The Dashboard Can't See You
Metrics compress the world so decisions can scale. Nothing wrong with that—until the count replaces attention and systems optimize dashboards instead of care. The deadliest year in ICE detention measured as a number. A sports body adjudicating accusations through process instead of truth. Legitimacy
Inspiration
Metrics compress the world so decisions can scale. Nothing wrong with that—until the count replaces attention and systems optimize dashboards instead of care. The deadliest year in ICE detention measured as a number. A sports body adjudicating accusations through process instead of truth. Legitimacy thins when institutions treat measurement as presence. The aggregate shields the harm. People closest to it stop believing the system can hear them.
Style Prompt
Architectural bass-forward prog-grunge at 98 BPM. Methodical recursive drum patterns, bass carrying thematic weight. Delayed guitars creating sustained atmospheric layers, sparse synth pad in background. Distant processed male vocals with slight delay effect, conversational but detached—institutional voice. Mid-tempo cyclical feel, odd time signatures (5/4 shifting to 4/4) that feel methodical not math. Dynamic build from sparse to explosive. Patient tension throughout, space and silence emphasizing what metrics miss. Raw but structured—the system speaking.
Lyrics
The numbers aggregate clean
Acceptable trends on screens
Twenty deaths become a metric line
The dashboard says we're doing fine
But the dashboard can't see you
Can't witness what the count won't show
The dashboard can't hear you
Just classifying what it thinks it knows
The ground thins out, the ground thins out
When counting replaces witnessing
We measure to compress the world
Make decisions at scale
Nothing wrong with that until
The metric becomes the veil
And the dashboard can't see you
Can't witness what the count won't show
The dashboard can't hear you
Just optimizing aggregate flow
The ground thins out, the ground thins out
When numbers stand in for presence
Measurement is not attention
The gap is where trust dies
You can hit your targets clean
While people pay the price
The dashboard can't see you
Can't witness where the harm hides
The dashboard can't feel you
Just trending what the system decides
The ground thins out, the ground thins out
When we count instead of show up
The ground thins out
The count stands in for the thing
The count stands in for the thing
