“Your Music, Your World” was the name of a 2023 Spotify Nigeria commercial, where a woman pops on her headphones, opens up Spotify’s home page, and clicks “Your Daily Mix,” before heading out for a walk around town. What comes next is strange. She stops to marvel at a wall of TV screens, where she sees several clones of herself posing as newscasters. “Hello and welcome to my daily mix,” one of them—her—says. She laughs and keeps walking, before buying a juice from, yes, another copy of herself. She pops into a hair salon, where everyone looks just like her. Next, she’s in a van, bopping along to the music, surrounded by a crowd of people, but they’re all her. “Playlists made just for you,” the narrator concludes. It illustrates in stark relief the deep individualism championed by this system.

— Mood Machine by Liz Pelly