On Social Media
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2019
Original album - Agenda (EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Tim Powell
Subsequent albums -(none)
Other releases - (none)
The second track on the 2019 Agenda EP continues the satirical social-commentary thread of its predecessor, "Give Stupidity a Chance," only this time focusing —as the title clearly states—on social media. The core message is that, while the
While democracy is losing its way
And greed is getting greedier
Console yourself with a selfie or two
And post them on social media
The lyrics catalogue the many ways in which people use such social media tools as Twitter and Facebook in efforts to improve their image, both to themselves and to others, and to achieve a sense of belonging—or, as the song puts it, feeling "part of the conversation." For the most part, the song paints a seemingly rosy picture (keeping in mind, of course, the satirical undercurrent). But Neil can't resist exposing social media's darker side as well:
And sometimes you can fuel the debate
By biting the hand that feeds ya
Expressing pure anonymous hate
When you're on social media
My favorite part, however, is when he slips in a linguistic meta-reference—"You're feeling hashtag-blessed," possibly borrowed from Bruno Mars's 2016 hit "24K Magic"—that manages to cast the whole phenomenon in a more than faintly absurd light.
The Pet Shop Boys are hardly the first cultural critics of social media, and they may appear to be preaching to a choir of their fellow baby-boomers, who very often look askance at the obsession of younger generations with it—at least when they're not participating themselves. But their sarcastic sermon is devoted to a fundamentally lost cause. And, no doubt, they know it.
Annotations
- The song's official lyric video very cleverly presents itself as a series of smartphone screens, complete with text that employs social media shorthand (such as "r" for "are" and "urself" for "yourself") and a good many hashtags (#). When the lyrics were published on the Pet Shop Boys' official website, more conventional spelling was used instead, except for the one instance in which such an item is specifically called out in the wording: "#blessed" as opposed to "hashtag-blessed." It's also worth noting that, while the lyrics naturally enough include a good deal of social media terminology ("Wikipedia," "tweets," "retweeted," "hashtag") that's commonplace and familiar to the vast majority of contemporary listeners, this may not always be the case. Today's social media may be tomorrow's passé tech.
- It may be a stretch, but one might regard this song's title as a bit of a pun. While it's clearly derived from the recurring phrase in the lyrics referring to people being "on social media"—that is, using it—the title also adheres to a convention, dating back hundreds of years (even thousands of years if you consider the translations of ancient texts from other languages) in which the titles of essays and other works that cover matters of import sometimes begin with the word "On," as in probably the most famous example, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Even some poetic works, such as John Keats's On a Dream, follow this convention. In these cases, the work is "on" or "about" the object of the preposition. This song is therefore "on" the subject of social media, thereby giving the title two meanings.
In fact, one of my site visitors has suggested that it might even have three meanings. Many people these days are essentially addicted to social media in much the same way that others are addicted to a drug. So just as a drug addict may be said to be "on drugs," a social media addict might likewise be described as being "on social media."
- "You're ready to pontificate" – The verb pontificate, which means to express one's opinions in a pompous and/or dogmatic manner, is derived from the noun pontiff, which refers specifically to the Pope. Although it hasn't always been the case, the word now carries strongly negative connotations that have become essentially part of its modern definition.
- While the qualification of "Expressing pure anonymous hate" (anonymous being the key word) proves that the Boys were not thinking of themselves when they describe "fuel[ing] the debate by biting the hand that feeds ya," one of my site visitors has noted that Neil might also consciously and playfully have been "fueling debate" by expressing opinions that he knew full well would upset at least some of their fans—the hands that feed them, the Pet Shop Boys, so to speak. Whether it was conscious and playful or not, however, that is precisely what occurred, with some PSB fans expressing dismay about Agenda in the days following the debut of its songs. And, yes, quite often anonymously.
- One other thing about the use of the word "anonymous" in this song – It's not inconceivable that Neil may also have been thinking of the hactivist group Anonymous, especially given that the official lyric video uses that group's infamous Guy Fawkes mask icon when that line appears. Then again, perhaps it was just a whim of the video's creator.
- "With a speed that couldn't be speedier" – A site visitor who holds a master's degree in mathematical physics has pointed out that "a speed that couldn't be speedier" would be the speed of light in a vacuum: exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, which is approximately 300,000 km/s or 186,000 mi/s. (That's notwithstanding Star Trek, Star Wars, and a host of other light-speed-exceeding science fictions, which usually get around the problem by warping the space-time continuum.) Although I've long considered Neil's language in this line to be figurative, another site visitor reminded me that it may actually be literal considering that the speed of transmission of data over the internet—especially now that optical wiring is increasingly common—indeed seriously approaches the speed of light.
- As suggested above, the song's reference to feeling "hashtag-blessed" (expressed as "#blessed" in the official lyrics) may be an intentional borrowing from the 2016 Bruno Mars hit "24K Magic," which uses the same expression. Then again, it may have been accidental. Without one or both of the Pet Shop Boys weighing in on it, there's no way of knowing for sure.
List cross-references
- Pet Shop Boys Satire
- Other songs in which Chris's voice can be heard
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- The Pet Shop Boys' 10 greatest protest songs (in an explanatory note following the main list)
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