Don't call before 9, my minutes aren't free

I was the guy that used audacity to make ringtones and then share them with as many people as possible. This was of course once phones could play actual music as ringtones.

I used to record the song using my cell phones microphone to ensure it was as low quality a possible.
- Blast from the past moment. Took me 4 episodes of yugioh to be able to properly record the intro song so I could listen to it whenever I wanted. Took me 3 for Pokémon.
They could. As long as they were midi files.
I used to be able to play a song or yt video and use an aux cable to go from the pc's headphone out, right back into the pc's mic in, which audacity recognized as a mic, so you could easily record anything playing in original quality.

These days I don't even want a ringtone on my phone.

Back in that day, before everything had an app, most notifications were important
- And before 99% of the calls and texts you receive were spam, political campaigns inevitably addressing you by the wrong name with heartfelt pleas for money, IRS scams, "Bob" from Microsoft technical support, Your Car's Extended Warranty, AI generated robocalls telling you not to vote, or someone's hysterical babymomma who refuses to understand that whoever she's looking for might have had this number in 2007, but they don't have it anymore.
- I still have my phone set that way. I turn off all notifications that aren't messages. Though, I guess now it all goes through my watch first.
i only unmute when i'm expecting an important call (like the pizza man at my door)
- Our pizza man doesn't call or ring the doorbell. He sends a text and if you're not down there in like 15 seconds he is GONE
- I can get away from unmuting thanks to my Mi Band 😬
How much you spending on custom vibration patterns?
- I would throw a dollar at shave and a haircut for texts.
Mine's always on silent mode too.
Ay but there are still notification chimes

Man, OPs caption unlocked a core memory I have of calling my high school boyfriend at 858 pm, and talking on the phone with him for about 2.5 hours before he got notified that he was under 10 mins left for the month.

We had thought he was only going to lose 2 of his minutes 😭.

I remember when they finally came out with the free unlimited minute plans.

Mind=blown
- Yeah but at first it was only Cingular to Cingular or Verizon to Verizon "free unlimited"
- How about Alltel’s “Fave 5”?
I stayed with Sprint through years of them being the shittiest in my area because I was grandfathered into an old plan with free nights starting at 5pm. Just taking non-stop at 6pm like a baller.
- Oh yeah those were the days!
  
  Now you've gotta pay me a hecking salary for me to use the damn TELEPHONE function. Ew

She has a baby by macaulay culkin now.

Who is she?
I had the hots for her back in the day.

Didn't know they had kids though, good for them!
2 of em
- Oh shit, a lil family pack.
Baby by Macaulay Culkin sounds like a perfume brand.
Oh. Is that who that is? I thought it was just some random token Asian girl.
- Rich girl in sweet life of Zack and Cody
  
  If you weren't a kid in that age, it was a very popular Disney tv show

i bought akon - lonely from a TV ad when i was a young teenager for my polyphonic nokia.

what i didnt realise was it signed me up to a weekly £5 subscription and it racked up over £100 before my dad found out.

Had to abandon that number and get a new sim

Yeah I remember those subscription scams. Real scummy stuff
- I think their only recourse was that there was the asterisk with the subscription verbage in really tiny fine print that was only visible if you had an 80" projector TV
- The massive block of fine print at the bottom of the screen. Things my preteen self would not take notice of.

Never bought a ring tone. I just stuck with the default Canon in D.

not to brag but tabbed out Tool's Forty Six & 2 as my programmable ring tone myself

A story the descendants will need to have strong search skills to understand.

One day, Merv Griffin was going through his snail mail and found a hefty check to him from a company he'd never heard of.

He used the intercom to summon his assistant. They explained to him that his people had licensed the ' Final Jeopardy' music to be a ring tone.

Then they had to explain to Merv what a ring tone was.

I want to believe this but I don't want to search for it.
- You can believe me. No body ever lies on the interwebs.
Merv Griffin? The elevator killer?

Don't forget ringback tones so u could force anyone who called to listen to a scratchy version of a shitty song any time they called. My sister still had hers til like 2015 or something.

Let's not forget, you could also compose your own ringtones on those 😁. Well, that's what I did 😂.

A friend of mine had self-composed Darude - Sandstorm as his ringtone. Amazing shit
I used to buy the songs that would play as my phone ringing. Like I'm not sure how to say it but when you called me you were forced to listen to a shitty song I liked instead of hearing the riiing riiing. Or when I called my weed guy instead of hearing the riiing or was 36 Mafia "where is the bud, where is the bud playing.
- A friend of mine still has fucking Mozart playing when you call him.
- I believe they were called ringback tones. Those were neat.
You still can if you want to. My phone uses an MP3 for ringtone that I selected. It's music that I wrote and recorded in my home studio even
- Meeh, it's just not the same 😂. I miss the quirky score notation on those ancient things 😂.
The good ol days of asking Jeeves to find you tabs/sheet music.
- Exactly! 😂
  
  Or you just lay in bed at night and just try to properly edit the score notation to a song you really like, but it's kinda niche, still all your friends know it, and then brag about it when you meet up "yo, check out my ringtone 😏" 😂.

If someone texted me, the reply was "these cost me $0.25, so i'll talk to you on AIM when I get home"

Ahh yes.. the Xennial Generation.

After being pointed out that I basically nailed the window for just millennials, I realize this comment is really fucking stupid. So if you wanna waste your time.......

I think that's a good name for kids born between 1980 and 1995. We mostly grew up with NO Internet at all but were pretty immersed in it by the end of high school. I'm young enough to have had both floppy disks and flash drives in my youth. Once my classmates and I got flash drives, that's how we shared music between each other after we got Chris to download what we wanted from Limewire lol
- I mean that pretty much covers the entire millennial generation...
- Xennial refers to people born from somewhere in the mid 70s to 1980. It's a narrow subset of Gen X made up of those that were growing up during the information revolution.
  
  I would say it might apply to someone in the very early 80s. But anyone born in 1995 definitely had their formative years with internet access and are firmly millennials.
- To me, the earliest Millennials were the class of 2000. It always felt like there was extra pressure on us because we were going to be the first of a new millennium.
  
  The divide was especially stark in my high school. The class of 99 - the last of Gen X - were kicked out of every pep rally and assembly for being disruptive, while the other classes were all well behaved and didn't really understand why they were acting this way.
- I had to drive over to a different truck shop for a flash drive this year.
  
  On my car I use a flash drive to crack the software.
  
  In my shops library they have a few floppies.
  
  :')
Excuse me, I downloaded my ringtones, and had the funky cables to upload ringtones to my Nokias thank you very much!
- Hell yeah brother.
  
  My Motorola SLVR would blast “oh my god that’s the funky shit” from the Prodigy - Funky Shit sample of the beastie boys.

My ringtone has been the same one for the last 15 years, Cowbell Rock. I paid for it twice, once when Ringtone Feeder was a thing, and then again from iTunes. Worth it. Best ringtone ever. Would buy again if I could.

I just go with a telephone ringing. I always have. Why not have my phone make the same sound phones made for over a century? Nothing wrong with it as-is.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Cowbell Rock

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I remember in the era of 3310, there would be a spreadsheet for you to compose those pop song tune in a teen magazine. Simpler time.

I remember finding a website with fairly rough versions of popular melodies were transcribed for Nokia ringtone format. Pretty sure I went for some Metallica. Not sure if it was before or after we got ISDN, but I'm fairly sure I already had a hotmail address.

I'm sorry but paying for a rington was never cool. And it's not a generational thing, just gullibility

Just wait till you find out people also used to pay for backgrounds and emoji. Lol. Scams and viruses, the lot of them.
- Don't forget ringback tones.
- I used to pay for those sweet flaming mouse cursor gifs too. Except I didn't, my parent's unexpectedly did lol
When I was young I would edit my own mp3 to make ringtones and figure out how to transfer them to my phone.

Now I’m old and I work and I don’t have time, so I’d rather just pay for it.

Of course I don’t even do that because I don’t give a shit and just keep the default one.

Anyone remember paying ten cents or honestly usually more per text until someone did out the numbers and we all realized we were paying more to text than NASA pays to beam data back from the goddamn Hubble? Like 5x as much on average? And only then did unlimited texting become common?

Best part was that SMS was specifically designed to use the current infrastructure at the time without inducing any real demand on it. It didn't cost the companies much of anything to implement it.

Yup that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up…

I bought at least one and possibly two Rob Zombie ringtones on a Cingular flip phone. Wasn't worth it then as shit isn't worth it now.

But I do need to go listen to some classic (Rob|White) Zombie now

I never cared much about my ringtone but I got used to "dream it possible" so now I keep using it 🤷

my first purchased ringtone was hips don't lie by Shakira

I bought 2 ringtones on my Nokia 2112:

Linkin Park - Numb

t.A.T.u - All About Us

It was funny to listen to them over and over!

To be fair, also born at the right time to have a mobile phone as a convenience that allowed you to stay in touch as you went places. As opposed to a smartphone, aka voluntary shackle that keeps you indoors doom scrolling social media.

I dont doomscroll at home! I do it in public transport...

I spent my money on a yak bak

she cute