Sigmund Freud, Paul McCartney, Hillary Clinton – Café Landtmann’s ability to entice the main characters of culture and society is almost as iconic as its strudels. And last week, the latest to cross the threshold of the storied Vienna restaurant was Poland’s First Lady of techno: VTSS. However, it wasn’t the 150-year-old venue’s coffee, culinary classics or period interiors calling the DJ/producer’s name. Rather, a distinctly 2020s kind of mission: vanquishing Gen Z’s digital doppelgängers. 

Together with Deutsche Telekom, she assembled what seemed like half of Vienna’s Gen Z population on an unassuming July weeknight in Landtmann’s grand hall. The palatial, wood-panelled salon looked a bit different with VTSS in charge: tables and chairs cleared away, her raucous, genre-flitting techno filled the room as she played to an overspilling crowd of ravers, the size of which kept the bouncers’ heart rates apace with the bpm.  

However, the people didn’t turn out in such numbers just to see their favourite DJ perform in unlikely surrounds. Instead, to celebrate the release of “Can’t Catch Me”: VTSS’s latest single and video, made to launch Deutsche Telekom’s #OwnYourWorld. The online learning space and campaign aims to empower young people to “turn privacy mode on” in their digital lives. Born from research commissioned by the telecommunications giant, which found that over 90% of European Gen Z expressed concern about their digital privacy, yet only 7% feel very confident in managing it – it’s about arming young people with the intel required to avoid the virtual world’s pitfalls as they stay connected.

The digital arena can be the optimal place to flex individuality. A curated IG dump is the ultimate reflection of a person’s very being, right? But our personal data can also be cloned, sold and exploited when we aren’t looking. “The ability to own your identity online should be a fundamental right,” Ulrich Klenke, Chief Brand Officer of Deutsche Telekom, says. “We know that knowledge is power.”

In VTSS’s uncanny, doppelgänger-packed “Can’t Catch Me” video, that threat is visualised. Directed by Shadrinsky – fashion’s chief aesthetes when it comes to viral surreal moments (Jean Paul Gautier, Marc Jacobs) – the film sees VTSS navigating a world overrun with clones trying to send her life into disarray. At one point, she even zip-lines through the city in an attempt to outpace them (and she’s a DJ who does her own stunts.) With a nod to brainrot culture, it paints an IRL picture of what happens when your digital identity takes on a life of its own. “So many of us feel this low-key anxiety about how much of us lives online, and how little control we have over it,” VTSS says. “This project creatively captures this, holding up a mirror to that experience and hopefully helping people feel seen.” DJ, stuntwoman… she’s also turning teacher. On Deutsche Telekom’s accompanying ownyourworld.online platform, VTSS is fronting tutorials on how to eclipse the digital doppelgängers once and for all, guiding viewers through everything from data tracking to algorithmic influence in digestible chunks.

In what can feel like volatile digital times, VTSS and Deutsche Telekom have stepped up to the plate to keep our online existences drama-free. Handy, as that way we’ve got more time (and mental clarity) to simply locate the next dance floor.