In the middle of a stackoverflow podcast, Joel’s PC started making a bunch of noises. He apologized, closed the app or hit mute and continued on. Today in a database course, a student in front of me got a little ding on their phone. She started typing away and each key she pressed made a little beep as she typed. Last week when I was playing around with Ventrilo coding, the full up Windows Ventrilo client makes a noise every time an event happens. You connect: *BONG*. You join a channel: *Whoop!*. You blink your face: *errrrrvvvrp!*.

Do we really need this kind of feedback? I know when I blink. I know when I press the add minute button on the microwave. I know when the letter F shows up in a mobile phone email subject line Re: STFU. I am not a goddamn leper. I can feel my face. I can feel my phone. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Let me look around my man cave. The only thing I want to make noise is my speakers when playing tunes. I want my headphones to make noise when making tunes. I want my piano to make noise when pretending I can sing tunes. Essentially these things are built to make noise. Without sound they have no purpose at all. On the contrary, electronics and software exist to get shit done. Not to convey a sense of blah blah blah with sound effects. The Xbox 360 makes a beep when you turn it on. As if you can’t hear the goddamn helicopter hooker fan blowing. It’s obvious that’s it’s on. I see a variety of blinking lights and my nasal cavities are cauterized by the GPU heat. It can’t be a seeing-impaired feature. There’s a really big VIDEO in video game.

I got your memo 360. You are on. You are on like Donkey Kong in Tron. I fucking get it.

Seven years ago I bought a microwave button soley for the reason that it has a silence button on it. When you pressed keys, it didn’t beep. Every PC I have control of has it’s volume muted. I specifically researched dummy headphone plugs because when you boot a Mac it makes the startup sound unless you have headphones plugged in. I know where Skype, Ventrilo, Windows, Mac, Linux, iChat and every other beepy-swooshy-bongy-pongy software keeps it’s sound profiles. The ones that I like are the ones that have a “No Sounds” profile. The ones that don’t get moved to the “maybe uninstall if a better alternative comes up”. I’m goddamn serious.

Shut the prison-rape fuck up.