In the debate between the primacy of Spotify or Apple Music, I’m taking Spotify 100 times over. For me, it just boils down to its user design and new additions that keep the app fresh.
One of these recent additions integrated by Spotify is the incorporation of AI in the listening experience. It began in 2023 with the release of the AI DJ, followed by AI Playlists. The AI playlists work by giving the AI a prompt designed by the user, or Spotify, with which it curates a playlist that it mimics.
As I looked through these prompts, one in particular caught my eye. The AI was told to diagnose the user with a mental illness and prescribe cures, all in the form of songs.
In general, tech platforms seek to gamify identity, including mental health, to frame personal traits as a form of personal marginalization. Their emphasis on mental health is a symptom of a culture that treats oppression as identity capital, and a society that has shifted towards performative identity and competitive victimhood.
No one should be surprised to learn that tech companies, like Spotify, collect a lot of personal data. It isn’t too far of a stretch to say that the platforms “know” you, in a way. Those moments when Spotify recommends a song to you that fits the moment just right, or you get an ad for a bike after scouring for one on eBay, it’s not because your phones are reading your thoughts; it’s because these apps are designed to copy how you think. In commodifying the way that you think, they turn your identity into a label that you can wear and show your friends.
Spotify isn’t really in the wrong for doing this, though. Tech platforms that use this model are so successful because they amplify behaviors that already exist. In fact, we all gamify our personalities to gain social capital. This is especially true in online spaces, where identity is performed and critically evaluated. Marginalization and personal struggle, most often with mental illnesses, are used as a rite of passage.
Few people, no matter your position on the political spectrum, look back in joy and nostalgia at the “cancel culture” era of the early 2020s. The movement began, in good faith, in 2017 with the #MeToo movement, but quickly led to something more cynical. As TikTok became more popular, the demands for accountability quickly shifted from the legal system to social media, often bypassing due process.
In this moment, those who held the cards were the ones who called out injustice, no matter how small or large, wherever they saw it. By consequence of the movement, those people were often parts of marginalized groups. In an effort to force themselves into this in-group, white users — who were frequently found in the crosshairs of the movement — would claim to have a disability that could seem viable, like autism or ADHD.
What seems like harmless features on platforms like Spotify ultimately reveals something deeper about how identity is constructed in our new digital age. As platforms refine their ability to mirror users back onto themselves, they shape the way identity is understood and performed. In a society where visibility and morals are increasingly tied to narratives of struggle, mental illness becomes more of a social identity than a medical reality.
This isn’t to say we are constantly trying to deceive each other. Rather, our digital society rewards self-framing through vulnerability. In turn, the line is blurred between genuine experience and performative identity. What is then lost is not just precise language, but the distinction between real structural disadvantages and gamified expression.
