“Year Zero” by Nine Inch Nails and 42 Entertainment (2007)
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“Year Zero” was a concept album by Nine Inch Nails about a dystopian version of America 15 years in the future (from the time of the album’s release). It’s a vision of eroded civil liberties, advanced climate change, abuse of military power, and more. The album itself presented a mostly vague, poetic look into the fictional world; the primary way the story was told was through an alternate reality game that took place in the months leading up to, and for a little while after the album’s release. Clues ranging from a code on a USB drive found in a venue bathroom to a mural painted under a bridge in London led fans, who banded together to find and decipher them, to fragments of various websites existing within the story world. Information from these sites would then lead to other diegetic websites, phone numbers, and for some in the Los Angeles area, the time and location of a physical meeting.
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