I feel like a sweatshop that the worker willingly enters constitutes a kind of labor market endgame.

Like the opt-in Surveillance State we acknowledge and worship every time we tag a photo, we really have to take a second to think about this. But nobody has a second. I deeply resent the fact that one can accurately and succinctly describe the actual world we live in and sound like a fucking AM radio whackjob.

It's true that these are choices people are making, ostensibly with the knowledge that this type of "employment" has none of the strictures commonly understood in a job, but after I saw my fifth or sixth burnout video - videos which slot ever-so-neatly into the same machine that caused the breakdowns in the first place - it just hit a point with me. I have the privilege of being able to use these services when I want to or to make viewing something we've done more convenient. For the creator native to these platforms, it's not hard to determine what the beast wants. You come to understand when it reacts with delight or when it recoils and no doubt it's simply a coincidence that it likes you best when you are prostrate before it in abject, dependent terror.

The beast, rendered here as a perpetually salivating squid crab, must be fed constantly. It is in desperate need of your youth and your authenticity because even in its green-black Authenticity Glands it cannot approximate who you and your friends are, just on your own. It has to baste its marketing ordnance in your innocence so that they may be fired with impunity and without consequence.

(CW)TB out.