On a recent episode of The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi, hosts Gianmarco Soresi and Russell Daniels, joined by guest Hasan Piker, landed on a familiar early-2000s memory: the school-produced anti-drug and anti-suicide videos that used popular nu-metal tracks of the time, especially Linkin Park.
The three recount the moment in real time during the episode:
Soresi: “Those family cards or friend cards—are you going to put the note down? You're getting a license, you're moving the papers around. I don't know what's going on. You're like, ‘What the fuck? Police benevolence.’”
Daniels: “Yeah. If you get a sticker like that, they're much nicer to you. I didn’t have that. I got into, ‘I’m rehearsing for a school play.’”
Soresi: “Yeah. No, it was—yeah, I guess. And so people don’t do that. Wokeness. Wokeness killed that.”
Piker: “Well, I think they still do the DUI. They probably still do it. Yeah. Yeah. They would also do this thing where there would be like a movie you’d see where it was set to the most popular songs of the time. So, at the time it was a lot of Linkin Park, and it would talk about suicide and drug addiction and stuff and trying so hard.”
Soresi: “Wait, didn’t the guy kill himself?”
Piker: “Oh, that was after, though. Yeah. Right. Wait.”
Daniels: “And so they played it. It was like stills of sad girls, and it would be with music of the time.”
The conversation between Piker, Soresi, and Daniels recalls a shared experience many students from that mid 2000's era remember: school assemblies using dramatic slideshows and cautionary messaging backed by whatever emotional chart-toppers were current. For the cohosts and guest and many others, that often meant Linkin Park tracks playing under montages meant to warn teens about serious issues, or in a similar vein numerous Evanescence tracks from the Fallen era.
The podcast doesn’t expand beyond the memory itself, but the clip stands out because it captures a very specific cultural time capsule; those early-2000s PSAs built from stock photos, serious themes, and the nu metal soundtrack that defined the moment for many students. The only second hand media more early 00's coded would be amateur anime music videos of Dragon Ball Z synced to a Meteora or Hybrid Theory track.
You can watch the entire podcast below. The Linkin Park reference comes in at about the 1 hour and 26 minute marker.
