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2025 Wrapped, Being Performative, Techno Future

December 6, 2025

This is a short blog post about some ideas I've been thinking about recently regarding 2025 Wrapped, being performative, as well as the future of technology and humanity. Y'know normal things. I'm writing this while I should be studying for my Programming Languages exam, but I couldn't focus, so hopefully writing this helpped me get into that. Anyway, please enjoy!

Hello all! I hope the start of the winter is treating you well! Just a warning that I go all over the place with this post, and get a little preachy, but I think I touched on some interesting topics, also at the end you can find my 2025 Wrapped.

Of course, with the start of December comes the infamous Wrapped, or recap, or whatever. I won't refrain from using any specific company name, but I'm not trying to mention them, well actually no, Spotify is an evil terrible company and I will critique them. This actually brings us nicely into my first point, in that Spotify does not deserve any praise and Should loose everything. Alas, they did create something that I think is genuinely kinda cool. If you're been reading my forum over the past couple of days, you may know where I'm going. I love Wrapped, I look forward to it, for my own stats, and to see others' stats. Is it just an excuse to steal your data? Yes. ALthough, in most scenarios where my data is being stolen, it's a net loss, because a lot of the time, I can't do anything about it, and I don't get anything from it. It's a pretty low bar, but Wrapped at least gives you something for taking your data.

The terrible practices of the music industry and data collection industry aside, I think that people sharing their music listening history for the year is awesome. It's a large scale social interaction that gives people insight into your life. Anyone who says that by sharing your Wrapped you're annoying people or looking for attention is low key a bit anti-social. I have zero problem with people sharing their interests on their personal social media; is this not what social media is for? If you have a problem with one post, once a year, then don't follow them. Even if I wholeheartedly disagree with someone's music taste, I still value them allowing me this insight into their life. I know Wrapped is often used as a sort of performative thing, like, "look at me I'm so cool, I have Kendrick Lamar as my number 1" (That's me btw) but I think that whole thing of performative being bad is really dumb. If you know me, then you might think that I'm just trying to cover myself by saying this, but although there can be actual problems if people are actually trying to deceive others like it is often said about performative males, putting on a character sleep with women, but I think that there has been propaganda spread and made it about something it's not. Yes, that is a problem if people are putting on a character with the sole intent of deceiving people, but what is authenticity really? I think that the scare of people being performative to trick you, is similar to someone saying that immigrants are going into America to do crimes. It's just a way to turn people against each other. If you're at your most authentic when you're by yourself, not doing anything, then what is anything? Of course I act differently around people, and I act differently around different people. If I came into work and treated my co-workers and boss like a professional, that would not be inauthentic, that would just be me at work. It would be weird if I acted like I do around my friends while I'm at work, that would be inappropriate for the setting. Judith Butler in her book 'Who's Afraid of Gender' describes how we are the people that we are in life. The act of performing your personality is who your personality is. While we may we born with certain things that guide our personalities, I can definitely say that my personality has come from a lot of work over the years, learning things, and choosing paths to become who I am today.

Anyway sorry about that, performative rant aside. I think it's cool to share you life with others and portray the person you want to be in the world. So post your Wrapped! The next point I have is about technology. I've already discussed my views on Spotify and while they take the cake for worst streaming company for reasons that don't even entirely relate to streaming, I feel similarly about streaming as a whole. I think that there is something to intentionally playing and searching for music, listening to mostly albums, instead of playlists, and I know, this point is subjective, but I like to own and be able to touch my music. I can be swayed on the physical part, but I think owning a copy is definitely something I like. So streaming, while providing so much choice and helping me listen to so much of what is my listening profile today, in my opinion it is not the penultimate option. At least if we are going to be fed the same music and not quite engage with it in the same way as we used to, we could at least have a half decent company, that pays the artists running it. This got me thinking about technology as a whole. The technological plane is looking rather bleak compared to the bright exciting future that appeared in my youth. Perhaps it was my youth that gave me rose tinted glasses for the future, but maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Of course when left unchecked and unrestricted, technology can become something no one (well not no one, but not me) wanted.

I was first thinking that if we didn't have streaming, how would we get something as cool as Wrapped, but I realized that we still could. Maybe not to the same scale or same format, but we could definitely still do it. Over the past year, as I have rekindled my interest in technology, I remembered the cool thing about tech is that it can be what you want. I feel like so much of tech is guarded and we are told that we must follow the systems laid out for us. While it's great that we can have systems that allow us to communicate over the web, we are often told how to use them, and what our limits are; this is simply not what I think technology is. A good system raises you up atop a foundation, it doesn't lock you in a box. It's useful for tech billionaires to keep you in that box because it's safer than giving you a hand up and risking that you surpass them. The line is thin, but I think it's walkable. If we exist in ambiguity, we need something to ground us and help us see the metaphysical beyond. I think that good technology and ideas can be a great help in this situation. Most big tech companies will say, "You want this goal right? okay here you go" in doing this, they assume your endpoint, and they actually suggest there is an endpoint, meaning you're basically stuck there, reliant on them unless you want to float into the void. If this doesn't make sense, then read literally any of my essays, there should be something along these lines.

So what should we do? I don't want to complain and provide no solutions. I think, that we really just need to fight back by educating ourselves, forming communities, and being more intentional with our lives. Learn things, find what's interesting to you, learn more, find friends, see that goal, and do what you think will get you closer to it. This doesn't have to apply to technology in particular either. Going back to Wrapped, if you want to move away from Spotify, and start a music collection, but don't want to miss out on sharing your music with the world and seeing how much music you listened to, you still can find a way. Whether it is a super technical way of tracking your music listening on your own and using data science to interpret it, or you do it analogue and track it using pen and paper, or a machine you made, whatever. At the end of the day, no matter what you do, you will have done something yourself and gotten somewhere you couldn't have while locked in a box. So to the question of what will I be doing? I don't know, now look at my wrapped!

AHHHH, she sent it to me personally!