What is The Emptiness Machine about? I think it’s about social media.
I’ve listened to Linkin Park’s new single The Emptiness Machine at least 50 times since it was released yesterday. It speaks to MY SOUL and I have strong feelings about what it means to me.
I’ve been a Linkin Park fan for more than 20 years. I vividly remember listening to Hybrid Theory in my graphic design class my junior year of high school. I learned how layers work in Photoshop while memorizing the lyrics to Runaway while listening on my headphones. As a sucker for nostalgia (I saw Creed in concert last month, for God’s sake), seeing Linkin Park return in 2024 returned all the feels to me.
I’m not big on, like… interpreting song lyrics? I don’t even know the lyrics to most of the songs I like. I don’t just mean that I don’t have them memorized; I mean that I’ve been hearing some of the same songs on the radio for decades and I have literally no idea what they’re talking about. But this song hits different. WAY different. So here we go.
The emptiness machine is social media
First, the context: I don’t know about you, but for the last 15-ish years, my experience interacting with strangers on social media has mostly been awful. Reddit is the literal worst. I’ve had multiple accounts for well over a decade, and the negative interactions I’ve had there have outweighed the positive interactions by a ludicrous margin. Fans of the site will make dumb excuses and justify Reddit as being a place that is not simply full of horrible, awful, toxic people, but I have a lived experience that is not that.
Twitter has a similar vibe, although once Elon Musk took over and I lost my coveted verified status when he made verification a paid feature, fewer people have been seeing my tweets, which means I’ve had fewer opportunities for aggressive engagement from complete strangers. But in the past, even my innocent tweets were often met by trolls I’d never met somehow finding them and ad hominem attacking me for whatever they said. (Appropriately, the worst interactions I’ve had on Twitter were when I engaged with Twitter accounts based on Reddit posts.)
I spend significantly less time on Meta platforms these days, but in the past, Facebook has led to many negative interactions with people I’ve actually met, and the brand accounts I’ve run on Instagram have been overrun with toxicity and negativity. And we all know to never read the comments on YouTube (that’s basically a golden rule of the site).
There are countless scientific papers and articles you can find online that quantify how bad social media is for your mental health in general, so if you can’t relate, then you’ll just have to trust me, literally science, and probably several million other people on this one: social media is generally bad.
The emptiness machine from the titular song, in my view, is a stand-in for social media, and the unnamed “you” in the song is the “you” that is the general character of the worst users on those sites. It tracks with my experience almost exactly and does an uncanny job of characterizing the (usually) faceless/anonymous mob that is seemingly waiting for any opportunity to just cut people down mercilessly.
Breaking down the lyrics of The Emptiness Machine
Looking at the lyrics line by line, this all tracks with my experience using social media.
Your blades are sharpened with precision
Flashing your favorite point of view
“Blades” refer to the barbs and other insults and takedowns that complete strangers seem to have refined to the point of perfection. “Flashing your favorite point of view” refers to the way their beliefs are cemented in their minds and ready to show off at a moment’s notice. Do you have a nuanced opinion of a politician or geopolitical event anywhere in the world? Well, then, prepare for someone you’ve never met to stab you with their well-crafted, completely inflexible opinion that has been “sharpened with precision.”
I know you’re waiting in the distance
Just like you always do, just like you always do
“Waiting in the distance” means that oh, don’t worry: they’re coming for you. As I write this blog post, I know they’re coming. Someone will comment about how stupid this theory is. Or about how I look bad physically. Or about some past post I’ve made is bad. Or even about their belief that the new lead singer of Linkin Park is a bad person because of her personal life, thus meaning that I shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy nice things. I had originally considered sharing this blog post on Reddit, but I feel there are FEWER people waiting in the distance on my website than there are on Reddit. But they’ll still come “just like [they] always do.”
Already pulling me in
Already under my skin
And I know exactly how this ends
I feel compelled to write. The internet is always “pulling me in” and tempting me to share my opinion with… someone. Anyone? A certain audience? It’s the curse of social media. I already feel anxiety about having to deal with the blowback from sharing my opinion here. The online stranger is “already under my skin.” I am already mad at someone I don’t even know exists. “And I know exactly how this ends.”
I Let you cut me open just to watch me bleed
This is important: I enabled, and am continuing to enable, this situation to happen. I am still here. I am still posting. I am going to let some random person on the internet, whether I know them or not, “cut me open,” and as far as I can tell, they’re doing it “just to watch me bleed.” Nobody gains anything from shitting on a blog post from some random suburban dad who just wants to share his thoughts. Yet here we are.
Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be
Don’t know why I’m hopin’ for what I won’t receive
I haven’t given up who I am, exactly, in this post. But how many of us have given up who we are for what others wanted us to be? How many times have you self-censored yourself online, or edited something you wanted to say, or only spoken up about certain topics because you didn’t want to be rejected by a group?
I once interviewed a researcher at Cornell University for the podcast I produced and hosted for Discovery, and she had incredibly compelling research regarding the power of exclusion. People are hard-wired to handle rejection from groups very poorly. In her studies, she had participants play online games with strangers, and those participants were purposely “excluded” from some of the games they played. Those participants felt very bad even if the researchers told them that the theoretical strangers with whom they were gaming online were reprehensible people, like members of the KKK. (The research was ongoing at the time, and I have not followed up to see if anything was published. But the initial findings were striking and have always stuck with me.)
Social media is the worst manifestation of groupthink and of exclusion. Part of what I hate so much about Reddit is that feeling of exclusion. Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to it, but I feel it, and there is no social media platform that can make you feel excluded the way Reddit does. You can be banned from subreddits for simply expressing an opinion (or even asking a simple question!) that runs contradictory to the dominant beliefs of the group.
We’ve all had little dopamine hits from likes or upvotes online, but in general, when I post something, I don’t get an overwhelmingly positive response or end up feeling accepted by this elusive, anonymous group of supposedly like-minded people with whom I’m trying to interact. I genuinely “don’t know why I’m hopin’ for what I won’t receive.”
And even looking at it less cynically: let’s say you give up who you are for what social media algorithms or groups want you to be and you aren’t rejected outright; even if you’re accepted, what then? What will you truly receive? What do you think you’ll get from a screen? Are you hoping for something you won’t receive?
Fallin’ for the promise of the emptiness machine
The emptiness machine
But that’s the promise of social media, right? To connect us? To make us feel accepted, or like we’re part of something? If you actually believe in that promise, then you’ve fallen for it. You, like many others, are “fallin’ for the promise” of social media — the emptiness machine.
Goin’ around like a revolver
It’s been decided how we lose
Which of the revolver’s bullets do you want to take? The Facebook bullet of your high school friend or coworker commenting on your post that you’re supporting the wrong political candidate or cause? The Twitter bullet of not having the “right” response to the latest school shooting or bombing in the Middle East? The Reddit bullet of asking a “stupid question” to a supposedly helpful subreddit that claims to want to help educate people about something? How many times have you switched tabs in your web browser like a game of Russian Roulette to see which feed you want to fall prey to next? “It’s been decided how we lose” by the algorithms that reward the toxic behavior that makes you feel bad about yourself. It’s already out of our hands.
‘Cause there’s a fire under the altar
I keep on lyin’ to, I keep on lyin’ to
Silicon Valley tech giants are gods in the religion that is American capitalism. You’re worshipping at the altar of social media success. The altar of Mark Zuckerberg generating billions of dollars in revenue, the altar of Elon Musk being able to buy up a major social media site and play with it like it’s a toy, the altar of the Snapchat guy turning down Facebook’s offer to buy them for billions of dollars.
The “fire under the altar” refers to the steps these platforms are taking to achieve endless growth. They need to satisfy their investors with an infinite upward trajectory driven by an insatiable increase in on-platform engagement.
Put simply, they’ve decided “how we lose” because of the profit-driven fire being put under their ass to keep us there. When they need growth, they do whatever they can to get us to waste more of our lives on their platforms, regardless of whether it’s good for us. They decide how we lose. And because their algorithms don’t care about authenticity or reward anyone for being their true self, these platforms are the ones you “keep on lyin’ to” in order to try to be seen or heard by others.
(Or, alternately, the “fire” refers to the eventual decline or even downfall of social media giants if people smarten up and use them less and/or politicians restrict or ban them. We all keep lying to TikTok even though it’s on “fire” and could be legally banned in the US at some point.)
Already pulling me in
Already under my skin
And I know exactly how this ends
This brings the song full circle back to being pulled in… to the next social media temptation.
(Or technology temptation, if you want to take it a step further; does your iPhone 14 addiction bother you? Then why are you camping out in front of a store at 3 a.m. waiting in line to buy an iPhone 15?)
Remember when Meta debuted Threads? People were looking for an alternative to Twitter after it was acquired by Elon Musk, so suddenly Threads popped up as a Twitter clone attached to Instagram. I’ve been on Twitter for 15 years. What you need to understand about Twitter culture is that a LOT of people on Twitter perceive Twitter as a horrible place to be. I have made comments in many past tweets about how it’s a cesspool and it’s a curse to be there. When my Twitter anniversary comes up, I inevitably make a comment about how I can’t believe I’ve let it make my life worse for yet another year. Yet when Threads showed up, many people actually signed up for it.
WHY?
We used Twitter. We saw people were terrible. Meta (which was already facing a ton of bad press due to all the horrible mental health problems Instagram has been causing for the last several years) launched a nearly identical service and people flocked to it. It surpassed 30 million signups in 24 hours. It was “already pulling [people] in.” It was already under many people’s skin. And we all knew exactly how it would end.
(Well, actually, growth and user engagement dropped significantly, so it kind of petered out. But some people are still on there, and I am going to go out on a limb and guess that those people have had negative interactions on the platform.)
Let you cut me open just to watch me bleed
Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be
Don’t know why I’m hopin’ for what I won’t receive
Fallin’ for the promise of the emptiness machine
It hits different this time, doesn’t it? Knowing that you’re trapped in a cycle of trying to be someone else in order to be accepted by the toxicity that is social media.
I only wanted to be part of something
I only wanted to be part of, part of
I only wanted to be part of something
I only wanted to be part of, part of
I only wanted to be part of something
I only wanted to be part
Sometimes I feel sad when I make a good faith effort to participate in something and I’m not allowed. When I want to share my thoughts in a conversation or ask a question or try to get people to think about something. I “only wanted to be part of something.” Don’t we all?
But social media is not the place where that happens.
I let you cut me open just to watch me bleed
Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be
Don’t know why I’m hopin’, so fuckin’ naive
Fallin’ for the promise of the emptiness machine
The emptiness machine
Why are we so fuckin’ naive?
Other interpretations of The Emptiness Machine
I won’t go deep into other interpretations, but in the day or so since the song was released, I’ve seen a couple prevailing interpretations. One is that the band is talking about the pressure of trying to please faceless fans who never seem to get enough, and the other is that Emily Armstrong is singing about some of her past experiences in her personal life.
I love Linkin Park because every interpretation I’ve mentioned here is valid and can work. This song speaks to my social media demons. Maybe for Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Phoenix and Joe Hahn, it speaks to their struggles as a band. Maybe for Emily, it addresses her own demons.
I’m not here to tell you what to think. But I’ve always loved Linkin Park because of their relatability. And in my opinion, I think fans would be better off trying to find what speaks to them than trying to psychoanalyze a bunch of musicians they’ve never met and guess how their specific personal feelings shaped their songs.
And that is exactly the kind of thoughtful sentiment that I would never share on Reddit.
A poem about carpet squares
Today’s poem—or, more precisely, the poem I wrote on March 27, 2003—will test the old adage “write what you know,” as its subject matter is something with which we’re all perhaps too familiar: carpet squares.
I don’t believe the classrooms in my high school even had carpeting, so I’m not sure why this particular topic inspired me to write a poem in my high school creative writing class, but here we are: my poem about carpet squares, followed by some nonsensical paragraph that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything:
Actual advice for writing poetry, plus a poem that utilizes none of it
First off, you’re welcome for the ABSOLUTELY FREE NOTES I’m about to give you from my Very Professional Public High School Education. It’s your (or your parents’) tax dollars that paid for this, and I’m nothing if not completely willing to help you maximize your return on investment. Read and learn, then be completely befuddled by whatever may follow:
It’s like I just assumed my teacher wasn’t going to read this
This post is kinda sorta the direct sequel to a real cliffhanger of a post, but while I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit to get to today’s (re: ~12 years ago’s) poetry, I’d like to first hastily explain what is about to happen in the three poems below:
- The first “poem” is total garbage. It’s a reluctant apology for doing something I did not consider wrong; I don’t know exactly what it was, but I am clearly just being whiny.
- The second “poem” is a continuation of the first, mostly because we’d just learned about Emily Dickinson, and apparently my major takeaways were “she capitalized seemingly random words” and “she used dashes seemingly at random,” leading my parodic slant to what we’ve got here (other than failure to communicate).
- The third poem was probably something I wrote in 2 minutes to show to Brynn, my awesome/hilarious friend who sat by me in class and laughed at most of the things I said/did, which is a thing that made her (and frankly anyone else) worthy of my attention, as I was (am) a charismatic young teenager who was always fond of a little extra ego boost.
Hopefully that introduction will alleviate somewhat the horror art you are about to experience:
Poetry about enigmatic smiles and offending everyone
This one’s gonna be a doozy.
You see, back on March 26, 2003, I apparently offended someone. This officially puts me Ahead of My Time, as these days, literally everyone is constantly offended all the time always, forever. In fact, I’m ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE that the previous sentence just offended someone. And my use of caps lock very likely triggered at least half a dozen people, who will now go blog about it on Tumblr and talk about how I oppressed them by thinking independent thoughts. Ha ha, just kidding—both you and I know that fewer than half a dozen people will ever actually read this.
To be clear, I was actually not even being that hyperbolic in the previous paragraph: in the image you are about to see below, I had to actually crop out half of my “apology,” because even MY APOLOGY would be too offensive for people in a hyper-politically-correct 2015, where Internet Peoples’ skin is about as thick as a sheet of tissue paper wrapped tightly around a blazing pile of firewood.
That having been said, here is the latter half of my apology, followed by a poem about… well, you’ll see (that’s what we call a “tease” in THE BIZ):
That time I felt the need to explain the concept and use of satire to my Creative Writing teacher, because High Schoolers
Thotes (or, “oh dear God, he’s back”)
Photo credit: J.J. Abrams
So, like two years ago or something, I had this awesome idea: a “creative reunion” of sorts, if you will, as it were, so to speak, if you like, as it please, and so on, et cetera. The idea was that I’d take my high school notes and upload them to this site along with commentary exactly ten years after writing them.
Unfortunately, at the time of my stroke of genius in identifying a somewhat unique outlet for my creativity, I didn’t have what you’d call “any support” from what you’d call “my heinous ex-girlfriend” whom you could say “everyone hated because she was a monster”—and I mean that less as a judgment of character and more as an efficient way to describe her physical scales, tendency to breathe fire, and flailing tentacles made out of lies and betrayal. But I digress.
The “creative reunion,” as I called it, fell apart, because when you spend most of your time with someone who validates neither you nor your creative works, you get discouraged and abandon them. And thus, The Internet was spared for over two years, and there was peace.
Well now I’m back… TO RUIN THAT.
I’ve got an itch to write again. Unfortunately, due to the popular convention commonly known as the “calendar,” it is no longer chronologically possible for me to resume a ten-year reunion, as it is now over 12 years later, and “dozen-year reunion” sounds like a stupid Dunkin Donuts marketing scheme, and “twelve-year reunion” employs a number which is a multiple of neither five nor ten, and it’s not amateur hour, so NO THANKS. I also lost my place in terms of where I left off, as I’d scanned literally my entire notebook (which only cost about $1,367.81 at Kinko’s, because Kinko’s) at the time of the reunion’s conception. So now I’ve got to figure out naming conventions and trying not to post multiple times and a bunch of other stuff that literally only matters to me because I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and which you will literally never notice. Or care about. I’m glad, then, that I just devoted an entire paragraph to discussing it.
Speaking of paragraphs, my point is that I’m going to change some names, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
Thotes.
I took notes in high school, and now I’m going to tell you my thoughts on them, and so when you combine the two words, you get a stupid portmanteau that both looks and sounds utterly stupid. Which is why it’s perfect for this site!
So prepare for some thotes. Unless I wake up tomorrow and change my mind on a whim, in which case disregard this entire post.
In the meantime: prepare your body. It’s gonna be quite a ride.
Viet-Mom
Welcome to CodyGough.com! This may be your first visit, because it’s my birthday, and I’m using the powers of Facebook to trick people into visiting promote my web site. Welcome, and enjoy. I host episodes of Unqualified: A Video Game Podcast here, as well as post stories and poems that are ten years old. I will eventually do more stuff, but I wanted to start simple in 2013.
With that out of the way: exactly 10 years ago, I had an idea. Inspiration like you would never expect. In addition to incredibly artistic drawings of characters from Super Smash Brothers: Melee, I came up with the premise to a story of epic proportions. Observe!
A CHILLING TALE INDEED.
Transcript:
VIET-MOM
The chilling tale of one Asian woman who bore an entire nation, only to one day be betrayed by her own uterus. Witness the gripping re-enactment of one pedophiliac cannibal’s quest for her “golden children” through the exotic jungles of such countries that start with the letter “T” as Tahiti, Tijuana, and Taiwan. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll cry some more, as the journey takes you through four hundred years of tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire.
A few things:
- Yes, I know I didn’t originally write “Asian,” but the word I DID use wasn’t politically incorrect yet when I wrote it. So sue my 10-years-ago-self. I actually am sorry if that offended you, though… just keep in mind, this was written by a high schooler in a different time. That’s all.
- I’m pretty sure that tragedy, comedy, romance and satire were like, the 4 types of stories we studied in English class. We had also watched Apocalypse Now in class, which I’m sure inspired this entire poem.
- I have no idea where Tahiti is. And I hate myself for ending the previous sentence in a preposition. But at least now I’ve shown that I did learn something in school, so I’ll call that a win.
Look, I never said that none of my stuff would be offensive (DAMN YOU, DOUBLE NEGATIVES), so please keep in mind that a high schooler wrote this stuff and that the “big picture” of my entire 10-year project is to entertain. Sometimes that includes shaking your head in my general direction. Other times, that means seeing my INCREDIBLY ARTISTIC ARTISTRY, especially applied to video games.
Anyway, I went on a kind of sabbatical from my web site in March, but you can look forward to seeing a lot more of my high school genius in April. Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoy my little project and decide to check out other parts of my site, and more importantly, I hope I can entertain you again soon, because I honestly think making people smile is why I was put on God’s Green Earth®… even if only because I have no other real skills.
Speaking of earth, I like how on my Apple keyboard, I can simply type Option+R to make the ® symbol, but on my Windows 8 laptop, I have to type Alt+0174. HOW DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Poem: The Konami Code
If you want to test someone to find out if (s)he is a “real” gamer, then ask about the Konami Code. It’s a cheat code used in several Konami games, but for whatever reason, it became so iconic that other video games also started to utilize it, and has become so prevalent in pop culture that ESPN, Facebook, and Google have featured it in Easter Eggs on their web sites. It’s kind of a big deal.
The Konami Code, by the way, is up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, usually followed by start or select and then start. I did that from memory. Be impressed… or don’t, since I just talked about how familiar every gamer should be with it.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about it. Please enjoy it.
I only had to use three continues before finishing this poem!! … which… doesn’t even make sense
Transcript:
Look at you!
Look at me
Look at you
Looking at nothing
BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST?
What’s it to you,
Super nerd?
I don’t think so—
Not this time—
So let me look around,
Look inside,
Pretend I believe in your fictional lies!
I’m gonna flip,
Iron Will;
Shoot to thrill, play to kill!
Stolen line just like the rest,
Unoriginality’s always been the best,
So do it sideways, up,
Up, down, down,
Left, right, left, right,
B, A, B, A,
Start the fight
Cause I’m gonna win,
Your chance was gone when I turned you on,
And now you’re gone, worse off than Pong,
Made obsolete by myself the 1337,
And when you scream I flip the switch
And live to fight another day.
Game Over, bitch.
Analysis:
- This is awful.
- Yes, I realize it’s not really about Konami. Or the Konami Code. Or anything.
- “1337” is pronounced “leet” (like “elite,” but without the “e”), in case you aren’t nerdy enough to immediately realize that.
- “And live to fight another day” is what the major bad guys (Bebop, Rocksteady, The Shredder, Krang) yelled all the time in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. So yes, that’s stolen, too.
- This… wow, this is awful.
I hope you were mildly entertained by this. Just remember: you can write better poetry than me. Sometimes I write decent stuff, but with this, I have officially set the bar so low, you can’t possibly do much worse. I’m gonna go punch the Konami Code into a controller for a while now.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
A poem I can’t really explain
Fair warning: I have no idea what motivated this poem. It includes a lot of vocabulary words and is kind of emo, at least for me. So good luck getting through it:
Holy vocabulary, Batman
Transcript:
I cry, enraged;
Interneccine, intractable, intolerable
Living a lie because the truth hurts
The truth, just as myself:
Intangible, impractible, intolerable
Just as hard to reach as
An echo in a cave
But deep within they lie
Investigate, intrude after all
Invincible You, Invidious You,
Inviolate Me, Invisible Me;
Interjected by hope.
By love – But for Whom?
Insanity for me
As if I could even tell
It interrupts the thoughts I can’t understand
They intrude, they intrude,
But into nothing at all.
People want me,
People need me,
But they don’t see me
So do they use me?
Symbiotic
People use people
And in the end, enraged,
I cry.
A few things:
- The second line roughly translates to “murderous, obstinate, intolerable.” Later on, “impractible” isn’t a real word, “invidious” means “hateful,” and “inviolate” means “unharmed.”
- I think the tone of the poem is too dark for me to have been simply messing around with alliteration, as I’ve done in previous poems, unless I was simply too angry while writing this angry poem to heed the English language.
- “An echo in a cave” refers directly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, although I don’t necessarily understand the context.
I must have had a bad day or something when I wrote this. Do you see any universal truths in this poem? Any statements about human nature? It’s hard for me to look at any of my old poetry objectively and try to read it out of context, which is both problematic for presenting my old works to the general public, and frustrating because maybe that’s now really the point.
This poem really sticks out to me because it isn’t sarcastic or irreverent, but it’s also really abstract compared to a lot of my other stuff. Like, generally, I see something and think to myself “okay, I get where that came from,” but this one is just like… totally out of left field. I hope you find some enjoyment out of it, because I can’t find much value in terms of poetry or reminiscence.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Cody Gough (dot net) 
That time I analyzed my creative writing class
I’m back from my summer vacation—and boy, are my arms tired!
But seriously, folks: it’s been a long year. Let’s celebrate the fact that we’ve nearly reached the end of our annual trip around the sun by reviewing that one time I analyzed my creative writing class:
Please Share This!