Sorry. I know that’s a jarring headline. But it was the first response I had to this picture, and probably yours as well. So what’s going on here? It’s a brand-new product called Mutalk from the Japanese company Shiftall, and it’s about to shut you the hell up.
As described on the Shiftall product webpage, Mutalk is “a soundproof Bluetooth microphone that makes it difficult for others to hear your voice and at the same time, makes it difficult for ambient noise to enter the microphone.” This product is perfect for sensitive work meetings, banshee screeching that you’re going to literally murder someone in Fortnite from the safety of your family home, or simply screaming into the void that is this device.
How does it work? According to the website, it uses a technique called “the Helmholtz resonator principle” that can muffle sound to about -30 decibels, and all you have to do is either hold it over your mouth or strap it to your head like a new-age device you’d see in a futuristic Saw movie.
Shiftall is best known for its creation of peripherals used by VTubers and VRChat fiends that allow their full-body motions to be tracked and translated onto their virtual character, so it makes sense that they would be in the business of creating a microphone that fully cuts you out of the real world. Gone are the days when your loved ones walk in on you saying putrid sex words to a 3D wolf in a heated session of video game lovemaking, this is the future.
That being said, I actually think the Mutalk is a neat device when it comes to wanting to have a private meeting in public. That being said, if I saw this in public, I’d be scared. It’s scary to me. In fact, I thought it was a joke at first, and the demonstration video to go along with it didn’t help!
Do you see this man? There is sadness behind his eyes. Fear. He straps the device to his domepiece and his eyes tell a story of a man saying the most horrible pisswords over proximity chat.
What’s next? A device that will let you kiss over the computer? Perhaps suck someone off? Are we doomed to a life where every household will contain unmoving bodies, VR headsets donned and Mutalks strapped on, making grabby hands in front of them, doing what one can only assume is related to honking on an anime girl’s digital bonkers?
What if you program an AI anime girlfriend, and find that you bought all this tech to completely immerse yourself in her digital world, only to find that over time she starts to lose interest in you? You tell her that you love her into your Mutalk so that your real-life girlfriend doesn’t hear, and all she says is “Haha, yeah!”. What then?
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