At the end of each year, Spotify holds a wickedly honest mirror up to each user and tells us who we really are. Our top tunes and artists of the year are revealed, and the app which has been there for us all year with songs for heartbreak, joy or dancing shares what it has learned.

Each year, people post and share the results of their Spotify Wrapped, and the memes around the annual tradition are often formidable. But what is it, and how did it start?

Where Did Spotify Wrapped Come From?

Spotify, the music streaming service, introduced Wrapped in 2016. The first-ever Spotify Wrapped dropped for each user individually on December 10th, 2016. The feature presented data about each user’s listening history in a catchy, corporatized style.

But it was in 2017, when Wrapped expanded to include ever more invormation, that memes and online reactions really started pouring in. Many shared the embarrassing results of their Wrapped to social media, presenting their favorite bands, warts and all.

Certain eccentric features of Spotify Wrapped, like the app’s way of naming genres, or declaring people "top fans," also attract attention every year.

How Do You Post About Spotify Wrapped?

For many, posting about Spotify Wrapped is cringe. But everybody, deep down, sort of wants to do it. Memes about the overposting of Spotify Wrapped content cropped up in 2017, when the first truly viral Spotify Wrapped dropped.

What Are Spotify Wrapped Parodies?

Spotify Wrapped quickly opened itself up for parody, with people posting memes and riffing on the feature. Often, these memes would sort of call themselves (or someone else) out, exposing some embarrassing aspect of their own taste or the subculture they belong to. Like other memes which celebrate nicheness while seeming to make fun of it (like the girl explaining meme) these Spotify Wrapped parodies give people a space to share themselves and their interests.

Why Do People Post About Spotify Wrapped?

Posting about Spotify Wrapped is a way of communicating yourself and your tastes to those around you. It's also a way of recommending the music you loved to the people you care about.

But the reason why the feature is so compelling for parody is how it displays technology's relationship to this human need. We all want to be seen and understood. An app like Spotify, which has captured a lot of our time and a lot of our data, takes a moment each year to show it has seen and understood us. Every other app on our phone has a collection of data on us just as revealing as Spotify's.

We experience pleasure at seeing the way Spotify has surveilled us, at how it has minutely recorded what we like and listen to. Music is a profound experience for many people, and in the modern era of AirPods and earbuds, it's often a solitary one. Spotify Wrapped shows us that we really weren't alone: the gentle corporation was looking over our shoulders and into our hearts.