Did you ever get the feeling that your iTunes “shuffle” feature isn’t actually all that random?
In fact it seems rather pointedly specific. Combining songs that go really really well together, or matching situations that you find yourself in with music exactly right for that situation? Think I’m crazy? Check out what happened to me.
So there I am, taking the train into the city this morning, listening to my Morrissey/Smiths play list while reading Business Insider.com (Hey it’s what I do, leave me alone). The article was a particularly disturbing one about how the sudden drop by the Dow may have been intentional.
It claims that while the Dow was dropping, the politicians on the hill were deliberating new regulations to impose on Wall Street Firms.
Read it here. Then continue reading, I’ll wait.
Did you read it? Are you as scared as I am? Essentially, it states that the 1000 point drop was a shot across the bow, reminding politicians who is actually in charge here: The Wall Street Firms.
As the article is making this point, “Shoplifters of the World” comes on with these haunting lyrics:
Shoplifters of the world
Unite and take over
Shoplifters of the world
Hand it over
Hand it over
Hand it over
The lyrics seemed to make more sense as I was reading, but iTunes was trying to make the comparison that the big Wall Street firms were the ‘Shoplifters’ and they’re ‘Taking Over’.
Coincidence? Possibly. But then, as if on cue, what comes on next but ‘Panic’ the defacto anthem for social unrest. With lyrics such as:
Could life ever be sane again?
and
Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
The footage in this video is from the G-20 Summit protests in 2009. Then they were protesting (among other things) disquiet over economic policy, anger at the banking system and bankers’ remuneration and bonuses.
Ok, still a coincidence? What came on next completely blew my mind. It was a short little diddy from Viva Hate titled ‘Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together’ with these ominous lyrics:
I know they take
and that they take in turn
and they give you nothing real
for yourself in return
and when they’ve used you
and they’ve broken you
and wasted all your money
and cast your shell aside
and when they’ve bought you
and they’ve sold you
and they’ve billed you for the pleasure
and they’ve made your parents cry
I will be here
BELIEVE ME
I will be here
After that was ‘You’re the One For Me Fatty’, obviously the Oracle had finished telling me what it needed to.
Has anyone else had strange experiences with iTunes Shuffle? Please post them below.
You’ve achieved Oneness with Shuffle. Thing is, lots of people report this, so it’s not a fluke. It happens to me most often these days visually.I have two monitors up when I edit, both generating random images to the desktop. My son is in art school, and the other day one of my monitors randomly displayed a drawing of one of his recent projects and the other monitor displayed a four leaf clover. I emailed him about it, and a short time later me emailed me back to tell me that he’d won a school-wide competition to put the design into production. Researchers playing around with random event generators have found that people can influence the sequence – changing it from random to not so random.