The post from the other day on Nightwish's new single, in concert with my other recent post on personal "brands", has stayed on my mind.

Apparently, there's a significant contingent of Nightwish fans that are "WTF" and not quit sure they like it, or will come to like it. I can see that. Not my concern.

A lot of people have seen the first layer - the strong criticism of social media.

What keeps pulling my attention is how the name and symbolic elements encompass far more than that.

First - the video, more than the song itself, takes a strong swipe at virtue signalling. Not only people who want to be seen as pretty, popular, but with the environmentalist hugging trees and far more importantly showing himself to be protesting, holding a sign, etc. - it is a direct attack on those who wish to be seen as virtuous instead of embodying the substance.

Personal brand, right?

Second, social media is but one of the tools they explicitly criticise. The helmet cutting off all other information, the omnipresence of this false narrative fed to people with no exceptions, is why it called to mind Scruton's "Tyranny of Pop Music". This goes hand in hand with the explicit call-outs to Brave New World, about a world where people are crafted, from before birth, to be cogs in a machine. Where they are fed a steady diet of sex, drugs, and entertainment to keep them distracted.

In a very real way it is about the narrative, the media, as a whole.

Hell, they even have a poser metalhead.