So, I’m wathcing the Stanley Cup playoffs (SJ vs CHI), and one of those Droid commercials comes on. You know, with the prototypical SciFi “evil machine” voice saying “DROOOOID”. Is this supposed to make me want to buy this phone or just scare the shit out of me?
I don’t get it. What are they thinking is appealing about this ad campaign? Is it that youngsters these days think that voice is cute or something? I just don’t get it.
Personally, I’m surprised you find it scary. I don’t find it fearsome at all.
That’s probably where the main disconnect comes. Modern evil SF computers tend to have human-like, mellifluous voices to make them seem more “human” and contrast with their real nature (see HAL).
What’s scary is that the robotic “DROID” voice is set as the ring tone for something on them out of the factory (either email of text message) and it goes off in the middle of the night.
It’s not that I’m actually scared of the thing, but that sound is associated with things in movies and TV SciFi that are not friendly, to say the least. I’m wondering why these guys would use a sound that one associates with unfriendly, evil machines.
The stupid part is that they’re advertising the Motorola Droid still, and there are no commercials for th HTC Incredible.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while other smartphone companies advertise to valley girls and grandmas with their “hey it’s so stupid-simple even YOU can use it,” Android is aiming at young tech people who want a computing machine in their pocket that will do whatever they want it to do. This aesthetic of the utilitarian and extremely powerful machine lends itself to a prototypical “powerful machine” voice. I don’t find it scary – in fact just about ANY talking robot from a certain period or genre of scifi (which I can’t really articulate since it’s more burned into my memories rather than something I consciously and specifically remember) sounds like a mechanized metallic voice. For a certain generation/group of people, that was the sound of the future. Sometimes it was scary, but always powerful. The future is now.
Just a guess.
I figured that maybe it was a way of appealing to younger males.
But the voice sounds exactly like the Centurions in *BSG *to me. By-your-command!
I agree with all of this. I don’t find the voice menacing at all. It just sounds like “tech” to me.
Sounds like Soundwave to me.
Which makes it automatically cool…if not a tad sinister.
Aren’t they calling that the Droid Incredible at Verizon? In which case it makes sense. Verizon is advertising the brand that they own (Droid), and trying to apply it to all things cool in Android phones.