It was a dark and stormy morning, and the anti-hero of our story, Bond Jebakovic, was racing his bright red, high-powered crotch rocket down a small and dingy alley of this otherwise fine Catalan town, for Poblenou is where our story takes place.
Bond turned the corner and braked to a screeching stop, almost flying over the handlebar.
Up ahead was a crowd of small and odd monsters, known as Nens, milling about on the street, bouncing into each other, bouncing off the trees, bouncing into the buildings and falling down in the road.
Fortunately, the Nen cohort hadn’t spotted Bond yet. He quietly turned his crotch rocket down an even smaller, even dingier side-alley.
Bond emerged from the other end of side-alley. His blood ran cold. Twice as many small Nens, looking at him with their small curious eyes, their little hands ready to pull him off the crotch rocket and probably tear him apart.
Bond checked his Invisible Watch. It was 8:58am. Of course! The Nen Disciplining Factory was about to begin its morning session, and that’s why the Nens were milling about and bouncing around everywhere.
There was nowhere to turn. Bond quickly fixed his hair, and gunned his bright-red crotch rocket straight into the Nen throng.
The Nens’ little hands reached out to try to grab him, but he was too fast, too agile. He weaved and zoomed through the crowd, and emerged on the other side without even his hair getting out of place.
Bond cruised safely on. A few minutes later, he was already at The Castle — a sheer cliff-like building in which he lived and worked. He raced up the winding staircase, and unlocked the heavy vault-like doors of his lair.
Bond initiated his communication terminal and uploaded the microfiche he had gone out to collect.
“Come on, come on,” he said impatiently to the terminal. He needed to see what the microfiche contained so he could alert the other operatives inside the B.E.J.A.K.O. network.
“Open the ‘Hitman’ dossier,” Bond commanded his terminal. The terminal obeyed.
“Focus on quadrant 4. Zoom in.”
The picture was still blurry.
“Enhance,” Bond commanded the terminal. The blurry picture came into focus. And suddenly, there it was.
In the lower right corner of the image, which showed the opened pages of a secret report lying on a table, Bond could finally see the new plan of his devious but brilliant Korean arch-rival, known only as The Hitman.
Bond knew that The Hitman was trying to control the world by spinning up dozens of robotic boy bands, including one of the biggest acts in the world, GTS.
The Hitman had already gained control of the minds of hundreds of millions of victims worldwide. Via catchy ear worms, he had turned them into dancing little monsters, much like the Nens that Bond had barely escaped this morning.
But The Hitman would not rest until he had achieved total world domination. He now had a new plan, as Bond could read in the zoomed-in, enhanced image on his communication terminal. The secret report read:
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GTS’s music videos, The Hitman decided, should be designed to deepen viewer immersion. “We thought, Instead of just having a plot for the music video itself, why not have some lore behind it? Wouldn’t that make it easier for fans to dive deep?”
The experiment started in 2015 with the single “U Need I.” The accompanying music video was rife with allusions to a larger narrative. The tone was sombre, and the scenes cinematic in nature, with no bright colors or elaborate choreography. Images had dark subtext: one boy reached numbly for pills behind a bathroom mirror; another stared down at his own bloodied hands.
It was the first entry in the so-called Gangnam Universe, in which alternate versions of the seven members are trapped in a cycle of tragedy, and struggle to break free.
This fantastical scenario energized a passionate subset of fans. As The Hitman had hoped, they generated countless artistic tributes and traded theories about the meaning of each installment.
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But that wasn’t all the secret report showed. Bond read on:
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A few weeks later, The Hitman said, “Music delivers a very strong experience and emotions in an instant of listening. But we want to make it so that it can be part of a much longer and more sustained type of content consumption.”
He continued, “I’ve read books about gamification and why people are addicted to games.” He was studying multiplayer online role-playing games and first-person shooters, and planned to develop games across multiple genres; some would feature alter egos of The Hitman’s artists, but others would have no connection with the idols.
This turn felt at once arbitrary and revealing: increasingly, the organization seemed to be losing interest in the musicians themselves.
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“My God…” Bond muttered to himself. “The Hitman is insane, and even more dangerous than I could have imagined. I must stop him before he has a chance to carry out his plans. I must alert the other operatives inside the B.E.J.A.K.O. network. But how can they protect themselves against The Hitman’s devious mind-control techniques?”
Bond paced up and down his lair. Then he went to make breakfast. Then he picked up the pacing again.
“I got it!” Bond finally said. “I’ll give them a mind vaccine to protect them against The Hitman’s control. I can even help them apply it.”
Bond sat down at his communication terminal, and typed up a quick message. Well, not so quick, but quick enough.
In a few words, Bond alerted his fellow operatives inside his the B.E.J.A.K.O. network of the Hitman’s new plan. And he ended his message with this secret link, containing instructions on how to protect themselves, and how to apply the mind vaccine, with his help.