Mind Control
“I don't want to hear your hidden messages. Every time you talk, another thought persists.”
Anger in the wake of digital mediation.
Writing, playing, seeing, and listening to hardcore punk music was a creative and cathartic means of processing difficult emotions throughout my adolescence and into my college years that I will cherish always.
Mind Control was a hardcore punk band active from 2013–2017, named in reference to the mass onset of digital mediation in modern society.
The band started shortly after Tristan Harris released his presentation, A Call To Minimize Distraction & Respect Users' Attention, while he was working at Google, which immediately went viral within the company and seeded a cascade of whistleblowing that informed how misaligned incentives in Big Tech can be changed.
I was an early observer of the societal neuroses Big Tech manufactured through manipulative technology, and this band was an expression of my anger in the face of that. Over a decade later, Tristan's message was largely ignored and the incentives have only gotten worse—now seeping into generative AI.
I did vocals in Mind Control, writing lyrics about automated banality, mediated communication, and ideological capture. We released a few cassettes and a self-titled 7", which included tracks like Robot Mode, Dead Communication, and Trends—respectively about life reduced to an automated schedule, texting replacing genuine conversation, and surrendering oneself to mimetic trends at the expense of one's integrity.
These songs were written and performed years before the attention economy was something most people talked about. It's an early version of the same argument I'm still making, just louder.