Categories: Articles

Phantom BlackBerry Vibrations – The Silent Killer?

I no longer have to suffer alone. It’s ok to talk about it. There are many, like me, who suffer from phantom vibrations.

Phantom vibrations are the feeling that your mobile device (in my case, my BlackBerry) is vibrating when it is not. There are even some who suffer from phantom vibrations when the device is not even on them (thankfully, mine only occurs when the BlackBerry is on my hip).

This article from Canoe.ca cracked me up: Phantom Vibrations – Is that a new BlackBerry message, or is it all in your head?

"Some users compare the feeling to a phantom limb, which Merriam-Webster’s medical dictionary defines as ‘an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.’

‘Even when I don’t have the BlackBerry physically on my person, I do find myself adjusting my posture when I sit to accommodate it,’ said Dawn Mena, an independent technology consultant based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. ‘I also laugh at myself as I reach to unclip it (I swear it’s there) and find out I don’t even have it on.’

Research in the area is scant, but theories abound about the phenomenon, which has been termed ‘ringxiety’ or ‘fauxcellarm.’

Anecdotal evidence suggests ‘people feel the phone is part of them’ and ‘they’re not whole’ without their phones, since the phones connect them to the world, said B.J. Fogg, director of research and design at Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

‘As human beings, we’re so tapped into our community, responsiveness to what’s going on, we’re so attuned to the threat of isolation and rejection, we’d rather make a mistake than miss a call,’ he said. ‘Our brain is going to be scanning and scanning and scanning to see if we have to respond socially to someone.’"

So here’s the marketing question: is this good or bad for the BlackBerry brand?

I say good (it’s also probably good for the mobile marketing and ringtone industries as well).

If you think it’s not good, you do have to admit, that it’s still good for laugh (even when it is at ourselves).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.