Bluetooth headsets can never look good
In fact, they make you look like a tool. Here was something I noticed in Atlanta airport the other day. I also include what I imagined them saying to each other.
Why can’t Bluetooth headsets look good? It’s good old human nature. People are uncomfortable with anything that looks like it’s growing out of a person’s body, like a mutation. Bluetooth headsets always look like mutations.
This natural aversion to mutants is further exacerbated in the victim’s mind by the fact that Bluetooth headset wearers seem so (a) proud or (b) ignorant, of how they look. The fact the average Bluetooth wearer looks like he’s (yes it’s almost always guys) talking to himself like a crazy people rounds out the discomfort.
My advice to Bluetooth headset brand designers: (1) make them easy to remove and store somewhere convenient.(2) have an alert that comes on after 10 seconds of hanging up an active call, of a female whisper into the forgetful user’s ear that says “Please remove the headset. I know you’re not a bad person, but you look like a dork, and if you leave it on then everyone will think you’re an idiot” and (3) design one that doesn’t look like it’s growing out of the ear.
While I totally agree with the premise that BT headsets are dorky, the rationale- a remote control for an object that is for the majority of users, located elsewhere on your own body (why reach?) afffords the miraculous ability to be handless. At the risk of starting the first Amish tech-blog, I recall ancient legends of letter mail, telegrams, rotary telephones and facsimile machines, each one a “breakthrough” in communications technology. Hah, I say! Which of those allows you to train your pet lemur to effectively operate it? None. What good is digital if you still need digits? Surely this headset fad is marketed at egomaniacs, nerds, idiots and/or scalding victims. Clearly not a large enough demographic, even for doomsday misanthropes like me. This crass ploy will surely crumble under its own Irrelevance.
But add a brain tumor…
and let’s not forget that wearing a Bluetooth is fairly effective birth control. I think I speak for many women, but a guy wearing a Bluetooth device is as attractive as a guy wearing Drakkar Noir. Not very.