Once up a time, in the early days of the internet, you couldn’t visit a website that didn’t have masses of gifs and automatically-playing sound. Facebook seems to think that we want to return to a time when Geocities ruled the online Earth with its launch of Soundmojis.

Soundmojis, in case the concept isn’t immediately obvious, are emojis that make noises. Because who wouldn’t want to share something like that with the rest of the world? Oh, right. Everybody.

But why soundmojis?

https://www.facebook.com/messenger/videos/150123953880602/

Someone at Facebook HQ must have thought this was a brilliant idea. In Facebook Messenger, you”ll be able to get a different audio clip to play depending on the emoji, from applause to laughter to… do we even want to know what happens when you post the peach and eggplant next to each other? Probably not.

Either the company is trying (badly) to appeal to the younger demographic or they’ve just forgotten that only folks who don’t know how a phone works use audible notifications any more, but the end result is that Facebook Messenger conversations are set to become more annoying than usual.

And the company is sticking with the feature for the long haul, planning to add more clips (it already has some from the likes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Bridgerton and others) and sound effects in the weeks and months to come. If you absolutely must try it for yourself, just select the smiley face in a Messenger chat, tap the speaker icon and then unleash your sonic fury on someone who is probably going to block you immediately. The various Soundmojis can be previewed, so you don’t send an inappropriate sound effect during a wedding or something.

Source: Engadget