Dec 6, 2023 3 min read

Although I’m usually an early adopter of technology, I don’t always run out and buy what the media claims is the “next big thing.” For example, we don’t have a ring camera that gives us video of who or what is at the front door of my house. Ring camera? We already have two dogs that let us know about anything violating our suburban sanctuary: deer; squirrels; rabbits; chipmunks; mail carriers; UPS, FedEx and Amazon delivery drivers; shadows; invisible ninjas; and one particular black German Shepherd that apparently said something mean to the older dog them at a dog park 5 years ago. So we don’t need to spend $250 on a ring camera … unless it also makes espresso.


Neither did we spend $5,000 on a “smart” refrigerator that will call our cellphones when we’re low on milk. Why? Because the fridge has a door, and we have hands with which to open it. All this grousing leads me to what may be the silliest misuse of technology to come down the pike since the electronic “Smart Belt,” which automatically loosens itself when you’ve eaten too much. Ladies and gentlemen, I present “Doritos Silent.”

The name of this new product may lead you to believe that PepsiCo, which owns the Doritos brand, has managed to make a mushy version of the popular corn chip that doesn’t crunch when you chew. But no. What’s the point of eliminating the satisfying crunch of a crunchy snack? Instead, Brooklyn-based Smooth Technology has engineered software designed to filter out crunching when you’re snacking while using a headset microphone. 

The software, developed at the behest of PepsiCo, is out now as a free app for use with PCs, and it soon will be available for other platforms. But, while Doritos Silent works on Zoom or any other any application that uses a headset mic, Smooth Technology says that it created the software for a more specific application: eliminating crunch from players of online multiplayer video games. After all, superfluous crunching might take away the thrill of hearing Nazis scream when you bazooka them into oblivion while playing “Call of Duty: WWII.”

“Crunch is one of the most distracting features that could throw someone off their game,” Mustafa Shamseldin, chief marketing officer of international foods at PepsiCo, told “The Washington Post.” Doritos learned this by surveying more than 3,000 people worldwide. Among those surveyed were gamers, who told them they love to snack while playing but find crunching to be off-putting. Enter Doritos Silent, thus solving another of the world’s most pressing problems.

Neither Smooth Technology nor PepsiCo revealed whether they considered simply asking gamers not to eat while wearing a headset. Of course not! That would’ve taken away another of the “personal freedoms” that Americans seem to have discovered only after the 2016 presidential election. Instead, the soft-drink behemoth spent untold wads of cash to develop unnecessary software that demands no accountability from its users.

Couldn’t they simply have hired a voiceover artist who, in a motherly voice, assails gamers? 

”Are you crunching online again? Did I raise a pig?

“Don’t make me come in there!”