Answering machine greetings, instant messaging statuses, custom ringtones... My first instinct is that these types of things have gotten less fun over the years, but it's probably just that I'm old and don't know what the fun micro forms of self-expression are for the youth.
Which raises the question: what _are_ the equivalents of the above in 2023?
Thing is, there's a firehose of self-expression modes available now. Maybe "micro forms of self-expression" were more important back then because they were the only, or one of the few, ways of doing it. Whereas now maybe they're mostly no longer needed? I dunno. Asserted for discussion without supporting material.
Based on my teenager and her friends, it's mostly collecting enamel pins and stickers. They have a collage of stickers on nearly everything they own and most especially their phone case. The other thing they do is relentlessly curate their Instagram profile, including doing things like posting photos in such a way that they form a triptych or similar on the main profile view.
Based on what I see in the <18s: tchotchkes attached to their phones, bracelets, pin badges (which, to my surprise, my kids are allowed to wear to school), custom avatars, Roblox skins/clothing.
I failed to give the context behind that statement. I live in the UK where school uniform is universal in secondary/high school, strongly enforced, and considered to be very important for some reason (enough so that breaching the uniform rules can result in being segregated from the other students for the day). They seem to allow a little more of a personal touch now than in my day, though, and can wear buttons on their blazers as well as hair accessories.
Probably just the pointy part. I certainly wouldn't put it past kids to use any sharp object for bullying purposes.
But on the other hand, pins and badges weren't banned when I was in high school either, I distinctly remember at least our resident punks wearing dozens of them on their clothes and backpacks. And pens and pencils and paperclips aren't much less sharp than a typical enamel pin.
Your custom voicemail prompts are useless because after the prompt, you get another prompt from the system asking you to leave a message after the beep.
I read confirmation somewhere that the origin of this idiotic practice, including the absurdly verbose script they use[1], was to waste people's airtime. And it sure seemed to be true, because some carriers literally went to the trouble, even as late as the 2010s, to modify their voicemail systems to remove the option that used to be there to omit the boilerplate language. Plus, if you had any goal besides wasting people's time, why would you coin the phrase "an automated voice messaging system"?
I wish they'd reverse course now, though, since almost zero subscribers of any of these big carriers have limited talk minutes.
[1] I believe this is the full exact text that Verizon and AT&T used, verbatim from memory. "Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Four... One... Five... Five... Five... Five... Zero... One... Seven... Four... is not available. At the tone, please leave your message. When you are finished recording, hang up, or, press one for more options. To leave a callback number, press seven."
I wonder if this is what actually killed voicemail. Who was going to wait through all that crap to say "Hey it's Steve, wanted to talk to you about X, call me back."
The old trick back in the day was "one-star-pound" - one of the three would often skip the recording and dump you right to the beep based on what carrier's VMB it was.
I remember having some goofy message for my voicemail when I was in college. Some recruiter left me a voicemail scolding me for being so unprofessional... finally changed it several years later when I upgraded phones.
Custom ringtones on my old Nokia were always fun. I guess I'm old and lame now and just have the standard iPhone ringtone.
With regard to custom ringtones, what happened? It seems to me like Android, in particular, started making it harder and harder to customize. I don't even know if I could set a custom text/ring tone for my wife on my current phone.
If you have an mp3 file of what you wish to be a ringtone, could can put it on the phone and open it in the file manager or music app of your choice, press the ⋮ options button and there should be an option to set it as a ringtone.
... It beats the 2000's hell of buying a novelty ringtone for 99p and ending up in some small print recurring charge for a year.
For adults, custom car plates, and in some ways the car itself. Custom plates used to be super rare but now very popular in the UK as a form of micro expression.
For teens: gender fluidity including pronouns and ambiguous hair and dress (nope, me neither). Also gamertags and in-game skins.
I think it was a Garmin that had this feature, but it may have been a TomTom, i haven't used a separate GPS unit since two got stolen. My new used car has built in GPS, so 100% of my desire to have a stand-alone GPS has vanished.
That is what I was thinking: either the car has built-in GPS now, or people use their phone with Google Maps or another nav app, and I haven't heard of those offering custom voices.
Which raises the question: what _are_ the equivalents of the above in 2023?