[Seth Says] Apocalypse Number Five
Because at times like these, who can mambo?
A little bit of covid in my life,
A little bit of climate change causing strife,
A little bit of fascism every day
A little bit of AI causing dismay
A little bit of layoffs based on corporate greed
So honestly more problems are the last thing we need.
And yet. Here we are.
I was saying to a friend the other week that an annoying thing happening to me -- my washing machine breaking -- still wasn't going to crack my top 5 list of things I'm concerned about because too much is wrong in the world. (Which really doesn't speak well for the world, given that generally speaking we assign big x10-x100 multipliers to things which are happening to us personally rather than other people out in the world at large.)
There are so many ongoing apocolypses (apocalypsi? apocalyptopodes!) that it's getting hard to keep track. Franny Choi (who I know from WordXWord back in my pre-covid performance poetry days) has a poem called "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On", and that's definitely the energy here at current. Everything was already too much, and then every day brings fun news like, "Republican governors join Texas stand-off against federal government, insist that US law and Supreme Court cannot stop their right to use razor wire and kill would-be immigrants." And the hits just keep on coming.
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INSTANTLY SHITTY
A year ago this week, Cory Doctorow wrote the best article I read in 2023, about how websites get worse over time thanks to a process he dubbed "Enshittification".
(It's a great article, and I'd say everyone should read it, but it is very long, so I'd say everyone should at least read the opening paragraph which I'll quote so you can decide if you want to click through for more detailed analysis: "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.")
Anyway, the other night I was reading about how Sports Illustrated was destroyed after being bought out, as so many publications have been recently, and it occurred to me that in some ways, large venture capital conglomerates buying out established (sometimes iconic) businesses and wringing them dry is an accelerated version of this. (Vulture Capital Illustrated, thus.)
It's not even the same people who built the business making it shittier, there's a perfectly functioning business providing value to readers and writers and advertisers alike. And then along comes a new owner, who can create value for themselves and/or investors by cutting a lot of corners and making things worse for everyone else, and then the award-winning writers are layed off, and the articles start being written by AI, and soon the gold standard of sports journalism for nearly a century is reduced to rubble. (I mean, I'm sad to hear it and I don't even like sports. What the puck.)
But then today I was reading about Microsoft laying off 1,900 employees from their video gaming divisions like Blizzard, the day after they reached a $3 trillion market valuation, and not too long after former Blizzard CEO and famed toxic workplace creator Bobby Kotick made a few hundred million dollars from Microsoft's acquisition, and then another $15 million as a golden parachute when he left. (I suspect some of the recently let-go staff might feel that such people ought to be given an actual parachute made of pure solid gold and then be thrown off a plane.)
So it looks like it doesn't really matter who is in charge, as long as they value squeezing out a bit more profit over maintaining a functional company. (Pour out a juicebox for our childhood friends KB Toys and Toys R Us, eaten by vulture capitalists like Bain.) (But only a little -- save the rest of the juice for someone you know who has just lost their job and might be thirsty.)
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UNEMPLOYED IN EVERY TIMELINE
I was thinking about websites getting worse because Upwork, the site where I find the majority of my freelance writing work (and where I am Top Rated Plus, Expert Vetted, and 100% positive client feedback, in case you know anyone who needs a speech, book, or ad script written) has been getting worse of late, making it more difficult for good writers and good clients to find each other on the site.
The unreliability of freelance writing is precisely why certain people (e.g. my parents) were dubious when I announced my plan to be a freelance writer. (And, let's face it, with good reason.)
But today I was reflecting on the fact that everything else I wanted to do with my life wouldn't have been any more secure. Journalists for major publications have been getting laid off left and right for years now, and that's if they even bother laying people off before the whole publication goes bust. (Folding newspapers used to mean something else entirely.) And I've always wanted to work in video games, but with nearly 6,000 video game employees laid off so far this year ("What a year, huh?" "Lemon, it's January."), that's also not seeming like a secure employment path.
It's possible secure employment is just one of those bygone era things, like payphones and bellbottoms. Seems inconvenient for people who want to keep a roof over their heads though. And speaking of which:
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BURDEN OF ROOF
My latest column is about the difficulty of getting home repair professionals to call you back:
The good news is, after writing this column, the roofer finally did come out today to look at our leaking roof.
The bad news is, apparently there's significant damage and it's going to be a five-figure bill to have it repaired, which they also can't do until after the weeks of impending rain we have. (For those keeping track at home, yes, this has leapt to the front of my top 5 immediate concerns, on the back of the affects me personally multiplier.)
So that's all terrible. In lieu of curling up into a ball and crying, I generally deal with a terrible world with the dual-pronged approach of trying to do something to improve it (e.g. donating to an abortion fund when you read the statistic that Texas alone has had 26,000 pregnancies from rape in the past 16 months), and trying to find a bit more joy in my own life. This newsletter strongly endorses hedonism.
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HEDONISM 2024
Admittedly low-budget hedonism, but hedonism doesn't need to be expensive. I continue to revel in the joys of tasty food (tonight: baked potatoes. Warm comfort food, and cheap!), and fun video games (many available free if you have the Internet), and spending time with people whose company you enjoy and who can tolerate you (check your local listings for details).
We're all going to die, but in the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun? Existentialism: It's what's for dinner. (Well, and potatoes.)("Existentialism and Potatoes" might be a decent title for a biography and/or cookbook.)(Surprise! This is actually a recipe blog and this whole newsletter of blather was just a lead-in to my baked potato recipe: Scrub potatoes, coat in olive oil, bake in oven until skin is crispy, serve with butter, shredded cheese, broccoli, and bacon.)
Thanks for reading this issue of Sad Times Monthly, back in two weeks with another column, and hopefully no other news whatsoever.
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Regards from the Jester of Damocles,
Seth