I wanted to hear the great Motörhead song about the Ramones (which I own on cd, but I don’t feel like digging it out of a huge box of cds right now) called: “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”, and so I looked it up on YouTube, but when I clicked on the video I wanted, there was a very brief ad showing the YouTube logo of the red rounded rectangle with the little white arrow in it, and it said something like: “YouTube Films presents…” And then there was this extremely loud noise, which was three times as loud (at least) as the video I was about to watch/listen to; so loud it really hurt my hears and made me have to rip off my headphones for fear of hearing damage: a very high-pitched noise which I guess is their audio signature (corporate musical theme), like Intel has one for their ads, and National Geographic had one for their TV specials, and T-Mobile has one for their ads, and Duracell has one for their ads: you get the idea; you’ve all heard them before countless times. The ad was pretty short, like maybe three seconds, but it was quite jarring, and I still have a headache from it, I am not kidding.
This must be something like the “sonic attacks” in Cuba that have been reported in the news as victimizing American diplomats and some American tourists; because, ouch, it really hurt. It hurt so much I went to the trouble to write about it.
If this is not what the Cubans use to attack Americans visiting their country, maybe they should consider using it. That way they could make the claim that they merely innocently searched for and clicked on a video on YouTube, and this really short video ad appeared before the video that was really loud, but also way too short to react quickly enough to turn it off before it blared weaponized audio frequencies for all unsuspecting people in the vicinity to hear, and it would seem legitimate. If they said that, I would believe them after my experience tonight.
Aside from the amazingly ear-splitting volume overkill I experienced this evening, the musical theme is I guess not that bad. It’s not really good either, and it’s in a frequency range that tends to be annoying to the listener in and of itself, but I’ve heard worse. But I love YouTube, and I honestly think they deserve better than this. And them playing it ridiculously loud does not make me change my mind about that, although I will be sure to remember it to the extent that I’ll never forget it, but it’s not for the reasons they might have been hoping for. My advice would be for them to make a different one that’s better, but failing that, I hope they’ll consider not assaulting their consumers’ ears with such a deafening volume level in future ads of this nature. I appreciate the brevity of the spot, which was only around three seconds, and about YouTube’s special coverage of the World Series. High frequencies are the worst for blaring at ear-splitting volume levels, don’t you know: they’re the most destructive for things like hearing loss and tinnitus. And this is coming from a Motörhead and Ramones fan. When someone like me says it’s too loud and it hurts my ears, you know it really is too loud.
Here are some of the sound logos, or audio themes, I mentioned above for Intel, T Mobile, and National Geographic, respectively:
And here’s a great selection of various corporate identity musical themes for people who are interested in such things (like me):
