---
id: "2026-09-22-claude-pop-genre"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-claude-pop-genre/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-09-22"
date_precision: day
category: culture
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 12
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-08"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-claude-pop-genre/

# "Claude Pop": music videos made by Claude Opus 5.5 for the AI-doom song "I'm Upping My P(doom)" become a genre

On the day Claude Opus 5.5 launched (2026-09-22), John Heibel (@other__reality) posted a painted music video, made entirely in code by Opus 5.5 in Claude Code, for "Claude-Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom)". That is a Suno remake (by deckard, 2026-09-09) of a 2024 Udio song full of AI-safety in-jokes. The post got about 2.7M views on X, and within a week dozens of Opus 5.5-made versions, sequels, answer songs and covers followed. The biggest was @donaldjewkes' "one prompt, 12 hours" video with about 3.6M views. The result is a community genre (not an Anthropic project) with its own recurring characters and lore.

## Key facts
- Community-made, not Anthropic-official. No Anthropic account or staff involvement was found (as of 2026-09-29)
- Song lineage: MusicPerson (Udio, Apr 2024) → osmarks' 'P(doom)' (Udio, 2024-11-09; lyrics partly suggested by a Claude model) → deckard's 'Claude-Pop' Suno version on X (2026-09-09, ~723k views)
- Opus 5.5 does not generate video: it writes code (p5.js/p5.brush, three.js, canvas, Remotion, Blender Python) that is rendered frame by frame in headless Chrome and encoded with ffmpeg
- JohnHeibel/PDoomVideo: two Claude Code generations; 'Everything in this repository was generated by the model'; human direction was only 'use the Clawd character' and 'give each lyric interesting visuals and transitions'. ~1.5k GitHub stars, 160 forks by 2026-09-29
- @donaldjewkes (2026-09-23): 5-minute dictated prompt, ~12 hours autonomous work, Seedance 2.5 + fal image models + ElevenLabs as tools; ~3.6M views, 10.3k likes on X
- Follow-ups within a week: Pleometric (~670k views), mexicat three.js karaoke version (~1.4M views; repo ~1.9k stars), 'Nothing Went Foom!' accelerationist answer (~670k views), 'Let's Lower the P(doom)!', 'P(bloom)', 'I'm Lowering My P(Doom)', 'Still Upping My P(doom) Vol. II', Korean and J-rock covers, a GPT-6 Astra-animated version
- Recurring lore: Clawd (Claude Code's pixel-crab mascot) as the singing AI, a nervous human Researcher, the P(doom) meter, the smiley-mask shoggoth, the basilisk, paperclips, 'What did Ilya see?'

## What happened

- **2024:** "P(doom)" was written collaboratively. MusicPerson made the first verse and chorus on Udio (April 2024). osmarks added verses on 2024-04-17 with input from the EleutherAI Discord, then finished the song on 2024-11-08/09 with help from a Claude model on the outro and final chorus. It was released on YouTube on 2024-11-09. The lyrics pack about two years of AI-safety Twitter and LessWrong in-jokes into one pop song.
- **2026-09-09:** deckard (@slimer48484) posted "Claude-Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom)", a new Suno rendition. osmarks' page calls it the "'Claude-Pop' version from alternate Suno song variant". It spread on AI Twitter (about 723k views; people said it was "stuck in my head").
- **2026-09-22 (Opus 5.5 launch day):** John Heibel posted a hand-painted Clawd music video for that audio: "Claude Opus 5.5 has the best visual design of any model I have tested so far". It got about 2.7M views, and he open-sourced the code as PDoomVideo. Opus planned the video itself (STORYBOARD.md), briefed parallel subagents (ANIMATION_GUIDE.md) and wrote every scene in p5.js.
- **2026-09-23:** @donaldjewkes posted a K-pop-styled remake: "I spoke to my computer for 5mins, claude worked for 12 hours, and I woke up to this". It is the genre's biggest hit (about 3.6M views). His published prompt became a template that Pleometric, makevoid and others reused.
- **2026-09-23 to 09-29:** remixes, restyles and answer songs followed, all made with Opus 5.5: mexicat's three.js karaoke version, a Nolan pastiche and a Barbie answer, a Korean watercolor MV, a J-rock voxel cover by an imaginary "Singularity Band", "Let's Lower the P(doom)!" (pro-safety), "Nothing Went Foom!" (pro-acceleration), "P(bloom)", "Still Upping My P(doom) Vol. II", and original "Claude Anime Pop" songs. Other Opus 5.5 music videos from the same week include A.J.'s JavaScript-synthesized pop-punk and rap singles, the "Absolutely Right (Crab Walk)" rap (music also by Claude), josh's "Functional Emotions" song, and Brad Mills' "Stroke of a Pen".
- Full list, production pipeline and lore: see `docs/ai-culture/claude-pop.md` and `docs/ai-culture/lore.md`.

## Why it matters

It is the first widely noticed genre of AI-*directed* media. The model is the director, animator and software engineer, while the music (Suno/Udio) and the lyrics are mostly older and human-written. The videos are code-rendered, not generated by a video model, so every one is reproducible and forkable, and PDoomVideo alone had 160 forks within a week. The genre also turned an AI-risk meme into mainstream entertainment and a battleground: safety advocates (PauseAI/ControlAI links in "Let's Lower the P(doom)!" and Patryk Perduta's version) and accelerationists ("Nothing Went Foom!") both used Claude-made videos to argue their side.

## What is disputed or not yet verified

- "Made by Claude Opus 5.5" usually means the *visuals and code*. The song audio is Suno (deckard) and the lyrics are from 2024 (humans + an older Claude). Exceptions where the music is also model-made include "Absolutely Right (Crab Walk)", A.J.'s singles and the Opus 5.5 fugue.
- View counts are from 2026-09-29 and come from X's public embed data (fxtwitter) and YouTube watch pages.
- X's AI-written trending summaries mention a Nick Cammarata reaction and 'super-propaganda' concerns. We could not read those posts, so these are low confidence.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 145 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 84 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 175 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 114 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [JohnHeibel/PDoomVideo source code](https://github.com/JohnHeibel/PDoomVideo) (github.com, code)
2. [mexicat/pdoom-video source code](https://github.com/mexicat/pdoom-video) (github.com, code)
3. [osmarks: P(Doom) Song Objectively Correct Interpretation](https://docs.osmarks.net/hypha/p(doom)_song_objectively_correct_interpretation) (docs.osmarks.net, docs)
4. [awesome-opus-5-5-video-prompts (curated list)](https://github.com/X-RayLuan/awesome-opus-5-5-video-prompts) (github.com, code)
5. [OrcaRouter: Claude Opus 5.5: What 'Plan a Video' Actually Produces](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/claude-opus-5-5-video-plan-one-shot) (orcarouter.ai, press)
6. [deckard: Claude-Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom) (X, 2026-09-09)](https://x.com/slimer48484/status/2097752569212756134) (x.com, discussion)
7. [NotinReality (John Heibel): Opus 5.5 music video (X, 2026-09-22)](https://x.com/other__reality/status/2102514581684052169) (x.com, discussion)
8. [OtherReality: Claude Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom) (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j-hR4fJywU) (youtube.com, video)
9. [donaldjewkes: 'I made this with one prompt using Opus 5.5' (X)](https://x.com/donaldjewkes/status/2102801274173587569) (x.com, discussion)
10. [osmarks: P(doom) (YouTube, 2024)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEB5E67vcPA) (youtube.com, video)
11. [Hacker News: Claude Pop – I'm Upping My P(Doom)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49839624) (news.ycombinator.com, discussion)
12. [mexicat's three.js P(doom) video (X)](https://x.com/_mexicat/status/2103108369569726802) (x.com, discussion)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29: Added post link(s) (posts-as-events pass)
- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-09-27: ["Nothing Went Foom!": an accelerationist Claude Opus 5.5 music video answers P(doom)](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-27-nothing-went-foom-accelerationist-answer/index.md)
- 2026-09-23: ["I spoke to my computer for 5 mins, Claude worked for 12 hours"](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-23-donaldjewkes-one-prompt-music-video/index.md)
- 2026-09-22: [Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5.5](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-claude-opus-5-5/index.md)
- 2026-09-09: [Suno launches v6, its first music models trained on licensed music](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-09-suno-v6-licensed-music-model/index.md)
- 2026-09-09: [deckard posts "Claude-Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom)", a Suno remake of a 2024 AI-doom song, on X](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-09-deckard-claude-pop-p-doom/index.md)
- 2026-04-02: [Anthropic finds functional emotion representations that causally drive Claude's behavior](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-04-02-anthropic-emotion-concepts-interpretability/index.md)
- People: [Ilya Sutskever](https://postcutoff.com/person/ilya-sutskever/), [Nick Cammarata](https://postcutoff.com/person/nick-cammarata/)
- Archived: 13 posts and 43 videos, listed in https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-claude-pop-genre/index.json