"Car Radio" by twenty øne piløts as a glimpse into our dystopian future

The future is brilliant, autistic, and fascistic

It terrifies me to write this article but that’s exactly why I must write it.

Lots of pop singers are vaccine-injured these days. It makes sense of course. With about 90% of kids in developed countries over-vaccinated, it follows that the cultural elites of that generation will also be injured in some way. And the market — the people buying music — will be largely made up of people who relate to the artistic musing of performers who are like them.

Sia appears to be on the spectrum and performs behind a blond wig or via a younger alter ego actor.

Billie Eilish has Tourette’s.

But I’m particularly fascinated by twenty øne piløts and the public adoration for this duo.

Let me start by saying that twenty øne piløts is brilliant. The name of the band is a reference to the play “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller about a man who commits suicide after causing the death of twenty one pilots during World War II because he knowingly sent them faulty parts after concluding that recalling the parts would bankrupt his family.

The lead singer of twenty øne piløts is Tyler Joseph and he is quite open about his battles with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. But when I listen to his music and watch his videos, I see someone who is high-functioning on the autism spectrum. If you have lots of experience with people on the spectrum I think that you’ll see it too.

twenty øne piløts songs are like nursery rhymes. They are simple, child-like, and incredibly catchy (you hear one of their songs once and then it runs through your head the rest of the day). A song they released in 2015 titled Stressed Out blew up and made them world-famous. The lyrics are not just nostalgic for the innocence of childhood but rather feel like some sort of arrested development — and that feeling is amplified by the video that shows the now-adult Tyler wearing a backpack and riding a fancy Big Wheel tricycle around his old neighborhood. Here are some of the lyrics:

I was told when I get older
All my fears would shrink

But now I’m insecure
And I care what people think
My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think
My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think

Wish we could turn back time
To the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep
But now we're stressed out

“Blurry face” appears to be a reference to prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, which is a disorder where people struggle to recognize other people’s faces. Lots of celebrities have prosopagnosia and the sharp rise in prevalence of this disorder seems correlated with the increased childhood vaccination schedule as well.

The song is fine, it’s cute, it’s clever, it won a Grammy. But then I noticed that on YouTube the video has 2.4 BILLION views and thought to myself, wait, now hold on, what’s going on here?

It seems that there are an astonishing number of people out there who identify with this song.

But what I really want to direct your attention to is the video for their song Car Radio released in 2013. The song is a jam and I think the video offers us a terrifying glimpse of our future.

The plot of the song and video are simple, straightforward, and then alarming:
Tyler gets his car radio stolen
So then he sits on the floor of a bathroom and stims.
Then he shaves his head.
Then, how to describe what happens next…
The video morphs into a cross between an ASD meltdown and a 1930s fascist rally at Nuremberg.
And everyone in the room just gets it.

It’s like watching a car crash — it’s terrifying, but you cannot take your eyes off of it.

Viewed 275 million times thus far, it seems that lots and lots of people identify with this narrative arc. It just makes sense to them — but it won’t to anyone over 35. The song is Smells Like Teen Spirit but for Generation Z. I will note that Smells Like Teen Spirit was satire. Unless I’m completely missing something, Car Radio is not:

The mistake that I and others make is to assume that rising costs of vaccine-injury will lead to collapse. It will, but not right away. In the meantime, capitalism is incredibly flexible and it adapts to almost anything. So we are entering a long period where the market adapts to vaccine-injury and it becomes part and parcel of our culture, economy, politics, society, and art.

So what does that new culture look like? It’s brilliant (because lot of people on the spectrum are absolutely brilliant), autistic (social relations are hard, meltdowns are frequent and long), and fascistic (not quite sure why, but something about both the extreme need for order and an excited energy that is untethered from traditional ethics seems to be part of what happens with society-wide vaccine injury).

I could be completely wrong about all of this. But ask yourself the question — why are both major political parties in the U.S. drawn to fascism right now? I think it’s because there is a huge market for it, neurologically, in the population, because so many people, particularly those 35 and younger, are vaccine-injured. Over the coming decade autistic authors, autistic singers, and autistic politicians, to name a few (all high-functioning of course) will be in great demand.

In making these observations I am not being politically correct. But political correctness has become a tool of totalitarianism and so I think it’s time to speak frankly about how widespread neurological injury is impacting society.

Obviously it’s fraught to analyze a pop music video and claim that it tells us something about the larger social/cultural moment. And yet, what better way to tap into the emotional currents of our era? Watching this video I felt like I was watching a glimpse of the future that is already here now.

In the comments please let me know what thoughts came up for you as you watched the video?

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