Amidst the AI revolution, we desperately need Arctic Monkeys anti-tech philosophy
On an evening run, bathed in early spring rain, I was listening to Arctic Monkeys’ “Batphone.”
Suddenly, a line I’ve heard many times before really clicks.
“Have I told you all about the time that I got sucked into a hole
Through a handheld device?
I will flashback now and again, but I'm usually alright”
I stop in my tracks. Is this fucking play about me?
I am voluntarily getting sucked into this hole everyday. I hate my phone but I’m too addicted to stop. So, I just blame the ~ modern life. ~
I just switch between the modes of overstimulated, yet underwhelmed. Overwhelmed, yet understimulated. In turn, I get convenience and entertainment.
Before, we had to worry about endless-scroll social media apps ruining our brain chemistry. Now, AI chatbots have entered the canon, promising us rapid, direct answers. Promising us to be our buddies. Our personal assistants. Our life coaches.
When discussing the AI takeover, we think of “Black Mirror.” Or “Her.” I believe Arctic Monkeys and Alex Turner, the lead songwriter of the band, deserve spot in that conversation. Though they do not address AI directly, their work touches on modern day technology usage.
Let me tell you all how my all-time favorite band has convinced me to change my social media, AI usage, and overall phone habits for good.
Tranquility Base Hotel – dreamy retro space with background jazz and no AI
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the album where Batphone’s from, is a concept album intended to be a “place where all retired rockstars go.” It’s set in 1969 and takes place on the moon.
I’m no retired rockstar, but I’d really like an invite to this glam, retro space where I could sip martinis. 3 green olives, glass frozen. I’d lounge on a burnt-orange sofa in a sunken living room. No hand held devices to suck me into a hole. No AI threatening to take my job.
I enjoyed Batphone and the album thoroughly before, appreciating its jazzy, avant-garde moments. But it has not resonated as much as it does in 2025. I long for a place and time like this. A little bit in the “I was born in the wrong generation” way.
Unfortunately, this is not my current reality.
So what is the current reality?
We think we don’t have a choice to opt out
Of course, I already knew: phone = bad. Social media = bad.
Modern life is very fast-paced. I don’t have a choice to opt out. I’m too scared to log off and miss an inside joke. What if I won’t know what “trench coat buttoned to the top” means?
I actually thought I was doing okay, in the grand scheme of things. I can keep a conversation without checking my phone. I can spend a couple of hours without it. It’s whatever.
And yet, I’m overstimulated and overwhelmed. All the time. Could it have something to do with…
Yet another thing to worry about…
We already know the negative effects of short form video content. We know what it does to your dopamine receptors & your ability to process information. It does bad, bad things.
But now, AI chatbots have entered the canon. My corporate job demands I use them to produce thoughtless content at an all-time-rapid pace. This past year, not a single work conversation goes without these two magic letters. You’d think I work at an AI company.
You can’t open a website without it begging you to use their new, AI-driven feature. A feature that doesn’t need AI, believe it or not.
But your company had to add it in. When you discuss the quarterly results, shareholders will be ecstatic you implemented some AI. Anywhere. They’ll be even happier if they get to cut half of a department. Fingers crossed!
To my beloved hypothetical shareholders, I think of you every time I hear this lyric. It comes from Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the title track. I know you feel this sincerely.
“Technological advances
Really bloody get me in the mood”
More than I’d like to admit, AI has also crept into my personal life. I use ChatGPT extensively.
The other day, I couldn’t think of a word. For the life of me. Google couldn’t help me with it, ChatGPT gave me an instantaneous answer. Another Batphone lyric comes to mind:
“I want an interesting synonym
To describe this thing
That you say we're all grandfathered in
I'll use the search engine (we've got much to discuss)”
Oh, Alex from 2018… You might be disappointed we’re no longer using our brains (or vocabularies) to find a word. You’d drop dead if you saw how we do it in 2025.
What started as a way to find words faster, turned into an addiction for more information. More answers. More direct answers. More, albeit, incorrect answers. I downloaded the ChatGPT app on my phone, so I could get more of those. A seemingly sarcastic Batphone lyric illustrates that well:
“Thankfully the process has been simplified
Since the last time you tried”
So thankful the journey from a question to an answer now takes 2 seconds and no brainpower!
O-ver-whel-med
I can’t stop saying I’m overwhelmed. How could I not be?
Here’s an episode from a regular work day:
I’m sitting in the back of a Bolt, riding home from a dentist’s appointment. I’m wearing Airpods, so I can listen to a song and a half, however much I can fit into one ride. I hope the driver doesn’t start a conversation with me. I should order food now, I think, so I don’t have to wait for it. Oh, I should check Slack to see if anyone at work is looking for me. Anyway, what should I order? I should get some deal, the prices have really gone up. Oh! I should update ChatGPT about my sleep data from last night. It’ll give me insights, are stats getting better, worse & why could it be. Anyway, where should I order from? Oh, I should ask GPT for tips on making my cats get along. It’s been 3 years, so I don’t know if it’s even possible… Should I ask if it’s possible?
All this within a 10 minute ride. Can. you. look. out. the. window. Oh, and I’ve probably had 3 cups of coffee beforehand, if all this wasn’t stimulating enough.
It is the modern life. But I dpo have the right to reject learning low value information every 5 minutes. No wonder why the inside of my mind feels like this:
Speaking of low value information, Tranquility Base features more songs with similar sentiments.
The “World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip” is a ridiculous name for a song, and it’s just as ridiculous of an event. Here’s Turner describing it in an interview:
“That was verbatim a news story I was unable to resist clicking on about a year ago, and I was unable to resist naming a song after it. It was laid out for me. We’re just living in a world where they’re flipping monster trucks forward”
The song pokes fun at how we’re terrorised with ridiculously useless information. It highlights how, while providing convenience & easy access to information, technology makes us dumber.
It’s also reflected in one line that’s repeated through the song, referencing a Kodak advertising from a late 1800s:
“You push the button, and we'll do the rest”
They’ll do the rest. The thinking for me, the deciding for me.
TikTok - also bad???
We can’t have any “phone = bad” conversation without mentioning TikTok. It sucks you into a hole through a handheld device like no other app. For 1+ hour a day, I would get so absorbed, entertaining myself to death on this app. You know what’s the worst part? The comments. Oh, the comments are too good. Everybody’s so creative, especially when it comes to making fun of something. Or someone.
I’d scroll until I felt sick of it. At times, wouldn’t even stop at that point. When I’d finally put my phone down, I’d feel as if I was taken to another planet, then put back down to earth.
Now what? Back to thinking about real-life problems that I was weighed down by right before opening the app? HowdoIfindajobIlikeomgshouldImovetoParisyesIshouldsincethewarmightcomeherealsoismyfriendmadatmeforthethingIsaid.
No, thank you.
I shall open the app again, even though I don’t want to. I’ll mindlessly switch between ASOS, the news, LinkedIn, Reddit. I’m looking to somehow feed that very hungry brain. Just one bite of very interesting information, please. Then I’ll leave. Satisfied. Promise.
There’s just so much information. I’ve been stuffing it in my already cluttered brain drawers. I’ve been carrying it on my tight shoulders. Someone keeps shoving more into those drawers. Stocking more onto that pile.
“The exotic
Sound of data storage
Nothing like it
First thing in the morning”
Another lyric from the monster truck song. Though it’s possibly referring to physical servers, I take it personally. It’s like I can physically feel the weight of how much information exists. Even on my phone. The pointless screenshots. The duplicate photos. The accidental ones. It stresses me out. I struggle to delete those. iCloud keeps asking me to upgrade my storage subscription. I won’t.
Everytime I ask ChatGPT something, I think of the resources wasted for it. Water, electricity. I carry the guilt. I could’ve Googled what are the most iron-rich foods. And then I could’ve decided which ones to incorporate in my diet on my own. But no, I needed GPT to list the foods, from the highest to lowest iron content. So I can eat the food that’s on top of the list and be done with it. Jk, I won’t start eating pork liver.
How you start your day dictates how the rest of it is gonna go. Some mornings I do real well: journaling. Breathing exercices. Plain black coffee. Phone’s put away somewhere. More often than not, I’m checking the news, catching up on stories, scrolling Vinted to find a good deal on a cashmere sweater. At 7:15 in the morning. Frantically, for some reason. Nothing like switching between five different apps first thing in the morning.
“Kids these days!” or not everything is a holy gospel
It makes sense that technology-sceptical narratives make it onto Arctic Monkeys music. I’ve seen Alex Turner, the songwriter & frontman of the band, expressing his distaste for social media on interviews several times.
When asked whether he considers joining a social media platform, Alex gave this comment:
“Not really, no. I just had to become comfortable not having the last word on everything.”
Personally, I struggle with this idea — letting go of control. Being out of the loop. Not getting the “trench coat buttoned to the top” or some other obscure joke. But I admire Turner’s distance. And wit.
It’s a running joke in the Arctic Monkeys fandom (a harmless yet tired one, if you ask me) that Alex is an old man who doesn’t own a smart phone. When I saw this picture of Alex on his girlfriend’s Instagram, I already knew what the top comment would be. See for yourself.
Speaking of fans, I vaguely recall Alex saying he finds it funny that people not only film him singing but themselves singing along.
A similar sentiment is reflected in 2013, one of the weakest song’s in the Arctic Monkeys’ discography.
“Well, the times are slowly changing
Baby, even when it's live
You can press pause and rewind”
Today’s concert culture is a whole other topic. But I feel like we’re leaning a bit into the “kids these days” territory here.
I love the videos I have taken at Arctic Monkeys shows. I do rewatch them, from time to time. The internet might be full of better quality, front-row videos. But I love rewatching my own ones. I took them. I own them. Sometimes, phone = good. When mindful.
I feel like I’ve been given a new brain
With all these thoughts and all these lyrics, I have deleted TikTok and Instagram off my phone. No more endless scroll. No more short videos that start playing automatically, leaving me no choice but to watch them.
I set this rule for myself: want to check something out? Use your laptop. There is a dedicated laptop time. It’s less accessible. It’s not a hand-held device.
I still have the ChatGPT app on my phone. I’m very indecisive. So it gives me great comfort to know it’ll give me a definitive answer. Possibly an incorrect one. But in great confidence! Like a man would.
But I am a bit more mindful of GPT’s usage. I stopped asking it to evaluate my sleep quality progress. The quality is shit, so who cares about the progress.
I resisted asking it to proofread this article. I desperately wanted to ask if there are critical errors. If my sentence structures and phrasings are native-like.
I’ve found, however, that it’s really good at helping me pick what episode of The Simpsons to watch. Just by ranking.
All that said, I’ve been living according to my laptop rule for two months already. While the goal was a clearer mind & more intentional information consumption, there are some unexpected results.
What do you know, my plants are no longer dying. I’ve tried new soup recipes (ily, green borsch.) My cats are getting along better. I engage with them more, too. This is random but everyone is just better looking. Regular people I see on the street. I’m ordering from restaurants via their websites and picking up in person. I’m getting my old stuff fixed: broken watches and shoes with holes in them. I’m switched back to physical books. I’ve got cash on me for the first time in years.
I’ve been reminded of how life used to feel. You need something, you use a laptop. You log on, you log off and it’s gone. You’re not carrying it with you at all times, to the bathroom or when crossing the street.
It got me nostalgic, even. I went back to 2013. Late at night, light’s off, mom’s asleep. I’m at my desk, scrolling Tumblr, discovering soft grunge, Dr. Martens, denim jackets, fishnet tights, Lana Del Rey, and, of course, Arctic Monkeys. Then you log off. And it’ll be there, the joys of the internet, when you come back from school tomorrow.
There’s only so much attention you can give, and I choose to give it to real life.
And if I have no energy for it, I’ll go on Youtube. On Pinterest. I’ll never be fully offline. I don’t want to… What if I miss the second world’s front truck flip?
That’s really beautifully put. And a bit sad because with the way our world is moving it seems like that retro dreamland is further and further away. But that last part really resonated with me, I wish I could wake up in 2013 again :D