As algorithms are deployed across society to assess and predict behavior, older modes of control based on normativity are in eclipse. The way we experience control has changed accordingly — it registers more in terms of “vibes” and “cringe” — as have the ways it can be resisted, not through revaluing antinormative behavior but through extending care-oriented practices like mutual aid.

It’s obvious that Peloton sells a kind of self-optimization — exercise as time discipline. But Spotify (a streaming service like Peloton) also trains listeners in how to attune emotionally to states (or vibes) that employers have deemed productive or speculatively valuable.

“Solfeggio frequencies” — sound ranges that purportedly can be used to “repair” mental and physiological maladies — are among the pseudoscientific wellness trends running rampant on social media platforms. They don’t do what they claim, but they do allow individuals to signal their willingness to assume personal responsibility for their health and reject structural fixes to what are ultimately social problems

It may seem strange for music scenes to spawn labor theories, but musicians, who were among the first gig workers, have long had to deal with challenges that neoliberalism has extended to more of the workforce.

Billie Eilish is the perfect music for a silent disco

Though psychographic profiling has been around for decades, big data analytics and distributed computing have made it easier and more powerful to execute and implement, capable of targeting not just populations or market segments, but individuals. Such big-data driven psychographics (often called “psychometrics”) purport to be capable of both perceiving and predicting individual preferences and behaviors. Replacing essentializing stereotypes with abstractions that better account for intersectionality and individual situatedness, psychometrics represents identity-based political categories in a way that superficially resembles the way progressive academics have urged for decades.