In this essay, I will argue that the 1977 hit song "Hotel California" is about the harmful effects of social media.
Let's take a look at the lyrics.
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
We have imagery here of a small light in the darkness - evocative of the phone screen. Perhaps, after a long day of work, the temptation is to "stop for the night" and give in to some late-night scrolling.
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
'This could be Heaven or this could be Hell'
The bell, of course, represents the notifications that might greet you as you open the app. A large number of notifications could portend either Heaven or Hell; such is the dual nature of online virality.
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
More light-in-the-darkness imagery.
There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say...
Welcome to the Hotel California
Obviously California (Silicon Valley in particular) is virtually synonymous with the tech industry. In particular, Facebook and Twitter are both headquartered there.
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here
Facebook was once pitched as a pleasant experience, characterised by travel pictures (lovely places) and selfies (lovely faces) of friends and loved ones. These lines also harken back to the promise of the Internet in general as a space of infinite possibility, where whatever you're looking for can be found instantly.
Of course, after this point the focus of the lyrics shifts from the promise of social media to its superficial reality.
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Bends
Conspicuous consumption is common among social media influencers.
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends
This clearly invokes the idea that "Facebook friends" are not the same thing as real friends.
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Perhaps this refers to TikTok, closely associated with dancing, and its parent company ByteDance. While ByteDance is not based in California it does have financial backing from the Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
Some use social media as a way to connect with people from their past; others use it as an escapist distraction.
So I called up the Captain,
'Please bring me my wine'
He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since 1969'
On October 29th, 1969, a message from a computer at UCLA to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute became the first message ever transmitted over ARPANET, the forerunner of the modern internet. Since then the nature of communication has been irrevocably altered.
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...
The internet connects us to people from far away, all over the world, providing a constant stream of information that may well disrupt our literal sleep as well as being overwhelming and distracting in general.
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis
We've already discussed "lovely place/lovely face," but now we see the more sinister implication of illegal or shameful activity online, for which one might require an alibi. This is also evocative of fake/pseudonymous accounts.
Mirrors on the ceiling,
Evocative of selfies, the obsession with appearance and presentation, and the way social media forces us to constantly consider how we appear to others, even in private settings. Possibly also a reference to online sex work.
The pink champagne on ice
She said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
Self-explanatory; many people feel trapped by social media, despite in principle being responsible for using it in the first place.
Moreover, we are prisoners of our own device; the electronic devices that we claim to control also control us in turn.
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast
The major tech companies - and Facebook in particular - have repeatedly claimed to care about fixing the harms they've caused, and have devoted considerable resources to addressing these problems. However, even those in the master's chambers have been unable (or unwilling) to kill the beast they created.
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'
This is, of course, the core message of the song, and it works on both a societal and individual level.
On the societal level, we can talk all we want about the problems with the modern internet, but it's impossible to go back to the place we were before. Things have changed too much and social media has become too integral to modern life. As already alluded to, we haven't had that option since 1969.
On the individual level, while we can 'check out' temporarily (by logging out) this doesn't truly free us from the influence of social media. We are, after all, prisoners of our own device. Moreover, deactivating a Facebook account famously does not delete the data associated with it, and even deleting the account (which is difficult to do) doesn't prevent data from being collected in the form of a "shadow profile." In fact, shadow profiles are created even for those who never create an account. There is a very real sense in which one can "never leave" Facebook.
Social media is set up this way because, on the fundamental business level, all such platforms are simply tools for surveillance and data collection. They are 'programmed to receive' information about you, and to not let go of this information. This data is then used for targeted advertising, intended to influence your consumer behaviour; in other words, using this data we are also 'programmed to receive (consume).'
Conclusion
In conclusion, the 1977 song "Hotel California" is a haunting allegory for how social media uses the promise of connection and distraction to lure us into an environment where we are ultimately imprisoned and used to nefarious ends, through a process that even the entities responsible do not fully understand or control. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
(Alternately, perhaps the fact that a song from 1977 can be made to align with modern concerns about social media suggests that we need to think more critically about which problems with modern society are actually caused by technology and which are merely a superficially novel expression of pre-existing tendencies. I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be highly critical of technology and its impact; I just worry that some problems have been misattributed.)