. To vibes that I start hearing. And what I can say, I guess, if I've I don't know if this is really changing anything, but I've just I've made many more playlists.

So you're doubling down.

I'm I'm tripling down. I'm unstoppable.

Hans?

Yeah. I've changed a couple of things, actually. I have reinvigorated a thing that I did a few years ago. I had a playlist, Georgia, you'd be proud of me, a playlist called what others are listening to or is more catchy than that. But, basically, I would go to people and I would say, what's the last thing you pressed play on?

You sought out and pressed play on. And I've started to do that again. I did that with Jason and Mike recently. Said I need something new. Tell me play.

And, like, what what I loved about it was they both responded within thirty seconds with a link to something, which tells me that they weren't, like, trying to tell me a story about what they listened to, but they were actually legitimately like, oh, what was it? This is it. And, it was delightful. I also found and have been really enjoying community radio recently.

Good human mediated curation.

And you just pop in at random times a day when it's like somebody just who's passionate about their music volunteering to be on the radio to play their favorite hits that they just need you to hear.

Mhmm.

There's something so satisfying about the wild stuff that people put out there.

Yeah. Yeah. My biggest change in behavior, which I will not shut up about, is that I am trying to only listen to Bandcamp right now. And if I really have a hankering to hear a record and I cannot get on Bandcamp, I will still open Spotify so I can hear the thing I need to hear. But anything like explorative or curated or if I'm just feeling I wanna listen to some music and I don't know what, I go to Bandcamp and I press play on whatever they have and I let the ride take me.

I listen to a record until I am not having fun anymore, and then I put a new record on, and I'm having a great time. The other people who live in my house are having a less fun time.

Jason, so when you do this

Yes.

Just go to bandcamp.com. Yeah. The thing that you that that is just below the banner is selling right now, and it's an ongoing ticker of the latest things that have people have bought on Bandcamp. Wild. And you just close your eyes and you just click.

Oh. It is it's like music roulette and it's super weird. Really fun.

I think it's important to listen to things that are kind of mediocre. Just to do it. Just to sit with something different than the world's accumulated greatest hits or biggest blunders. That's right. And just sit with some things that are fine and form an opinion about it, and then maybe like gain some stamina of exposure and then move on.

And with Bandcamp, you can get that. You're like, I'm not even sure if this is good or not. I'm not even sure who this is.

Yeah.

Then after a while, I'll be like, I'm not even sure if I dislike or like this, and then move on with your life. And think those are all really important aesthetic feelings to cultivate.

I have one last thing to offer since I'm the only person who seems to not have had some sort of existential change. One thing

Yeah.

That I will plug here is a website called Radio Garden. It's radio.garden, and it connects you to radio stations around the world.

Oh, nice.

Like independent stations, so you'll be getting regional music. It's amazing. It's so cool. I recommend it for everybody.

That reminds me, my mom, I don't even know if she still does this or uses it. She had this app where it was a map of the world and you could click into the map and it'll take you to that radio station. So she loved it because she would click around in India and so she could listen to the radio in India and it was very nostalgic for her.

That's cool.

Well, that's what we learned last summer that changed three quarters of our lives in many ways. Okay. This summer, we're gonna look at a different behavior that has evolved over time. Meagle, what do you have for us?

Well, okay. So today, I wanted to talk about ringtones because I'm in the process of changing all of the sounds that are on my phone. And I was like, wait, ringtones used to be such a

Mhmm.

It was like picking out your favorite outfit on your first day of school.

Meaghel, I have an initial question for you. What sounds does your phone make and what sounds do you need your phone to make at this point?

Well, that's that's the thing. I used to have my text messages on vibrate. Yeah. And Yeah. It just vibrates all the time.

And I was like, I'm trying to not be texting 247. I'm trying to put most things on silent.

Oh, interesting. Wait. But then so how does this how does the ringtone, the music come in, the sound come in?

Well, before before I had like a smartphone and everyone had a smartphone, I used to have a ringtone. Yeah. And I think most people used to have ringtones. And now I actually have my ringer on, but my so like if I get a call, it should make a sound, but all my texts are muted. Mhmm.

Because most of my spam messages are now texts. They're not phone calls.

That's true. Lucky you.

Oh, yeah. To me, it's like if something really urgent is happening, someone will call me. So I'm gonna have that, like, my ringer on, but, like, no one's gonna text me something urgent, so I have that silent.

So your phone is now you've taken off the vibrate. So when it texts, it no longer vibrates.

I also don't have any banner things.

You don't have any woah. So you're living in a world where do you have the notifications that it tells you how many unread you have?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So you have to actively go if you're like, oh, it's message time. You pick up your phone, you look at how many unread there are, then you open the app and go through it, rather than being notified when something happens.

Yes.

And then calls, you have your Vibrate on or don't have it on, but you have your you have your speaker up and you have think your I

have

ringtone on. Ringtone and the Vibrate on for calls because sometimes I can't hear it if it's like in my pocket, but I can feel it. Yeah. Or like in my purse

or something. Wait. So what's your ringtone?

For right now, it's just the default ringtone. But I've been thinking about, should I like make it a song? Yes. Also, I don't even know how to do that. I have to like figure out how to do that on my iPhone.

Do those websites even exist anymore?

Yeah. This is what I wanna pick out a little bit. At some point, I stopped customizing anything on my phone, and then on my laptop. And these were like activities that used to take me. Yeah.

I considered thought to do. I have a friend who is 15 and whose favorite band is Limp Bizkit. Okay. Who loves Jackass. Woah.

And her phone is all pictures of these boys and like different colors and different folder structures and like Wow. There's like widgets involved in all this. And it blows my mind because I had just largely considered this to be a dead activity because nobody I know spends the time to customize their phone at all. And perhaps it is just true that teenagers are still doing this, and that it's not just that phones are less optimized or less marketed for customization and just that we don't love Limp Bizkit as much as we should.

I found that like younger people, like in younger generations, they customize their phone with how it looks like like having whatever photos and things.

Like oversized cases like the phone cases, the things with the pop that used to be the pop sock that Mike still uses and loves and like bless him.

His heart.

But less so much customizing the sounds. Like, that's what I'm really like, oh, what happened to that? Or are we still doing it?

Well, I'd be curious to know from everyone here, and I don't know if I have an answer to this. Do you remember the last ringtone that you like chose for yourself? I do. Okay. What was it?

It was, I think, the first and only ringtone that I had chosen. I did is it 19 o one by Phoenix?

Sing for us. Sing it for us.

It's like a ding. I can't even

like It's just like electronic music. But then like but I

was like, oh, this is perfect because it sounds like a ringtone. But to my horror, using that as my alarm when I wake up in the morning in college made me hate the song. It triggered me so much that then I quickly took it off.

Yeah. I did the exact same thing with an alarm where I was like, oh, let's have some fun. I think I

have something different.

And I had a song that was by the band Broken Bells. Oh my gosh. And within, I don't know, maybe a week of having that as my alarm, I was like, oh, absolutely not. I'm I'm turning into the Joker. I hate this song so much, and I I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it.

I'd love to remember, if you all could help me remember, what it used to be like for ringtones. Because we're talking like before smartphones, right? So like pre-two thousand and eight, we're talking like early 2000s, as soon as you got like, I remember the Nokia phones had them, Like the Razer, those flippy ones, and everything. Yeah. And so what was the because I'm gonna confess something.

I have never bought, downloaded, or used an ex a nonstandard ringtone or sound notification. Mhmm. I didn't even know how to do it. So help me understand what used to happen.

Yeah. So Yeah. In my recollection, you would either go to a site that had these or go to a site that would help you make them with your existing m p three.

Yeah. Mhmm.

They would make you a ringtone in whatever the file format you need to make ringtones out of. And your little Nokia would know how to connect to that site such that it became an option for you to use that as the ringtone. And I'm sure it was like just bit crushed to death Oh, during that process.

And those tiny little speakers? Yeah.

Yes. Between the speakers and the remaining size of the file after all that happened. Yeah. I'm sure it was barely the song. And yet, that did not deter me from trying to influence the world to think about me in some particular way via how my phone ring.

Mhmm. And Hans, did not care about this.

I did not care about this. Not only that, it felt a little sketchy. Sketchy.

Sketchy.

Well, because it felt like there were so many of the websites have been like ringtones felt like these pop up because that was the world of pop ups.

It's true.

And it felt like so many of them were coming from this like morass of questionable websites that I just didn't know how to distinguish good from bad, so I just avoided all

of them.

And also that was a like, it never sounded good. It took something you loved and made it sound terrible. It made everyone hate it. I kind of like the idea that you could assign different ringtones to different people so you would know who was calling. That I thought that was kinda cool.

Oh,

yeah. Yeah.

But otherwise, it never held in. I've had my phone on silent since my first, what, Nokia or whatever Wow. Twenty years ago. I've never had it I've never had the ringer on.

Wow. Wow.

How How do you know anything? How do

you know where and when?

Well, I feel like I would be remiss at least not to mention the kind of social clout. Yeah. There was at least at Meigle and I's age bracket, where like, I remember very vividly the kind of faux coy like, oh, that kind of thing if someone had their phone and had like programmed it to have my humps be their ringtone. Right. And then, you know, they'd like have their friend call and be like, oh, hello.

Like, it was it was such a flex to be like, yeah, this song that's about sex, something I've just learned about. I went to an all girls middle school. There was a lot of stopwatch. That's very funny. But it really had this kind of cache.

This like cultural, like, in the know what kind of song you chose was either, yeah, like, yeah, I'm into some freaky stuff or like, I'm an emo kid and I know about this like, cool band.

Here's a song you'll never heard.

I wonder, Jason, I we're a little bit more of the same age here generationally. And I think it's enough of a skew we're actually all not that far apart.

I was just sitting here and nodding. I was like, yeah, temperature. I also remember this. Go on old man. I love my humps.

We're not but this is interesting because we're we're not that far in age. But I think, like, this is a really critical, like, if you were in sixth or seventh grade versus if you were in high school

or college. Yeah. I know some people find this annoying. But I do really believe that, like, the span of ages we were all born in, the minor differences between individual years kind of ended up mattering because it meant that we all got the Internet at a different age and an iPhone at a different age and things like that. So that's span of like the mid eighties.

It really matters what year.

Yeah. So since Jason, you and I are a little closer. Yeah. My Yeah. Hearing Georgia and Megal share that, like, very specific view of it makes sense to me.

The only thing I knew ringtones was as the butt of a joke when in in popular culture, it was always a very serious moment, and then somebody's phone, this tiny little my humps would start playing and be

like, oh my god. My god.

And it would like ruin the moment for comedic effect. And that was always like, oh my god, that person like can't read the room or like, it was always this wrong thing that was juxtaposed in. That was my only way of hearing them or seeing them or experiencing them in

the So you found that as your experience in real life, not like what you were watching on TV, like that a ringtone was used for comedic relief or in a like an inappropriate, you know, interjection?

I come from a very fundamental and maybe discordant attitude that you should not take up any of the public space sonically.

Interesting.

The public space is public, and that is in that is in interference. So people who listen to things on their phone, just watch videos on their phone, people who have loud conversations, and you only hear one side of it, All of that sort of stuff where people are really dominating the oral soundscape. It might be the Midwesterner in me. It might be, you know, any number of other things, but there's other Midwesterners on this call who don't feel this way.

I was gonna say.

It might just be a me thing, but you don't take up that space. And a phone is in such an intrusion because they're often harsh, loud, sudden, unexpected, and sound bad.

But isn't like a ringtone trying to make that intrusion a little nicer? Like, would you rather the default bleep bloops cut into your life? Or

No. I would rather have it on vibrate.

But you felt this way even when sort of phones were being in cell phones were being introduced, and ringtones and customized ringtones. Like you felt this back then. I did. That's wild to me. God.

Because like, for me, it's like, I understand like, yeah, like if I'm at the mall with my mom, like I don't want my ringtone to go off. But this was like, okay, Friday night I finally got to have a sleepover at another friend's house. I'm hoping my mom calls me so my ringtone will play.

Wow.

That's what like type of social. I'm at my like boy and girl party. I hope someone calls me so my ringtone or something. Or even for me at the time, I didn't have a customized ring. I don't think I I don't remember having one, but even just to be like, I got a notification on my phone of something.

So I can physically take it, flip it open, and respond.

Yes. It was very much a performance of Yeah. People wanting to talk to you, of notifications. Yeah. And there is this moment that I don't know when it was, maybe the invention of the iPhone, where the amount of notifications you got became this moot point where it's like, listen, we're all getting a bunch of notifications and we all hate them.

Right. That's interesting because when I was putting all this effort into making ringtones, I bet my phone rang once every month.

Right. Yeah. Like, who's calling me? Nobody.

Like like, when it rang and it's like my mom being like, you gotta come home. I was like, oh, shit. Like, someone's phone is ringing. And I'm like, oh god. Something bad is Like, I gotta go home or whatever.

Like, people just didn't call the fucking chat because it like took minutes, you know, paid minutes off of the plan. That's why. Yeah. And we were like less conditioned to have fun on the phone because there was nothing else to do other than talk on it. So we were like having fun in person as the priority.

So all that work for nary a ring.

And spam calls were going to landlines, like they weren't True.

Selling them.

That's true.

That's That's so true.

I remember, like, most of when I would hear the ringtones that I had put together was just in like sharing them with people. Like I remember getting together with people and being like, check out all these and you do like try to make really funny ones or like really tight clips of stuff and be like, yeah, these are funny. And then you'd never hear them again.

We would also at sleep I do remember this at sleepovers doing prank calls on like classmates was a thing. But then in that, making sure that you had a voicemail set up that was like custom.

Oh my god. Yes. So this like like

your voicemail response like once you bring to Yeah.

Making And sure that it was your voice or like you can make a funny one. It's almost kind of like how people use voice notes on Hinge. Like people would do this as your Flashbacks. That's true. Warp So

does everybody know what their answering machine as it were, their Like voice mail right

I now was gonna say.

Yeah. Right now.

I just removed mine completely because

I It just says, you've reached number number number number number.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's unavailable. Like, I had one that really just was this can just like, hello, it's Georgia. Like, leave a message. And then genuinely, I think I had this this thought where I was like, I think this has played out.

I think I don't think I I want to do this. Fascinating. But like why? I don't know. I don't

know

why A I did Hansian statement. I don't want me to be there.

It is a Hansian statement. Except Hans is gonna make the opposite statement and be like, but like what if somebody like, the people who are the only people who actually hear the message, I feel like, are the robots who don't actually hear it.

Mhmm.

And then somebody who needs to get ahold of me for a professional reason.

Oh, that's a

point, honestly.

Look at this guy.

But like, not really because I almost never get calls. Like That's what I'm saying. An actual call anymore. So like, I don't made it maybe ten, fifteen years ago and I don't I genuinely don't know what mine says. I could not tell you.

Wait. So if you made this ten fifteen years ago, you've just been transferring that as you change your phones?

I must have done. I don't think I've rerecorded. I don't know. I don't remember. I have no idea what it is right now.

Interesting. There would

be no way you would ever encounter it unless think about it

and we go for it.

I'm just gonna call you all the time now.

Hans from fifteen

years When I know you were in public too.

Yes. I thought I mean, it's fine. He won't hear it. It's funny. I I sort of instinctually agree with you, Hans, that like taking up I I think people are very blase about taking up Sonic space in really frustrating ways.

I hate that. I hate people who play video games with the sound on in public. I hate that the default now seems to be if you get a call, throw that shit on speaker. Yeah. I know it's a little bit sweaty to put a phone on your ear and like maybe mildly uncomfortable, but like, there's a 100 people who don't care about any side of this conversation.

And I still like, you know, if a call comes in, I'm in a public place, like, huddle into my jacket and like quietly try to have this call so as not to ruin anyone's time. But given all of that, I do have memories of in college tucking my, like, Nokia into the little front pocket of my pants with the speaker in the butt sticking out and just playing songs I downloaded to my phone while walking around. Woah. Jason.

Woah.

But to be honest about that memory, there was also a conversation happening internally about making sure I wasn't close enough to other people to ruin their day. And so I would take routes that was far enough away from other people to get me where I was going so I could listen to my songs.

Gentle soul.

This is so much work. You're like, imagine you in the woods. Right?

Walking nine miles out of his way.

Shinko jeans covered in mud. Finally, I can listen to

my m p three through my phone speaker.

I can have the worst music experience possible.

Was this because you wanted to listen to music without headphones, or because you wanted to be perceived as someone listening to music with a Nokia sticking out of your pant pocket?

This is deeply uncomfortable territory. Good.

Yes.

I honestly don't know. And I have so much trouble knowing the difference when it comes to music as a part of my personality and as a part of the world that, like, I go to therapy trying to figure out some answers.

Well,

as somebody who, like, performs music in a lot of different ways and who stopped I used to sing songs that I had written throughout high school and stopped after performing them once in college and got a nice response from people and was made so uncomfortable by that that I decided to never sing in front of people again. I have no idea the answer to that question. Wow. And with that, we'll take a break. Bye.

Welcome back. How are you feeling, Jason? Well, I'm feeling great. This is my favorite episode because we talk about things that aren't

me. And

in that effort, the next thing I wanna talk about is, like, hardware customization in general around the phone, not just like the ringtones in the sonic environment. Phone, laptop, other things, thinking back to my 15 year old friend who has figured out how to change every single thing inside that phone. I use the stock background on every Mac book I've gotten for like the past ten years. I don't change my wallpaper. I don't have a screensaver anymore.

I Yeah. Don't change the background on my phone. These are things that I used to, like, laboriously ponder over how, like, I would be interacting with any of my hardware in a way that I wanted to feel more like me, and now I just want it to be, like, frictionless and not feel like anything to some extent. I know this connects a lot to sort of George's piece from last year about platform customization and how that has been taken away from us in a

lot of ways. That's what I was thinking.

Yeah. I'm wondering, sort of what are your relationships with customizing your gear at this point?

You can pry choosing a background out of my cold dead notes. I love doing it. I've had a customized background on my computer for years. It's the same one. It's a painting.

I have different lock screen backgrounds depending on kind of how I'm feeling and I it's also different paintings.

Mhmm. So Georgia, did you get really excited when in the whatever, like a year ago, the release that Apple did? Because you're on an iPhone. Right?

Yeah. I am.

Yeah. When they did the like, you can switch your whole theme and then they have like, yeah, different fonts and they've got different notification Yeah.

You can put little widgets up there. Yep. Like there's oh my god. I I was so excited.

Yeah. So

when do you choose your mood? You wake up and you're like, I'm gonna be a bad girl today.

I'm gonna something's dripping in

the air.

Yeah. And what does that look like on an iPhone?

Oh god. It's nothing exciting. It really will just be I'll find a new image that I love and I will want to create an aesthetic. I I really don't like having an image when you open the phone and all your apps are there. I need it to be blurred because it's just a design flaw.

Like, you can't see any it drives me crazy when people have like photos that are full, like, vivid images and all your apps are there. You can't read anything. Like, it's just to me a very bad design choice. But I have not had a ringtone for a long time. I have my phone on vibrate.

Something for all you interested parties out there, if you don't you know can customize the vibrating pattern.

What?

Of when someone calls you. Yes. I've done it. I've lived it. I love

it. Georgia.

It shows up as a little pad basically on your iPhone and you tap it. So mine is like, and I did that. Like, Wow. I

have formed it.

Yeah. And that's what happens when someone calls me now.

That's fantastic.

So I I'm in the walls. I love this. It's the best thing in the world.

I have a question for you, Georgia.

Yes.

Would you feel comfortable showing us your phone right now on what's on the lock screen?

Absolutely.

That is I can't

really see. Tamara Lempica.

Okay.

It's a painting.

Famed bad girl.

Famed bad girl.

Love her.

Legend. Everyone should look her up. Her work is incredible.

So the question about it for me is like, how much is a lock screen versus a background versus a theme for you or for other people? Because how much is a ringtone for you or for other people?

You mean how much, like, does it signify?

Yeah. Because there's a world where you're like, no. I don't really wanna show you my phone screen. I don't wanna show you, like, even or my lock screen, sure, like other people can see, but my, you can't you can't look at what my

background is. Me not wanna show you? Me not want

to share? No. I I always I I think this is something I'm realizing. We're having therapy in the call today.

This is good now.

Where I do and it's I I'm not judgmental about it. I'm just very curious where if someone, even like a stranger at the bar is like checking their phone and then they put their phone down, I'm like,

what is it?

Like, what do you have there? Because it's I find it very interesting. Yeah. What people choose to be there. I kind of never really have photos.

Like, it's not a photo if I'm dating someone. It's not a photo of my partner. It's not like a photo of my cat. Like, it's always paintings.

That's what I find interesting is that it's not your own personal photos. It is photos that you got online. Yeah. Because I'm the opposite. I only have photos that I've taken and they're only of my pets.

I don't know. Now it's Mabel's time for therapy.

Let's go. Let's go.

Every time I get a new phone, the first photo I take on my phone with my camera has to be of my dog. Yes. And growing up, it was my family dog and now it is my dog, Lava. The first photo, the first click has to be of my dog. Oh.

And then all of my my lock screen and my background has to be of my dogs. And like so my lock screen is of my family dog and then when you go into the background, it's Lava when she was a puppy.

Perfect.

But I particularly how I organize my apps

I gonna I'll say

go into it. I purposely have a photo where she's in the bottom third.

See? Yep.

And I group my apps at the top because

I do.

I also find extremely distracting.

So I just have is the product of art school, Meg.

So Jason, as somebody who refuses to put a background on your computer and everything, what does your lock screen look like?

So I have embraced the photo carousel, like, on lock screen. Like right now it is like a San Francisco hill from a trip I went to San Francisco. Yeah. I put some thought into like, you know, the design such that hopefully they aren't too busy or like there's a picture of my dog Hank where his eyes line up right at the top where the two circular widgets I have for Oh, you. Weather go.

So they fit in his eyes and that's fun for me. And they are exclusively for me. Like this is the I think it's the equivalent of like when you would go into people's offices and they had pictures of their family sitting somewhere facing them at the desk where they sit. Yeah. Right?

It is that.

Yeah. That's a good analogy.

I'm going to work and I miss my family.

Yeah. What do they look like? Yeah.

What do

they look like? That's my phone. It's like

Someone else might see it, but it's not really for them.

It's not for them. It's for me stuck in the office of my phone to remember the life outside.

I famously put absolutely zero decoration if I have a office desk. Like, the older I get, the more I'm like, with these corporate jobs, you must not know if I even have a family. Wow. Like, I'm here to work, you cannot know anything about me. I don't have a monitor.

I work on a tiny laptop. There's nothing personal besides maybe like a mug.

That's interesting. I don't put images of people up at all, but I definitely put up like knickknacks and things and action figures and Yeah.

You and I are the same, Hans.

Postcards and who even knows.

My desk space wherever I am is full of funny little guys.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right now. But also, only when I got my current phone, did I actively think I am gonna get a clear phone case and then add customized stickers I

did

to the the And same

this was the first time I've done that. I've always just gotten a black phone case. Yeah. Or something.

How does it feel?

Oh, I love it. But also like, again, the only I don't know why anytime I customize, it's just like, let me let people know that I have a dog.

So so right now Literally, it says a have lot like a like a like a label maker label that says your dog's name. It's got a picture of a dog on the bottom. There's a bunch of little stickers I can't quite see

So like, is the bottom letters. It's MJ. So that's my initials. A little snowflake. A sticker of a dog that looks like my dog.

There's a dog's butt.

Yep. Flower, another sticker of a dog. Yeah. And then this is a chukka, like a bindi that I wore at some event. Oh, I think I wore this to my grandpa's funeral.

So I saved it.

Woah. Wow. Damn, dude.

I realized I have kind of a similar thing in terms of representation of my pet. Okay. Because I have a clear phone case. Yeah. I have a gigantic sticker that they're like Gengar.

Gengar.

They're like

right in the same

And then in the corner, I have a little black cat

Oh my god.

That looks like

my This is so interesting.

It is amazing how much like, I believe the backs of these phones to be pretty accurate representations of the two of you in some way. A thoughtful pet owner and a giant Gengar.

Yeah. I don't understand.

Jason, what's what is the back of your phone look like and can we divine

Oh, it's a black case.

You are.

Yeah. That's how I used to be. Utility.

No. Utility. I put a sticker on it. Yeah. Yeah.

I just want my phone not to break.

Wait, Hans. What about you?

So I have I have a, like, just patterned one that's kinda old and I cannot take this case off. I mean, I can take the case off, but the phone is broken on the back and the case holds the phone together and I'm worried bearing if case. Yeah. It's a low bearing case. So I'm stuck with

this case.

There's nothing I can do.

Hans. But I see you have photos. You have

photos as your home, like, lock screen and your

I do. So I have photos as my lock screen, and I do photos. My TV is where I customize the most.

We have

an Apple TV, and we have a carousel, our screensaver for the TV, which goes on all the time. It's hundreds and hundreds of photos. And so it just takes a random selection of these hundreds and hundreds of photos and puts them up. And it is absolutely delightful. Like my wife and I sit and watch the screensaver like from time not infrequently, like several times a week, just sit and watch the screensaver.

When people come over, we're like, oh, there's you. There's you. Look. Remember that time we did the like, it's a rotating because the TV is big and these photos are coming in and out, and it's just like this constant reminder of us and our story, and it's really anchoring. So that's like a customization that I love love love love.

I mean, that makes sense because it's fixed like a picture.

And it's a shared space whereas, like, my computers are not a shared space.

Yes. That's true.

I don't really customize my computer at all, but I would die if I could make my computer LCARS themed, the graphic interface from Star Trek The Next Generation.

Oh, you can totally do this.

I don't know that you can. If yeah. This is my my request is if somebody knows a legitimate way to do this. I just don't this is the thing. I don't know how to find

this is where I give

up is I don't know how to find this stuff, and then I look and it all looks sketchy.

Gray scale.

Yeah. You can do gray scale stuff. Everything on your phone can look like Limp Bizkit album covers. This is all possible.

Florida has a setting where when they're within the vicinity of their apartment, their phone is on a gray scale. But when they're out in a bar, it's not.

Wait. Why? What does this mean? Let's just look their

like, not

using their phone all the time when they're home and like

So if you open Instagram or whatever, it's all grayscale.

It's like the night mode where it like takes all the

beauty Yeah.

That's cool as hell.

I wanna take us back to ringtones because I have a question.

Okay.

Do you know anyone in your life, all of you, who still either uses a ringtone or like has their phone on sound, so that if someone calls them, they hear even like the canned ringtone. My grandma.

My mother has a custom ringtone.

Really? My dad has a custom ringtone.

Yeah. She has figured out where to get this.

Where what's hers?

It is the Harry Potter music.

My dad has had the same ringtone for, I'd say, at least a decade. And he specifically, like websites be damned, he made this ringtone himself. He had to open Audacity and use it.

Oh my god.

And it's fresh It's it's my huff. God, that would be incredible. Dad, listen. You can hear me. But it's the song Fresh Air by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, which is a psychedelic band from like the sixties seventies.

Okay. Another ringtone my mother used to have. She watches a lot of safari live streams. Woah. She's like daily out of South Africa.

You can like live stream along. There's a whole community around it. It's pretty cool. It should be a segment.

Okay.

But she changed. She had custom ringtones for the different people in her lives that were the different vocalizations of her favorite animals. So like, a jaguars call would be somebody and then the jackals going at it would be someone else.

Wow. You

are your mother's son. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Do you think that there is a world where iPhones will take away the customization? And the way that like you can't add a background to your Facebook page, like, I'm wondering if that will hit devices.

Georgia, you did all this stuff for your customization Mhmm. Story. I'm really curious what you think and having looked into this more.

I'm inclined to say that no, that's not going to happen. Because phones and computers are literally devices. They're not websites. They're not apps. There is a level of ownership that I think is expected from our experience with any of these devices that it's like, no, I should be able to do this.

I do wonder if this very streamlined design, we've made every decision for you, don't worry about it model. I wonder if that's a bubble that'll burst

or

if

it's not. And don't have an answer to that. But I I hope it is, honestly. I hope we kind of we we move to maybe the clear, you know, bright orange Mac computer

Right.

Desktop thing. Like, I please.

Now that I'm thinking more about that conversation you had with Boone about tactility and the conversation about customization that you had with Katie Entopoulos, One of the overlapping ideas there is that a lot of these platform companies are concerned decreasingly concerned with how what you're engaging with represents you and increasingly concerned with how it represents a frictionless interaction with the content at the heart of their business model. So there's no room for you because there's all the room for the content.

Mhmm.

Apple seems to be one of the few remaining places that has a little bit of that sense of it's probably just like vestigial ideas they haven't stamped out yet. But the sense of that you are engaging with this in some way and that it should be representative of you still. And so I think if they were to go to a place where they ditch customization, it would be to go down that same line of, like, your lock screen should be content. Why would it be anything else? Everything else is between you and the content.

And it would frustrating and kind of sad that now everything from hardware all the way down to platforms is just a vehicle for us to get to the things that pay the bills.

Yeah. I

have a question for those folks who are exploring getting back into ringtones. What's the difference in your mind between a ringtone and having the sound up? Like that the tappity tap.

Like like texting and you can

hear something. Keystroke sound. Is that coming back too? Is that a thing that's gonna become popular again? Is

that Why did we ever need that? No need for this. Right? It's not like an accessibility thing.

There's not really a need for the ringtone either. It's an offense.

I I have found a piece of utility for it.

Okay.

You wanna know when you're getting a phone call and you're not actively staring at your phone. I know. I put that one together.

But but but Why does

that not feel useful?

No. It doesn't feel useful because a vibration will do the same.

But like I I still am able to do the thing where I put the phone somewhere and walk away from it and know that I will know if somebody

calls walked away from your phone? I've been within four feet of my phone for twenty years.

Is that crazy?

Like It's so crazy.

Come on. Why? Leave it in another room? Are you nuts?

I mean, I think that's a huge reason why ringtones are kind of have fallen by the wayside in a large way. Where it's one Yeah. You just simply have your phone all the time. So vibration is enough. Two, the existence of vibration is an option.

And three, we are getting so many notifications all the time. Right. From a lot of things we just don't even want. Like, I've had to turn off notifications on the weirdest apps Yeah. To be like, okay, that's so great that you have a deal on light bulbs.

This app that I use to change the color of my light bulbs, like Yeah. Don't talk to me.

Yeah. I mean, I like, my grandma has a ringtone but that's I think very much like an accessibility thing. Like I think she needs to hear it and like vibrate, it's not gonna notify her. And also now like she does get a lot of phone calls from like healthcare related things and that's usually a phone call. But I am now trying to figure out actually to when I'm home to make my phone like a landline and keep it in a certain spot and I know there's a growing movement and desire for that and with that, I will be more intentional about having my ringer on for calls.

Wow.

Like that a lot.

It never occurred to me that you could do that.

That's cool. Yeah. I because it's like, well, the majority of my screen time is always texting and I I just I don't need to respond that quickly to stop and it causes me a lot of physical pain. So I I'm trying to just put the device away and that will bring me to have a ringtone.

I will concede that the difference between Jason with his Nokia poking out of his pocket, shrilly pumping Primus or whatever. I can't imagine what it was you were listening to, but that's what I'm assuming. The evolution in speaker technology, like, phone speakers sound pretty good nowadays. It's not a harsh harrowing experience to hear a favorite song through that medium now.

I bet people are listening to us right now on a phone speaker.

I think maybe somebody can't tell

us because I wanna know who you are and what's happening in

your life.

Make me your ringtone. Now do it immediately.

But I think that if it's a more pleasant experience, and you're opening my eyes to, like, there's a different life I could lead with my phone, and this could facilitate a different life with my phone. Like, it causes me stress to think about not being close to it, but what if?

Right.

Yeah.

And like, I've, even with that too, I'm like, I actually need to then get physical alarm clock. And so my phone doesn't sleep in my bedroom. It can stay in my living room or kitchen where the landline is.

Do you think if you start getting more calls, you'll change how you feel about this?

I don't I don't know. I I think it will just depend. And I I would be interested to see if I could customize that I can only get a ringtone when it's summoned from my contacts. That would be ideal. Oh, I bet you could

do that.

I bet you can.

Right? Yeah. Surely.

I mean, that brings up the other point is like, the phone can they are pretty powerful and I'm sure like we all just said, oh, yeah, I'm sure it can do that. But like, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. Like I don't know how to like change most of these things because it just hasn't been important for fifteen years.

Right. And I think it's that friction that leaves me to just like have the defaults on Yeah. Everything. Like, who fucking cares?

Yeah.

I'm telling you, you gotta get in there.

That's how

I found out about the thing where you can customize vibrations.

Well, I'm inspired. I don't wanna be at next year's cool breeze tight squeeze summer hang. The guy who hasn't changed anything about his life pursuant to this conversation. So

Yeah. Who would wanna not change anything? That'd be so embarrassing.

So I wanna find a way to connect my two ambitions here and make it so that every time someone calls, my phone plays whatever someone has just purchased on Bandcamp. Oh.

Oh, now we're talking.

That's only my life. There's gotta be

Well, thank you all It's

great, Edith. So much.

For coming in, getting out of the heat, and shooting the breeze. Listeners, if you have thoughts about customization, how you interact with the hardware of your devices, what it means about you, what it reflects about you as a person, how much sonic junk you're putting into the world for others to have to deal with. And also listeners, if you have successfully navigated whatever menus are in there to customize your own experience in a way that you think is interesting and would help me live a better life, We would love to hear what kind of customization you did, how you did it, how it's possible, what cool things are living in the phone that I'm too afraid to poke my way into finding out. The ways you can get in touch with us can be found in the show notes, and there are many ways, and we would love to hear from you. Georgia Hans Magle, good to see y'all.

Take it easy. Enjoy the rest of our little summer break here, and we will be back in two weeks with a full episode of Never Post chock full of insightful wisdom and maybe some Mike McNetta.

So set up your ringtone so you get notified when the next episode

thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Bye. Bye.