If you’re anything like me (which by god I hope you’re not) The internet was and or is pivotal to shaping your character, your desires, passions, interests, likes, attention is all determined by monolithic billion dollar algorithms and when not, are defined by people that you desire, implicitly composed of an echo chamber you have inadvertently systematically built over your lifetime. You didn’t do it because of a sense of obligation, or a feeling of needing to moderate your attention, you had no pretenses or premonitions of the attention economy and the concept that what you choose to allow to occupy your mind would determine who you are and what you like. You simply did with your autonomy vaguely influenced by the people that were formative and or important in your life at the time during the interim. Much like AI, the computer (and then the World Wide Web) raised you. Statically speaking, the most formative years of human life in terms of developing music interest are between the ages of 13 to 17. ~Roughly. I’ll cite the study if I find it, but take my word for it. As a result, the content you are predisposed at during this pivotal time period GREATLY influences your mind and who you are. For me, I really liked nightcore when I was about 14 or 15. This has shaped me and who I am. It has informed my broader views of the copyright system, of civil disobedience and ‘technically’ following the rules. It has informed my opinions on the DMCA, and has caused me to reinstall Osu! from time to time to briefly recapture that nostalgia before realizing I’m not high enough on the skill ladder to compete with the bottom 99%. and the ‘reason’ for it all? Well, in my view when YouTube rolled out the automated copyright claim system, people began to reupload videos they liked with sped-up, faster ver. and eventually ‘nightcore’ versions. It was the epitome of ‘technically’. Not saying anything of the high effort song covers that happen to speed themselves up also to avoid copyright issues, only that my interests and largely what I consumed was determined by YouTube suddenly being inundated by those videos, and I listened, and I enjoyed. This become particularly stark and interesting to me back a few years ago when I realized how much of a bias ‘Nightcore’ music was to the group / musician Cascada. Was it on purpose? Probably not. Well, no. But it could have been. Someone simply liked music by that artist and feel it worth their time to ‘nightcoreify’ that music at the time. But what if they hadn’t? What if popular Osu! beatmap makers instead opted for ACDC, or early Adelle? Would I now spend all my time listening to a different genre? I can’t answer that, but the idea that companies that have built mega empires in the internet age, with billions of spend into social and psychological manipulative tactics to sway the opinions and views of the public at large DO know that? That’s scary to me. TikTok is scary to me.