"I lived here, I loved here, I thought it was true"

January 24, 2021 12:22 PM

"I studied code because I wanted to do something great like you / And the real tragedy is half of it was true.... If only you could be what you pretend you are." Via Casey Fiesler (who used it as background music for a TikTok video recommending books about tech ethics): "Rät", a song by Penelope Scott "on the promise, failure, and disappointment of technology" and about complicity and vulnerability, available on the album "Public Void". Analysis by Fiesler. "When I said take me to the moon, I never meant take me alone / I thought if mankind toured the sky, it meant that all of us could go / But I don't want to see the stars if they're just one more piece of land / For us to colonize, for us to turn to sand." Lyrics on Genius.
posted by brainwane (8 comments total)

Clever and melodious - thanks for posting.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 4:10 PM on January 24, 2021

Oof. As a thirty-five-year-old woman who's been working in some aspect of "tech" pretty consistently since 2001 and full time writing software since I finished school in 2007 - this hit me right where I live. I remember making the emotional transition from "vocation that chose me" to "just a job that pays the bills" a few years ago and it was possibly the hardest breakup of my life - like, "crying in the parking structure when 'Nothing Compares 2 U' came on the radio" level emotional pain. I'm both surprised and not surprised that this is the first "breaking up with tech" song I've heard.
posted by potrzebie at 4:16 PM on January 24, 2021 [5 favorites]

I absolutely love how raw and clever her songwriting is. Her early version of this on TikTok (called Elongated Muskrat) stopped my dead in my (scrolling) tracks.

Another great song from Public Void is "Lotta True Crime." I, too, like the girl talk vibes.
posted by abry0 at 4:52 PM on January 24, 2021

As a first-year CS grad student, I worry that this will be me. I love my little corner of the field, but it seems like 90% of people are either working on cryptocurrency or AI.
posted by nosewings at 2:10 AM on January 25, 2021

My children have played this song for me many, many times. I was struck by the tone. I couldn't put my finger on in. It seemed to me that it was resignation. Realization that she is stuck, sees where she's going now, hates it, wants out, resents seeing the unobtainable possibilities.

Thanks for posting.
posted by zerobyproxy at 7:02 AM on January 25, 2021

Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow. This is so good, in multiple dimensions. Like, I'm not over the dozen different relevant allusions contained in the "I bit the apple 'cause I trusted you, it tastes like Thomas Malthus" line!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:18 PM on January 25, 2021

"You promised you'd be Tesla but you're just another Edison" is so completely perfect a line that it pops into my head every time I see Musk in the news lately.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:41 AM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

I keep coming back to this song. It's nothing like anything I've ever chosen to listen to before and is strangely compelling. I can't remember the last time I listened to a song on repeat.

I'm a mid-thirties woman who writes code for a living. The narrator is only half me. I share her disillusionment and disgust towards Musk and his ilk, but I haven't yet permanently broken up from my vocation in the way that potrzebie so aptly describes. We've broken up multiple times, but I keep circling back, trying it from different angles. Maybe this time it'll work out?

I come from scientists and atheists and white men who kill God
Oh dog I love this line. Perfect.

And the real tragedy is half of it was true
And this is what keeps me circling back. I try to evangelize that there are jobs where you can use programming skills for not-evil, in an attempt to counter the default career narrative that people who love code tend to follow. Trade the bullshit westcoast dogma and astronomical pay for merely excellent pay and a job with a non-disgusting mission. Maybe I'm just full of bullshit. Or stupidly lucky.

I can't believe you tore humanity apart
With the very same machines that could've been our brand new start
Yeah.

Thank you so much for posting it!
posted by Metasyntactic at 11:09 PM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]