Sockpuppet Blog.

Context

Once a year, Song Fight! people get together to do a show, Song Fight! Live, where we basically get together and do Song Fight! as an in-person live event. The original format from the first three years was that we’d have basically an in-person reprise of prior title challenges (with different musicians taking turns to play their songs for the titles), followed by what was essentially an open mic for songs people wanted to perform. In keeping with the challenge of Song Fight!, the event’s host would also provide a title for people to make a new song for, to be debuted at the show.

Starting in the fourth year, the title-based format stopped being feasible (due to the growing number of titles and the rarity of any two participants having had any of them in common), and it switched to a concert-festival format, with each participant doing a short performance set, but the final “live fight” challenge (with the debut of a new song) remained.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the format had to change; rather than meeting in person, we prerecorded videos that we would submit for presentation, and there would be a separate video presentation of the “live” fight songs, with a vote conducted online. The title in 2020 was “Better Luck Next Year,” which was… optimistic about how soon the pandemic would subside enough for us to reconvene in person.

2021 was still online-only, and the title selected for the live fight was “Behind a Mask.”

When this challenge was ongoing, I had recently moved from Seattle to a nearby small town in order to have more space for gardening and working on music, although I had not yet set up my new recording studio.

Inspiration

With the context of the world and everyone’s isolation, I was struck by just how much everyone had withdrawn and started to rely on social media for all interpersonal contact, and with how much this reliance on social media was distorting peoples' attitudes to one another.

At the same time, in this isolation, many people were forced to spend a lot of time alone, which leads to introspection and self-discovery. At the same time, Snapchat’s “gender swap” filter was leading a lot of people to experience gender euphoria for the first time, making them realize just how much dysphoria they were normally under without realizing it.

Meanwhile, so-called “deepfake” technology was getting extremely powerful and scary, and this was leading to a huge uptick in the number of scams being perpetrated on unsuspecting/unaware people, who didn’t realize that the person they thought they were dealing with did not exist.

The various algorithms that were impacting everyone’s lives were changing the way we thought about ourselves and others.

Lyrical meaning

Feeling lost in an elephant’s dream

This is in reference to how elephants purportedly never forget, and how the Internet is essentially a non-forgetting collection of facts that can be recalled at will, perhaps inaccurately. The specific phrase comes from the name of an open-source short film.

Caught up in the digital stream

This is, of course, in reference to how awash everyone is in a never-ending stream of social media posts, especially when trapped inside with nothing better to do than to sit at the computer.

Cave of shadows, can’t say what I mean

This is a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in combination with the acts of self-censorship people have to undergo in order to remain “polite” or to avoid hurting others' feelings, especially with regards to invalidating other peoples' truths.

A million miles far from home

Being stuck inside made one’s home feel like an unfamiliar, oppressive place. Many of us just wanted to get back to simpler times.

Best foot forward, take a step back

A reference to the Overton window and its related allegory: “Meet me halfway,” says the reasonable person; you step forward, they take a step back, and then once again say, “Meet me halfway.”

Play defense while on the attack

Bad actors have a tendency to play the victim while being the ones who are committing an offense. Figuring out who is really wronged, and what steps we must take to address that injustice, can be quite challenging.

Sowing discord, can’t cut them no slack

This line has a double meaning; the primary one is that people who spread misinformation and disinformation online have a tendency to then decry anyone who tries to correct their lies and mistruths, and how difficult it is to hold one’s ground in light of that.

The other meaning is that Discord and Slack very quickly took over as the communication platforms of choice, especially as alternatives to in-person communication and collaboration since offices had finally become recognized as unsafe breeding grounds for disease.

Everybody so alone

Because, you know. Isolation.

If everyone could see
themselves through some other eyes

Perhaps it was a wish for folks to try to understand where other people were coming from, perhaps it was a cry for a fresh perspective in general.

Innocent, caught up in the machinery
An algorithmic disguise

The entire premise of the song.

Making everything great again

A reference to a certain Presidential candidate and his tendency to always frame his positions as being a “common sense” return to greatness.

Forget about your family and friends

So many people I knew went down political rabbit holes never to emerge; factions formed, contact was broken off, so much hurt happened as a result of people getting caught up in particularly virulent cliques.

Looking for a means to an end

So many people got downright Machiavellian when it came to justifying their beliefs and opinions, especially through vilifying the “other.”

Just don’t want to be alone

Many destructive online communities became self-sustaining cliques where people are so caught up in their community that they dare not abandon the specific belief system that makes it a community to begin with.

Back in September, 2020, Dan Olson released an incredible video about the Flat Earth community which goes deep into this, and draws connections between it and some of the other communities I am indirectly addressing in this song.

Fragile gem, split in two

This line has another specific double meaning.

First of all, I saw a huge uptick in people who began to identify as plural, possibly because of how much time they were spending with themselves and where they started to notice (or perhaps build) lines around the different aspects of their personalities that make them whole. Sometimes it felt like people were purposefully breaking themselves apart, shattering into little shards that could never be reassembled.

Secondly, and more generally, this just referred to the much deeper political divide that had formed, separating society fully into diametrically-opposed camps.

Internal dialog of them versus you

This refers to both of the meanings of the previous line. Some of the plural systems were having a very difficult time agreeing with themselves. Radicalized people with strong political views would engage in straw man tactics to decide that people on the other side were inherently wrong because of what they believed each other to believe, even if those beliefs were not, you know, actually present.

Find acceptance with nothing to do
The voices there are all your own

And this continues the double meaning, with somewhat opposing meanings depending on which side you’re looking at.

If everyone could see
Themselves through some other eyes
Innocent, caught up in the machinery
An algorithmic disguise

No new meaning to this repeat of the chorus.

A deeper body ache

The stress of the Everything made a lot of chronic pain sufferers feel everything to the core.

And make a bad mistake
A million jumping on

Nobody ever wants to become the Internet’s main character. Make a fool of yourself in public by sharing an opinion, and you might just be branded a monster forever.

Sharing a bad take
Nobody can quite shake
The feeling that you’re gone

But sometimes people just dig in their heels, regardless of any impassioned pleas to the contrary, and sometimes everyone else just has to cut their losses and mourn the person they once knew.

[Caught up in/Woke up from] the elephant’s dream

This lyric was originally recorded as a repeat of the first line of the song, but when I perform it live it is now changed, to show a progression and an understanding that it’s possible to pull yourself out of these algorithmic traps.

Getting washed away by the digital stream

But being aware of the situation doesn’t itself solve the problem.

If it feels better to share another meme
Doesn’t make you less alone

A lot of people use memes and cultural touchpoints to bond with each other. There’s nothing wrong with that, but life needs to be more than just sharing the latest weird in-jokes with your circle, right?

Some notes

My explanation of the “fragile gem” section might be seen as saying something that I am not, and I want to go into further detail.

In no way am I calling for a centrist idea of civility between warring camps. Nor am I saying that there are correct ideas on “both sides.” Instead I’m expressing frustration on how there even are tribal “sides” to begin with, and how much the nature of the modern Internet and social media in particular have lead to this societal partitioning.

I am very much of the opinion that we need to do what’s best for each other, and that happens to put me firmly on one side of the divide that shouldn’t even exist to begin with. I’d love to see the gap get filled in, ideally with the corpses of the capitalist systems that created it to begin with. From where I’m standing I feel like things are too far-gone.

I hope I’m wrong, but things are likely going to get way worse before they can get better.

And regarding plurality, I am certainly not making a judgment call or claiming what’s right for people. I’m just observing that the state of the world has led to these internal fractures and that sometimes people are left duct-taping the pieces back together. Really, my belief is that everyone is made up of separate constituent parts, and what defines someone’s “self” as an integrated whole has no true objective basis. I just want to remind people that even if they are multiple individual shards, they still form a singular being, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

Making of the video

Most of the videos produced for the live fight were just people performing their song in front of a camera, sometimes with loved ones, sometimes overdubbing and editing things into a “live” assemblage. (If you like, you can see the entire event as it unfolded.)

I took a different approach, and in I went all-in on the “algorithmic disguise” aspect, using Snapchat filters to make myself appear to be a number of different things (including, at one point, an actual sockpuppet!), as well as a bunch of other video filters for various effects. All of the video footage was taken while I recorded those parts for the Song Fight! submission, although for the album I rerecorded the vocals. (Regrettably I hadn’t yet thought to make the “woke up” change at that point.)

As mentioned earlier, I had not yet set up my recording studio, so I recorded different parts of it in different rooms of my house. There was also a segment that I animated (the making of which was shown in a timelapse during the post-bridge instrumental). Some commenters thought that this was also a Snapchat filter (which I’d looked into doing and is the style I was going for), but I’d actually keyframed it manually and used EbSynth to interpolate the keyframes, with additional video effects to take stylistic advantage of where EbSynth fell short. I was specifically inspired by Joel Haver’s animation technique (and Joel was kind enough to watch my video and leave a nice comment on it).

The bit with Animal Crossing was in reference to how New Horizons came out at just the right time to become the game of the pandemic. By mid-2021 I was pretty bored with it, but I also happened to have an in-game wardrobe that reflected my real-life clothing and some accessories; I’m not sure how well it comes across in the video, but during the segment where I’m changing my clothes in-game, those changes are also reflected in real life.

I am not too ashamed to admit that playing with my appearance in Animal Crossing actually inspired some real-life stylistic changes at the time, too, including me adopting a new hairstyle for a while.

During the DDR segment I’m actually playing one of my own charts (specifically the one I made for Delicious Candy). I thought that imperfectly playing DDR to the lyrics “A deeper body ache / and make a bad mistake / a million jumping on” was too good to pass up. I was also purposeful at tearing the mask off (to breathe better) only for the camera to cut away just before my face becomes visible.

Aftermath

I did the entirety of the song — video and all — in just over two days.

A couple people complained about it being “over-produced” and losing sight of the purported Song Fight! Live ethos, even though I was working in the same time constraints as everyone else, while simultaneously dealing with not yet being fully set up in my new home. But people love to find things to complain about, I guess. (Which is what I’m doing right now, too.)

Neither the song nor the video won anything in Song Fight!, but it was the song that sparked me to finally complete the album Songs of Substance, which I’d been planning for a few years at that point. There’s some pretty good songs on that album, if I do say so myself! None of them are as deep or meaningful as “Behind a Mask,” but I’m particularly fond of A Long Plastic Hallway.