[Intro]

[Long Intro]

[Intro]

“Well…

At first it just felt mildly unusual…

Like what’s not on the menu at your favorite restaurant…

Or people who ask you for your middle name…”

[Verse 1]

Everybody’s smiling with their teeth but not their eyes

Like they learned it from a training video sometime in ‘95

The grocery store sells birthday cakes beside the pharmacy

Celebration and blood pressure medication in aisle three
The bank teller says “How are you?” before denying your loan

And both of you pretend that question wasn’t fully rhetorical

The waiter calls me “buddy” while describing dead sea animals

Like intimacy can be achieved through scripted casualness

[Pre-Chorus]

And nobody mentions how unusual this all is

We stand in lines beneath fluorescent light

Buying little pieces of survival

[Chorus]

Here is where things get strange

Everybody knows my face

But only from passwords and identification cards

The advertisements finish sentences in my head before I do

And every conversation feels pre-approved
We bury people in expensive boxes

Then argue over parking spaces

While the television explains

Which bottled water will make you whole

[Verse 2]

There’s a man on YouTube teaching strangers how to grieve correctly

An app that counts your breathing while increasing your anxiety

A coffee shop where everyone is working on a screenplay

About escaping modern life from inside modern life
The self-checkout machine thanks me for my honesty

Like theft is now the final proof of human authenticity

And every screen asks if I accept the terms and conditions
F
or things no living person can fully read

[Pre-Chorus]

We trade our fingerprints for convenience

Then act surprised

When the machines remember us

[Chorus]

Here is where things get strange

Children learn evacuation drills before cursive handwriting

The weather has corporate sponsors now

And loneliness arrives through high-speed internet
Everybody documents their breakfast

While quietly losing their minds

And somewhere in the distance

A drone photographs a sunset for insurance purposes

[Bridge]

There are warehouses larger than medieval cities

Filled mostly with replacement phone chargers
Somewhere right now

A man is apologizing to an automated menu
Someone fell in love today

Through an algorithm designed to increase engagement metrics
And honestly…
that seems stranger than ghosts

[Long Solo]

[Verse 3]

There’s an airplane overhead with three hundred people sleeping

Held aloft by mathematics almost none of them could explain

A teenager repairs friendships through a wireless signal

While unable to describe where wireless signals actually are
The cashier can’t explain the barcode

The mechanic trusts the diagnostic screen

The programmer copies code from forums

The professors cite papers they have not fully read
And all of us depend completely

On systems built from other systems

Balanced delicately upon assumptions

Nobody remembers making

[Pre-Chorus]

We live inside enormous machines

That convert mystery into convenience

And call it progress

As long as the lights keep turning on

[Chorus]

Here is where things get strange

We monetize our hobbies

Then wonder why they stop bringing joy
Every human emotion

Now comes with a subscription model

And the old man screaming at crows downtown

May actually understand something important
Here is where things get strange

Not suddenly

Not all at once
Just gradually enough

That nobody notices

The difference anymore

[Outror]

“…anyway…

Would you like to accept all cookies?”

[Outro]

[End Now]

[End]