Mute

I noticed that my iPhone is almost always intentionally muted these days.

I think the ringtone is becoming an outdated artefact of a time when all a phone did was take and receive calls. In fact, I think the only time my iPhone is actually permitted to behave like a phone is when I'm in the car and occupied by other things, such as driving with due care and attention with the aim of preventing me from exiting this earth in a fireball.

Otherwise, I use it for most things apart from as a phone. But, if left unfettered after an hour or so, the incessant auditory chirping and bleeping of those other apps would, frankly, make you want to exit this earth in a fireball.

So it's on mute almost all the time. And the combination of permanent mute and lowered frequency of calls is profoundly different to ten years ago.

And I wonder if switching my phone to permanent mute is a subconscious denial or coping mechanism. I mean obviously it is, at a surface level, but I mean deeper than just preventing it from being a pain in the arse. Like we subconsciously know we're drowning in a sea of information and we don't need to be reminded of that every fifteen seconds.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then the psychotic random sound generator in your pocket would paint Munch's "Scream". And we know it.