Liminal Wordsmith

When thinking about Justin Hodgson’s ideas about the post-digital world, my mind immediately goes to The 1975. Digital tech is not separate from daily life anymore. It surrounds us all the time, and we usually only notice it when it glitches or becomes overwhelming. McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” and Ulmer’s idea of electracy get at the same point: media doesn’t just carry meaning, it shapes how we think and act. Hodgson takes this even further, saying meaning now comes through remix, circulation, and overload.

The 1975 really bring that to life. Their music is never just about the lyrics. It’s everything surrounding it. The stage sets, the music videos, the way they use social media. A song like “Love It If We Made It” feels exactly like scrolling through Twitter during a chaotic news cycle. It piles on fragments of politics, internet culture, and headlines. Instead of making a clear argument, it captures what it feels like to live in that mess.

They also lean into this in their visuals. The video for “People” is a blur of neon, quick cuts, and text flying across the screen. It’s almost uncomfortable to watch, but that’s the point. In concerts, the band uses phone screen imagery and glitch effects, so the live show itself feels tied to the digital culture outside the venue. That is basically Ulmer’s electracy in action, where images and emotion carry as much meaning as words.

Even the quieter stuff works this way. The opening track “The 1975” on Notes on a Conditional Form is just Greta Thunberg’s climate speech set to ambient music. It blurs activism and art, making the “song” itself a kind of rhetorical act meant to circulate online. Other tracks, like “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” or “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”, mix nostalgia with modern themes, showing how post-digital art is always about recombination.

For me, The 1975 make Hodgson’s theory feel real. McLuhan would say the medium is shaping us. Ulmer would say it’s electracy. Hodgson would put them in the New Aesthetic, where culture and technology can’t really be separated. Listening to The 1975 feels like living in the post-digital world: fractured, saturated, overwhelming at times, but still full of meaning.

The 1975 stage set photo by Jordan Curtis Hughes