Whether you’re hanging out in a busy coffee shop or working shoulder to shoulder in your row of cubicles, there never seems to be a good place to take a phone call these days. You either look like one of those nut jobs brazenly yelling into a Bluetooth headset or you’re forced to sheepishly excuse yourself into another room just to tell your mom you’ll call her back later. Well, thanks to a big dumb piece of wearable technology, you can now have your private conversations in public spaces and everyone will just think you’re a weirdo that’s really into The Dark Knight Rises.
As the man in the video with the implacable accent says, “Hushme is a personal acoustic device that protects speech privacy in open space environments.” It also makes you look a bit like you’re plotting to blow up Gotham but you didn’t have the budget for the over-the-head piece or the fur-lined coat.
To make matters more embarrassing, the Hushme website claims the device includes customized voice-masking sounds like a monkey screeching, Darth Vader breathing, and a Minion laughing. Since there’s no proper test of the product included in the video, it’s hard to tell if Hushme actually works or if it’s simply made to make you look/sound ridiculous. Until further market research can be done, it’s probably best to just put a big paper bag over your head with “I’m on the phone, please!” written on it in Sharpie.