Sunday, February 18, 2018
Old sound more common now
Most of the questions on quora.com are either (1) completely jumbled and incomprehensible, (2) immediately googleable, or (3) seeking sneaky shortcuts around the law.
Among the useful questions are generational differences, as in "What's a sound you have to explain to younger people?"
Many answers to the latter question are phonograph sounds. It struck me just now that ONE phonograph sound is actually MORE recognizable and MORE common now than in the era of real phonographs. Namely the VOOOOOOP sound made by a needle scraping across the record. You hear it all the time as a sound effect in radio talk shows and Youtube clips. It's an audio emoticon for "Let's start this again."
When records were real, the VOOOOOP was rare because it DESTROYED THE RECORD. It didn't give you a chance to start over, it just made the record unplayable.
A case of semantic shifting in the realm of audio emoticons.
¶ 12:33 PM 
A case of semantic shifting in the realm of audio emoticons.
¶ 12:33 PM
