Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

Okay, not rly. But still.

Well, in Brisbane I end up meeting and greeting some record label people, who are pleasant enough, and one of them is a sales guy, so I say "Why is this the case?" He goes "Because your packaging is a lot more expensive". I know how much the packaging costs -- it costs me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a CD with the colour-changing ink on it. I'm taking the hit on that, not them. So I said "Well, it doesn't cost $10 more". "Ah, well, you're right, it doesn't. Basically it's because we know you've got a core audience that's gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever". And I just said "That's the most insulting thing I've heard. I've garnered a core audience that you feel it's OK to rip off? F--- you'. That's also why you don't see any label people here, 'cos I said 'F--- you people. Stay out of my f---ing show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. F--- you guys". They're thieves. I don't blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s--- that they pull off.

Interesting revelation: the Year Zero alternate reality game was spurred by Reznor completely apart and isolated from the record label.

Well, their response, when they saw that it did catch on like wildfire, was "Look how smart we are the way we marketed this record". That's the feedback I've gotten -- other artists who've met with that label ask 'em about it: "Yeah, you like what we did for Trent? Look what we did for Trent". They've then gone on to try to buy the company that did it to apply it to all their other acts. So, glad I could help them out. I'm sure they still don't understand what it is that we did or why it worked. But I will look forward to the Black Eyed Peas ARG, that should be amazing.

Unsurprisingly, that company, 42 Entertainment, is also responsible for the web marketing of The Dark Knight, including IBelieveInHarveyDent.com and the ever-changing IBelieveInHarveyDentToo.com, which a few days ago gave us the first glimpse of the Heath Ledger Joker.

I'm deeply intrigued by the Year Zero alternate reality game, implemented by the same people who brought us I Love Bees, and as you might expect, this time it's refined, focused, and deeply disturbing. It's right up my alley, as it turns out, being a lifelong fan of apocalyptic/dystopic future storytelling, except I think we've hit a point where the number of thresholds we have to cross to go from present-day-life to horrific-dystopia is in single digits. But Year Zero's conceit -- that a planetary "subversive" movement uncovers a quantum-computing solution to send information back in time -- feeds into the form and function of its content (websites like IAmTryingtoBelieve.com, the chilling HollywoodInMemoriam.org, and my favorite, ThePriceofTreason.net, with their presentation similarly distorted by the time-travel), and despite recently-voiced warnings of the perils of worldbuilding, I'm waiting for the storyline to unfold further. Thematically it's a perfect synthesis of the fears of the future with the anxieties of today -- it's like a shelf of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Robert Heinlein crashed into a TV set showing FOX News -- with just a hint of potential redemption.

Of course, this has little to do with the actual Year Zero album, but I think it clearly transcends what we'd reflexively call "viral marketing" -- this isn't sticking Lite-Brites up in Boston; the ARG has become a narrative form in and of itself. What strikes me most about all of this, though, is that for all of the issues, for its potential relevance, for all of the ideas presented in Year Zero, it will never provoke as much discussion or dialogue as those Lite-Brites in Boston promoting a movie about a lump of meat, a carton of French fries and a hedonistic milkshake. Maybe we do deserve to be overrun by tin-hat tyrants and drugged into docility. And maybe we already have. I'm not giving up on the whole human race yet; I'm just starting one person at a time.