The ICQ “uh-oh!” sound is still the iMessage custom sound for my best friend’s contact, because I remember spending sleepless muddy summer nights of 1999 chatting with him on the crazy realtime chat feature.
Yup. It also had random chat feature which i enjoyed quite a lot. Made my first online friends (whom i ended up meeting in real life, and are still friends with to date).
Deeper down in the comments you get a story about how this sound came to be. Who knows if it's true, but it's more fun to give the benefit of the doubt.
Scott Chapman:
> The actual origin of the Uh Oh sound: My ex wife and I used to talk in Squeaky Voice a lot and were quite good at it. I used both WS_FTP and ICQ back in the day and I made the original recording of this sound and sent it to one or both of those companies. I think I sent it to WS_FTP first where it was used to indicate an error in connecting to a remote host. I don't recall if I sent it to ICQ or if they got it from WS_FTP. Someone below said it came from Gremlins. That is not the case. Happy Trails!
DJHEADPHONENINJA replies:
> Why would you just record your voice and send out to companies? Sounds pretty weird man. I'll go with Gremlins because I just watched the movie and heard this sound effect so I had to google the true origin of the ICQ sound.
Scott returns:
> Go with gremlins if you like but the sound is not the same. Back in those days it was not about remuneration.
After installing ICQ for the first time, I distinctly remember thinking that ICQ straight up copied the sound from WS_FTP, which I had already been using for a while and where it was used as an error sound. They are definitely the exact same samples. Interesting to hear the story.
I'm very nostalgic too. It was the beginnings of the Internet in France and this is the first app my brother installed on my computer, he told me "with this you can make a lot of new friends around the world" I was so glad everytime I heard this sound.
