Recently in my home city, Melbourne, an infamous street artist scaled the pillars of the Bolte Bridge, 140 metres up, painted a giant ‘Pam the Bird’ and then sat up there in a police stand off.

Incredible and audacious feat aside, the usual conversations were kicked up in the media, especially from right wing rags, about ‘crime and vandalism’. Normally, the readers of these publications love a pile on with anything remotely to do with either. ‘Pam the bird’ is iconic and can be spotted in many locations around the city, and the below image was used in one post asking for people’s opinions on whether it should ‘all be cleaned off’ no matter the cost. (The irony, of course, being that Melbourne’s street art is always used as an attraction in tourism campaigns, when it suddenly becomes conveniently of value.)

But something quite funny has happened in this instance. The responses were not at all what they were looking for. Most of the comments were in the vein of:

Pam is part of the city. Leave them up.

Better than staring at blank walls.

I enjoy looking at them when I drive past as opposed to concrete nothingness.

And the perhaps the funniest:

The real estate billboard above it is far uglier.

But this is coming from a place that is about more than street art vs. vandalism. We’re increasingly living in a grey, blank, concrete world of soulless uniformity. One that has been forced upon us rather than collectively built. Individuality and personality are the first things quickly extinguished within corporate environments, but over time it feels like that overreach has bled outside the office walls and into every other space that people inhabit.

“Now, don't get me wrong
I love what you've done with the place
I just wish we had a chance to help build it
Instead of just moving into this home of disrepair
And expected to work, prosper, and then share” - Enter Shikari (Juggernauts)

We’ve been scribbling our personal character and individual expression all over our surrounds ever since we lived in caves. Every child starts out as an artist, happy to draw, paint, and build with reckless abandon. Free of inhibition and fear of judgement. I’m sure we’ve all carved something in a school desk or wet cement at least once in our lives. There’s a strange but inarguably inherent need inside of us to let the world know we were here, and to know that others are here too, no matter how small or inconsequential. We’ve always left, and sought, signs of life. Always.

As every decision in the world has been increasingly decided by a spreadsheet rather than a human wanting to make something simply because they wanted to make it and someone else might like it, we’ve seen all the unique signs of life that have always been there start to fade away. At least in the western world, that is.

Tech companies, especially, continue to force things on us that we never asked for, nor showed overwhelming interest in.

AI, of course, being the latest, but before that, the ‘Metaverse’, NFTs, VR/mixed-reality headsets, amongst others. ‘Data’ has been spoken about as the ‘modern gold rush’, and deemed the most valuable resource that any organisation can have at its disposal. Because, as they say, ‘the data doesn’t lie’. Yet somehow, an organisation like Meta, which has access to every single image, video, location, opinion, and interest of nearly every person on the planet, decided in all its vastly accumulated wisdom to spend $80 billion on this.

It’s almost like putting some of the least interesting, least creative, and least, well, human, people in charge of shaping how and where humans interact is beginning to backfire. And push as they may for everything to move in one particular direction, the history of the universe tends to say otherwise. The first law of thermodynamics is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. And as Newton discovered long ago, every action causes an opposite reaction, so when we are forced into behaviours and places we don’t want to engage in or inhabit, space tends to open up on the opposite side.

Artists, and listeners, are starting to unhook from streaming. After nearly two decades of decline, physical media is having a resurgence. Led by vinyl, but CDs, and even cassette tape, sales are up. Olivia Rodrigo’s latest release sold 100,000 units in the first week. Vinyl is up 16% YOY in the first half of 2026. I bought a record player this year for this first time in 20 years.

Sony were dragged all over the internet last week after announcing that the PS6 will have no disc-drive. This is more than just a cost-saving measure. It’s about control. It kills the re-sale market. It kills competitive pricing, as they can strangle distribution. And above all, it kills ownership, effectively turning full price purchases into glorified rentals given they can simply remove a game from their network at will. Many gamers have already decided to switch to a PC or Steam deck, and I’ll possibly be one of them if it goes ahead.

“Here comes another Juggernaut!

Crushing all in its path
Crushing all in its path
Crushing all in its path
Crushing all in its path” - Enter Shikari (Juggernauts)

Have you ever spoken about AI with a regular person? Like, just a non-industry friend? One of your kid’s parents? Or better yet, your kids and their friends? Could not give a rat’s arse. And if they do, they hate it. Especially Gen Z and Gen Alpha. But if you talk to anyone in big business, it suddenly becomes what everybody wants. It’s a world-changing tech, and has a role to play, but its perceived significance has been manufactured by force.

We’ve even seen the invention of words like ‘shrinkflation’ and ‘enshittification’ to describe the seemingly constant decrease in quality of products and life for no tangible benefit other than preserving a few fraction points of profit margin in return for contributing to a collective decay.

Capitalism was always supposed to drive innovation and improvement but seems to mostly now be pre-occupied with forcing unwanted conformity upon the market in order to meet an arbitrary bottom-line number. And it’s being met with visible resistance. Some brands will see the space open up on the other side, but many will mindlessly plow ahead.

This is going to be a major challenge for brands moving forward. Because when the CFO and the quarterly targets are master and commander it can be hard to steer the wheel away from a squall on the horizon. As technological parity hits a singularity point, being seen as a brand that actually listens, pays attention, and respects the signs of life that built it in the first place are going to start holding serious value.

Because being human is beginning to feel like vandalism. Having wants and needs that come from within, rather than being forced upon us, a radical concept. Deciding what, where, and how we find joy in things, an act of resistance.

Simply put, people want to feel seen and heard. And, as Dr. Ian Malcolm famously said, “Life, uh, finds a way.”

I’ll leave you with more of the words of Rou Reynolds from Enter Shikari’s 2009 banger, Juggernauts.

And I know that we've still got time
But I do not think we're invincible
And I'm thinking that it's a sign
And I do not think we're invincible

And I hope that we've still got time
'Cause I do not think we're invincible
The idea of community
Will be something displayed at a museum

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