![]() ![]() In the intervening years, I didn't use Facebook Messenger much. We were friends on Facebook, and Messenger was a way we could stay in constant communication, without the commitment or overt familiarity of other platforms. But we weren't on the level of chatting daily over Gchat, like we both did with our friends. Facebook Messenger.įacebook was already somewhat uncool by then - the days of painstaking album uploads had faded - but as young 20-somethings looking to chat during the day about nothing much, it worked for us. For the next year, as we flirted, chatted, and became increasingly part of each other's lives, our preferred mode of communication was. My partner and I began our casual courtship in 2013. "Who we are is not just the neurons we have," Santiago Jaramillo, a University of Oregon neuroscientist who studies sound and the brain, said, referring to cells that transmit information. When distinct and repeated sensory stimuli, like UI sounds, are paired with feelings, moods, and memories, our brains build bridges between the two. Or if you grew up a child of AOL, maybe an intense, vivid memory of using AIM as a tween occurs if someone plays you the iconic doors opening and closing sounds. If you've had a particularly stressful job with a trigger-happy boss, perhaps you feel a churn of anxiety when a notification tells you you've received an email. "The sounds that we have are adding to that tapestry," Will Littlejohn, Facebook's sound design director, said. And just as a song has the power to take you back to a particular moment in time, the sounds emitted by our connected devices can trigger memories, thoughts, and feelings, too. Back then, we talked almost daily on, of all chat platforms, Messenger.Īs devices, software applications, and apps become omnipresent, the User Interface (UI) sounds they emit - the pings, bings, and blongs vying for our attention - have also started to contribute to the sonic fabric of our lives. Whenever I hear the now-retired Facebook Messenger notification, I'm transported back to 2013, when I happily, gratefully, giddily got a message from someone I liked, who would later become my partner. The understated double ping hits me with a jolt of excitement, a swooping stomach, and even a bit of relief. It sounds like someone accidentally hit adjacent keys on a xylophone. ![]()
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