TING TING

It feels like the opening to an alien-invasion/sci-fi movie, but I genuinely have had a strange notion over the last few days, to send my entire contacts list a quick message that simply says:

“Ting Ting”

That’s it. No explanation! Just: Ting Ting.

Ting Ting?

Where has that come from? What does it mean? Why is it in my head, every time I open WhatsApp? And what responses would I get?

If you’re reading this in the far future, looking back at that lovely, peaceful time just before the arrival of the Ting-Tingians in the middle of 2020, then I can only apologise, and hope that others out there on Earth paid more attention than I did.

To my mind, Ting Ting is the noise made by tinkling a teaspoon against a wine glass - the kind of thing the Father of the Bride does as a warning bell for incoming dad jokes. It’s a sound that quietens the room. It gathers attention. It creates a hush.

Maybe that’s what this is: a subconscious urge to tell everyone to stop talking and listen up, to remove the noise from the air. 

And boy is there a lot of noise! Who’d have thought silent words on a screen could be so noisy? It’s tough to concentrate on the important bits when the signal gets dissipated so quickly.

That was the problem with early telephone wires too - noise to signal ratio. Over distances, natural physical effects caused the signal (the bit you needed) to be lost within the noise (the interference you didn't). The further you laid the cable, the worse the noise became. The history of how they solved that a hundred years ago, is really interesting by the way, but it’s for another time.

Today, phone signal is carried digitally, with corrective packets that do the ‘noise cancelling’ bit remarkably well. And in smartphone world, the digital packets are perfectly reassembled into text and emojis, and whatever else we seem to love sending each other.

But clearly we haven't eliminated noise. It’s just changed its form.

I haven’t sent a ‘Ting Ting’ to anyone yet. I think most people would just ignore it. Some would send back two alarmed question marks like this:

“??”

... or would ask me if I’m feeling quite alright. Others would assume I was starting some sort of pattern, and would play the game by sending back a...

“Tong Tong” or a “Ping Ping”

... and then not think much more of it.

I’d get at least one eye-roll emoji: “Just Matt being Matt" they’ll say, pressing 'Send'. (The eye roll was designed for that kind of thing.)

If it is aliens, then I don’t think they’ve picked the right Bill-Pullman-Nicolas-Cage-Shia-LaBeouf for the job.

The Ting Tingians are just going to have to turn up unannounced, ready to wonder why we all clean our teeth in the excretion room, and then why we shake hands (albeit limply) with each other. And what's a dad joke?

Sorry, aliens.