I’ve often seen music like this referred to in the comments and in video essays as “coworker music,” a term that’s existed for ages but has had a resurgence in the last few months. The basic idea seems to be lyrical-miracle white rap and over-the-top mainstream pop, the kind of stuff enjoyed by cringe, uncool colleagues who think “Astronaut in the Ocean” is peak culture. This phrase is also very popular on TikTok, where people rank the top “coworker” songs. The idea feels like a funny vestigial trace of a pre-pandemic world—Are watercooler topics still a thing? Is there even a monoculture to chat about?—but there’s also a twisted truth to it.

The internet is basically one big megacorporation now. We’re all coworkers in a rat race of posting and follower counts, feverishly trying to boost our digital clout. At its most depraved level, this is get-rich-quick music; these artist-grifters are like sycophantic workers debasing themselves for the Big Boss Algorithm. And the intention of this music, unlike with most other platforms, doesn’t seem to be to drive streams on DSPs like Spotify. Reels music is simply an end in itself, slop so sloppy it’s become its own sort of sonic font, an aesthetic guaranteed to rack up people raging and engaging in the comments.

After days of straight soaking myself in the Reels algorithm, my brain is dizzy and disturbed. My feed has devolved into a labyrinth of harrowing animations of creatures being mutilated, AI Robotheist phonk, Cars edits that look more like cursed Cocomelon, and occasionally this dude rapping about how his woman is so wet she’s like SeaWorld. It doesn’t have to be like this. But there’s also something strangely freeing and exhilarating about this damned realm. All this inanity might not qualify as “music,” but there’s still enjoyment to be derived from the witty insults in the comments, the crackedness of the spectacle, the way the algorithm hurtles between genres. It keeps you on the hunt, scanning for the next permutation of canny marketing, something truly genius. At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome.

What I’m listening to: