"Some pure joys persist, bear market be damned. We will always have love, which is maybe also suffering. The perverse pleasure of exposure, refactored as strength. And when that doesn’t pan out, there are other low-effort mood elevators. Early 2000s pop songs, mostly, sped up 33% and appended with anime album artwork – nightcore remixes, resurfacing from a decade ago themselves. At this point, I can’t make it through an evening without queuing up a track or two. A friend calls it my “nightcope.” Ten pm is the witching hour, when fatigue and solitude prime the weak among us to give into temptation. The sober, mindful people feel the want for drink arising and release it like a passing cloud. Me? I’m at my computer, fiending for a nightcore nightcope, something that sounds like, but isn’t exactly, what I remember as Avril Lavigne."