i usually get turned off really easily by video essays with a decided lack of visuals but your cadence and scripting is very engaging. excellent video 💯
I've been saying a lot of the things said in this video for years now. My "inciting incident" was getting laid off for 3 months at the start of the pandemic and just getting to live free from having to labour for a while. I was happier, healthier, I slept more, my house was tidier, I was eating better, etc. Then I was offered a job and the panic started setting in. My start date was pushed back a few weeks due to Covid so I had time to stew in the thought of going back to work. As my start date got closer and closer I started feeling more anxious about going back to work. This eventually came to a head a few days before my start date when I had my first full blown panic attack about it. I was hyper aware of what working full time looks and feels like because I'd spent the last 10 years working full time before this. I suddenly felt, deep in my core, the existential dread of having to live like that again. Just 5 days on, 2 days off, 5 days on, 2 days off, 5 days on, 2 days off..... the cycle repeating every week, likely until I'm dead because retirement is a pipe dream. Except unlike the last 10 years I now KNEW for a fact how much better life is when I'm free of this cycle, and that makes this so much worse. I tried to figure a way out of this, desperately trying to find some justification for not having to return to work, I was manic, but there was no escape from it. I had to go back. I cried myself to sleep the night before my first day while trying not to scream, my partner at the time consoling me as I did so. I woke up, suppressed my emotions as best I could for the day, and kind of disassociated my way through it to be honest. I don't really remember the time at work that day. What I do remember is getting in my car, driving a few blocks, turning into a relatively empty parking lot, parking in the back, and just fucking BALLING. Just tears, and snot, and screaming, and holding myself back from breaking things in my car due to all of the hate, fear, anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion, anger, and frustration I'd been holding in all day bubbling to the surface. To this day I'm not sure I've ever had a more powerful outburst of negative emotion than what I let out that day in my car after my first day back to working full time. I had another panic attack that evening, and the following day, and eventually they became less frequent as I got back into the routine of working and my doctor and I found a good dosage of the medications I now take for anxiety, ADHD, and depression. I'd love to say that things are better now, but they aren't, I'm just more used to feeling miserable about it again. Every day I spend at work I just can't help but think about the fact that I'm forced to give up the majority of my waking hours, on the vast majority of my days, for the vast majority of my years, to labouring. I have to spend most of my days somewhere I don't want to be, doing things I don't want to do, for people I don't even like, surrounded by people I only associate with due to proximity, while my life continues to tick on by day after day, just so I can afford to eat food and live indoors. This isn't living. I spend more days longing to live than I do actually getting to do it. Things don't have to be like this, they shouldn't be like this, we all deserve better.
you've perfectly encapsulated how i've felt ever since starting my first "big kid" job after graduating college, how i've grown to hate the clock and calendars, marking when my time is up, and their time begins
When COVID started I had just started a new job at Whole Foods. My new job was about as kushy as it gets in retail. I worked with one other person or alone in a refrigerated room in back-of-house cutting up and packaging various fruits, guacs, and salsas. I liked my coworker ok, we listened to podcasts or our music all day, we got to decide what to do when, and it was ALWAYS ok to not finish everything we could've done. If we didn't get to something before our shift ended, oh well, they don't pay us to be here longer. I liked my job more than I had liked any of my other jobs, all customer service. It was easy, I wasn't micromanaged, and I never had to deal with upset customers. But then COVID hit. And I started having anxiety attacks almost every day before work. It started being just harder to get out of the car and go in, but then it kept baking up to earlier and earlier in my commute, and lasting longer and longer in my shift. I would be anxious the whole car ride but it would dissipate a few min after I started my shift, then it took 30 minutes for the anxiety to leave, then an hour, then it never left. Eventually I started pulling the car over on my way to work to breathe heavily or cry and try to force myself to go in, because I had to pay the bills. But more and more I'd just end up driving around the City, finding nice parks or cute neighborhoods to park in. Feeling the freedom of time I "should" have spent working, but now spent alone. What was the most confusing to me at the time is that the anxiety seemed totally disconnected from my feelings about my job. I actually kinda liked it. The cubing of fruit is an oddly satisfying activity for me. Finding the best way to make the most even pieces, the repetition. Even the cold room didn't bother me; I preferred it to the summer heat. So I couldn't understand why I was having the most undeniable anxiety I'd ever had in my life about it. I think now though that I was feeling the reality you described noticing once you didn't have to work. Some part of me knew my job was close to useless and taking so much of my life that I want to spend on things that actually matter to me! Eventually I quit by just continually not showing up. Now I'm back at work as a barista and I actually like it ok. It has a lot to do with my coworkers, and working for local shops not a big chain. But the main reason I'm not feeling terrible about work anymore is that I spent almost two years not working, one of those on a hippy Commune. It took *that long* of relative rest for me to relax and reset my nervous system enough to be able to come back to working a job and not feel dead inside. Oh, and I also only work like 25hrs a week. Because 1) fuck full time, and B) I'm living with my parents. All that to say, yeah, I feel your pain.
We give up our lives so a few percentage of elites can live theirs-comfortably and with unlimited power. I wish more people woke up to what’s happening so we started changing our mindsets around how the world operates, and actually achieve change.
so, i'm Malaysian. I've lived in Malaysia all of my life, and i used to work in advertising here, was a copywriter. that part about how we don't own our minds at work hit pretty hard. the most insidious part about an advertising job, besides the standard corporate culture mentioned in your vid, is this propaganda they feed us - that our work, creating pretty lies to sell products and brands, is supposed to be creatively satisfying, culturally significant, and defines the very value of our existence.
Hey Pagemelt - I just want to say as someone who works within the gaming industry - that portion aroud 55:10 ish is even darker than it looks. "If you want to make a startup, then quit and make a startup" A Microsoft exec says on the heels of purchasing tons of startups, crushing their spirits, getting rid of competition for Microsoft/Xbox, and not only that but as of the last couple of months we now know that Microsoft went on to disband and get rid of many of the studios they had acquired. That message was clear as day to me: "Go try it on your own, and we'll fucking crush you"
Why did anyone think big company startups? They either take the patents and ideas and throw out everyone or they integrate it and any creativity and flexibility dies. So you can only sell take your money and run or don't sell.
Teacher here. You've made me glad to stay in teaching. We work our butts off, especially in elementary schools, and don't get as much pay as we deserve, but we never question the validity of the work. (We do question our sanity every day. Kids have that effect.)
spectacular video. thank you for sharing it. I also wanted to add, on the topic of "meaningful work" and the way a full-time do-it-or-die working culture will erode that meaning away - I previously worked as a nurse providing abortion care through the pandemic and the overturn of Roe v. Wade. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most meaningful work I've ever done and could ever hope to do. I moved from that into family social work. What I learned is that it is profoundly easy for important, community serving work to be exploited. I've seen it ever since in my work as a nurse and it has consistently made me so catastrophically pessimistic about our ability to care and provide for one another under capitalism that I almost checked myself into voluntary inpatient care after quitting my last job. When work has real meaning, real value, when it is genuinely imperative to the community, that human need for care and meaning becomes a gun to your head. It doesn't matter how abusive or exploitative the employer, how dangerous the working conditions, how brutalizing the schedule, how unforgiving the working culture. If you don't do the work, these people don't get care. It turns valuable work into a game of chicken with employers who want to see how far your compassion for the people you serve will stretch before it breaks, or you die.
I have worked both blue collar and white collar jobs, both suck in their own way but blue collar - without fail - always pushed me to a mental breaking point of crying. You body hurts, your physically exhausted, and you are stressed because all you do is work and you can’t eat regularly. Bottom line, corporate job is definitely easy in comparison but it’s not all roses either. Take this comment with a grain of salt bc variability in every job field for every person. I’m a big white dude, so I’m on easy mode in life lol
My experience has been the opposite. White collar jobs left me working 12 hour days (literally working on my public transport commutes to and from work) 7 days a week for maybe a 20% pay increase to when I was a factory worker working 9-5 5 days a week and actually being able to clock out physically and more importantly mentally. Jobs on your feet are exhausting but at least it’s physical that improves your health. Mental exhaustion and stress from overwork and always being on call (rarely with paid overtime for all those extra hours) for me was much worse. Like you obviously just my own biased experiences but my view of friends who work in office jobs vs friends who work with their hands is that aside from my white collar friends who are engineers and my blue collar friends who work in hospitality the blue collar jobs are almost all better pay, better hours, and less stressful. Obviously the compounding effects on the body aren’t ideal but I know enough office workers in their late 20’s to early 30’s with severe back problems and arthritis from sitting and typing all day that I’m not terribly convinced by that argument either.
I believe some people are better suited for other positions but I also believe these people shouldn't be relegated to a full time position just because they're the best fit. The janitor should be allowed some say in what gets done and how, alongside their "manager" (everyone is a manager, I hate this title).
i'm the type of guy who will put on nearly any video essay-style vid i see on my recommended just to have something going on in the background, and so much of it is fairly mediocre, but this video truly captured my attention. i absolutely adored your use of grabbing from so many different example sources and connecting it back to your wider point without rehashing the same thing over and over. this video doesn't have fluff and deserves its whole hour and eighteen minute runtime. absolutely delighted that i found my way to it :) i'm excited to see your future endeavors!
im genuinely so glad thoughts like this are increasingly becoming part of our cultural imagination. thank you for doing the ~work of spreading these ideas.
Your point about Not the Worst Cleaner *wanting* to clean particularly stands out to me. I am a handyman and I got into it because I enjoy construction and maintenance. I *like* fixing houses. I often do handiwork for my community for free or for trade. I also was a barista for about 5 years. I’m working corporate right now but I’ve always said that if handiwork or baristaing paid even marginally better, I would have been happy to do either forever because those jobs are so enjoyable and fulfilling to me. I don’t desire a lavish lifestyle but I do want to have a savings account and own a home someday… and for that it seems like you kind of have to Climb The Ladder 🙄
I'm Native. You've described what decolonization looks like to me. We do the work to care for our loved ones! Our community! We're only gonna make it if we care for each other
Sounds like a great goal to me. One idea I'd like to contribute: The names of these good societal plans seem to me to be vague, controversial and antagonistic. Hear me out because cooperation is good For instance "Defund the police" while the real plan is a not-controversial and not antagonistic to police. It is about a shift towards public outreach, prevention, de-escalation, reducing necessity of Militarized equipment. All good stuff. The implications from the name, to a lay-person sounds like get rid of the police. Decolonization as a name sounds a lot like the worst possible interpretation. Sounds not like a plan to focus on moving away from corporate capitalism, on sustainability, stability, family and community. It sounds like a call to get rid of Europeans. I wish the left would stop using outrage as a slogan and truly begin to focus on getting everyone on-side and cooperating on specific issues rather than focusing on totalization and full ideological conformity. As someone outside the space I didn't realize I was arguing for the same goals but disagreeing with "defund the police" and "de-colonization" because nobody really explained that their goals aren't nearly as radical as the slogans seem to portray. This is concerning for me because the vast majority of people are normal, good people but there are some who use these slogans to push radical change and hide the severity of their language and hate. Two people can say "we want to de-colonize ___" person A intention is to put severe limits on corporate greed, build housing and focus on building strong and diverse communities. While hypothetical person B is a rare radical hiding their hate and desire to eradicate "white people" I've seen the two ends of the spectrum from real neoNazis and the extremists who want the same national socialism just exchange Jews for whites. It's disgusting how both aren't seen as the same evil scum. There's a big blind spot to radicalism in society today causing a rift and lack of cooperation in the middle
@@LoafingMushroom exactly what I meant by my previous comment. You're just as evil as the Nazis with your blood and soil rhetoric. What about mixed people? What about people so goddamned mixed they don't have any identity?
Working as a systems software developer in a company that recently went public and was acquired by a parent. One of the most exhausting things about that acquisition is the amount of corporate speak and drivel that has come down the pipeline that we're expected to pretend to care about. Everyone on my team has features to design and implement and test, system architecture to read up on, bugs to fix, code to review, etc., and in between all of that we're inundated with corporate emails and trainings and finance meetings that interrupt the work that we're being payed to do. Great video, and your monologue of how you feel about your job rings very true to me.
hey, thanks for this! I didn't want to get too in-the-weeds about my personal experience with my day job in this vid for fear of doxxing myself, but this is basically exactly what I'm going through, and the craziest thing is it we're just supposed to pretend like the culture hasn't completely shifted under our feet. I'm sorry you're dealing with it too, but it's nice to know I'm not crazy 😅
I’m so happy this popped up in my recommended. This is such a well thought and well worded explanation of a feeling I’ve had as a zoomer in corporate America. Excellent stuff, thank you for making it.
the closest i've ever felt to feeling "fulfilled" at a job was when i worked big industrial sewing machines making leather products (primarily guitar straps). it was difficult on my hands and at times mind numbing to repeat the same action literal hundreds of times. i dont have any kind of passion for guitars or leather working in general but i loved having the feeling of accomplishment that i made something tangible. i actually really enjoyed helping the ceo with a side project where i was almost entirely in control of the process and the way the materials were organized and got to work with my boss on different styles of straps. i looked forward to working on it during the last hour of my shift everyday. and even with all of this i still developed alcoholism at only 22 to cope with how my life was structured because of work. my next job as a gas station attendant made it exponentially worse and nearly killed me because of the existential dread i tried to bury with vodka and the promise that i would be dead instead of having to life through another day. I started my new job at an extremely physically demanding job 3 days ago and i am already in pain and exhausted and it is the first time in a long time i considered stopping at a liquor store after almost a year of being sober from the stuff. its exhausting in a way that nothing else is and i appreciate this video for being so upfront with the horror of existence in this system. i wish i could just create. i think in another kinder life im basketweaving for a community i care about
watching this directly after getting off work was maybe a mistake.. my brain is gonna chew on this for the rest of the day like a dog with a dangerous bit of plastic. Amazing video!
i'm 20 and have grown up with abuse and mental health problems, not to mention living life with autism and adhd, and coming out of the darkest period of my life, with finally prioritizing my mental health and feeling like I'm myself again, just to now have to shove that down the toilet to 'work', is a nightmare. To have to have a career. Turning to older people and just not understanding how they manage, asking them and getting indiscriminate answers like "oh you're just not doing the right work" or "once you find what you're 'meant to do' it'll all work out" is soul crushing. Not to mention the pick between a laborious job, which will destroy your body, or a desk job which will crush your soul is insane. How do i as a young person make this decision? how do we expect a change from the inside when, like the workers at double-fine, our ideas and thoughts have to be kept secret or else proves our disloyalty? Disability is so close to our discussions of work. I saw a little snippet of a speech that Joanna Hedva gave on disability, where they say, "Illness could be a major subject. It could be like love, war, coming of age, identity, family. It could be this thing that we understand ourselves going through as a crucible that forms us. Why then, do we keep telling ourselves that it means 1 or 2 things?". Mainly expanding on your point on disability here, but, if we could understand our body's and souls, as people who will be disabled one day, then maybe potentially we could have a better understanding of jobs which house meaning, and building structures in place which don't have to make people 'grateful' for suffering to death. ahh also great video!!
@@EepyHarmony thank you so much for the advice!! i'll definitely ponder on a lot of those options. I love the bit about not doing what i fall flat in autistically, i think that'll really help :))
I am 50 and have ADHD and can share my experience. Yes it is hard, but one can find more caring and helping people as one thinks, Many are like you and more than we think care.
I started watching this before bed thinking "oh neat a video essay that I'll probably fall asleep to but be able to rewatch some in the morning" I'm obviously still awake, and much like you with Elysium, i don't think I'll be able to stop thinking about your ending monologue and final quote for a long while.
What an absolute treat of a video, your way of constructing an argument that follows a comprehensible and chronological progression through your point and into the watchers perspective of it is an incredible talent. I love watching your other projects on patreon and I’m so happy you were able to complete this project! You’ve clearly put a lot of effort in and it really does shine through so massive kudos!
Watching this during the 3 days i took off work to have a surgery, already dreading going back. Thanks for this great video, as someone w a corporate job i appreciate how directly you clocked the abject bullshittery of so much of it
wow this entire video is literally exactly bar for bar what ive been feeling and thinking about for the last few years and i just couldnt express it ANYWHERE even remotely close to this well, lowkey made me tear up, im so happy you made this video genuinely i love you, people like me who are maybe a bit slow or have a scattered brain or dont have enough time to indulge in such an analysis by themselves for many uncontrollable reasons, it truly does mean a lot that you can communicate something like this so well in the beginning of the video you said something about how this is more focused on an american experience, but truly its barely any different here in most places in europe, younger people nowadays finally are realizing how bullshit all of this is precisely because so many of us had to see our parents and grandparents break their backs and ruin themselves mentally all just to upkeep their image as the "hardworking guy", all just to reach arbitrary social success goals, this is also the reason for so much racism and discrimination against immigrants and roma people, because theyre seen as "lazy", "cowards" and "get to do nothing because we pay their meals with tax money" or whatever, even i, who is studying illustration in uni, get really condescending and lowkey bitter attitudes from my wider family because i can just tell they think im a slacker who doesnt do shit all day, while also envying me in the same breath. My mere existance isnt worth as much as theirs, because im not working 8hours on minimum wage every day at a factory with 3 broken fingers so i can afford renovations on my newly "bought" house(40 years in debt) with my 2 kids that i had at 18years old while my husband makes disgusting sex jokes about me at family gatherings, like literally what is the point in any of that. My ENTIRE family has this miserable history of overworking themselves within a company that could not give less of a shit about their wellbeing, its genuinely too much to even write here, but they still go on and dont do anything about it because they think this is just the price they have to pay to perhaps have one day off a month where they get to drink a beer on a terrace with their neighbour and coincedentally most of their conversation topics are just complaining about work and how long they have left until retirement. However with younger generations coming in and telling it how it is, ive seen their determination and confidence shake, and theyre realizing theyve spent 40 years working a job that provided no value to anybody whatsoever, realizing that its just stolen the time they couldve had to be close to their loved ones instead. Its honestly sad to watch. But theres also a hint of hope when they talk about the young people being "bratty", WE need to change something because i dont intend to suffer like the rest of my family
This is incredible, especially loved the last section. I'm burned out from existing in capitalist society. But what if I didn't have to stress over working or obtaining work? If I wasn't incentivized by money? What would I have the energy, the spoons, to do, to help? How can I start re-claiming some of that energy now? I quit my full time coding job last year, freelanced for a bit, and am now going back but in a much more creative direction (tho still coding). I'm hoping that this direction will be more "fulfilling", tho I've also recently arrived at that realization that I won't find The Meaning Of Life in my work. Truthfully, I don't understand how anyone does this long term, tho I'm ND which maybe plays a part. This video put words to a lot of half cooked thoughts in my brain, lol. It was also a comfy watch. Excited to watch more :)
This is an absolutely incredible video, the kind of thing that you think has 500 thousand views but somehow has almost none. Your style of citing and including sources is really engaging, I hope to get to the point where I can use sources with as much talent as you do here.
At first, I, for some reason, didn’t want to watch the video, but now I regret it, this is brilliant. Thank you so much, it was worth the time, would definitely rewatch.
have not yet finished this video bc i was playing it in the background while i worked my corporate 9 to 5 and work has ended lol but it has already impacted me so profoundly. thank you for making this video
procrastinated going to bed for fear of work by watching this❤ jokes aside this was incredibly thoughtful, well researched and astute. definitely put into words a lot of the scary feelings I've been having as a young person starting their career!!
This rules, thanks for making it. That quote from the double fine doc by Matt fucking Booty was so harrowing when I first saw it. I'm glad someone recognized the madness happening there and called it out for what it was. I work in the games industry and was laid off a couple months ago, and not only are my personal projects my lifeline during unemployment -- both structurally, to stave off depression, and financially, albeit in a small way, they're also the kindling of the entire reason I fucking got into this into the first place. Everything important I learned about making games, I learned myself -- and brought that to work. It's fucking agonizing to hear that the entire reason my resume was good enough to get into this industry is also radioactive the moment I make it in. My last job was shitty in many ways, but I am thankful that my last employer had the sense to realize moonlighting was worth allowing folks to do.
This is an absolutely incredible video. I struggle to find the words to describe how I feel about the work culture in America but you perfectly articulated it all and more. I’ve seen it devour my friends and wound the soul of my family. 6 months into my first “real” job I knew I wouldn’t survive a normal 9-5. I ended up starting my own business with its own up and downs but I do feel the work I does helps people, and I feel very thankful for that.
Only 15 minutes in (while sitting in my soul crushing corporate job) and already so grateful the algorithm brought this video to me. What a nuanced and thoughtful approach to a terribly important topic. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the video has in store
what a banger of a video, the most comprehensive and approachable, and at the same time profound essay on the hell that is work i am right now in a temporary state of just living my life being supported by a bit of savings and help of a beloved partner. for the last 3 years i was working in corporate IT, fully aware that no meaning or value is being created during these paid hours. i felt my soul and body decaying every day and i knew the cause of it. i ended up severely mentally and physically ill by this fall, and quitting working a corporate job resolved those issues in a month. i don't know how to try to approach looking for a new job again, and i know that i am blessed for having this break of having my life belong to me for a little bit I'll eventually continue working for the knife, as mitski eloquently put in her song, but i will not stop trying to save my soul and peace. i encourage everyone who is struggling to keep trying as well. we are so much bigger than our bullshit jobs or our meaningful but criminally undervalued jobs
This is exactly like me! My body nearly shut down physically (heart and lungs got infections) and I had to spend some time in the hospital as a result. I'm now back in school to switch career paths into something more meaningful
So glad you’re on youtube now! Deleted tiktok but when I had it, every time I saw a video of yours I would listen intently without fail. Same is true when I get an hour straight of content 🙂 So impressed by your ability to quickly and effectively distill large social issues and make connections throughout history and media types. I rarely comment but I appreciate your videos so much I felt compelled to!
This is such a sentimental well thought out take on the world of work and I'm all for it. I like your introspective take and I'd love to see more content like this. You've earned my sub, great job putting this video together!
I'm lucky to live in Europe. I get a entire months worth holiday or vacation for you Americans guaranteed and protected by government this applies from the lowly service worker too. My company cannot fire me on a whim and must give me 1-2 months of heads up and full pay before I leave the door. I have to be given breaks for every 6-8 hours worked. I have to paid overtime for every hour worked outside my contract. It's crazy that America is so overworked.
A) Thank you for keeping me company while I make my first ever bundt cake, B) this video took me viscerally back to my retail/customer service days, which I exited by getting a dream job in the gaming industry... which required such an enormous weekly word count from me that I now have permanent hand pain! Which I guess makes a nice change from all the foot and back pain I had working in a shop 40 hours a week. Abolishing work so we can live and build community sounds amazing to me. Great vid, well worth all the time you spent on it.
Mel, I loved this video! I always find you so smart and thoughtful and deeply interesting to listen to and that very much continued here. I am so excited to see what you do in the future and to read/listen to/watch some of the works you mentioned here. Also, great background! I loved tracking the changes.
Incredible video. Also, I majored in English and spent many years blogging for small BnB tech companies. I actually did try and I’d stand by anything I ever wrote. But so many of those sites are dead now, and gone is all the fruit of my labor 😅
I’ve been trying to struggle with this type of overarching setting and ressentiment that builds in my own writing. This video has unblocked a few chakras and liberated some stratified bullshit. Thanks Mel!❤
really beautiful video. I was watching office space again recently for the first time since I was a kid and was persistently thinking about Graeber’s work throughout so I’m glad to see those connections validated and explored so thoroughly here. thank you!!
I mean this from the bottom of my heart: this is one of the best videos on youtube. The first thirty minutes changed my brain chemistry. I am less optimistic about the solution of making work like play. I don't see any reality where that doesn't result in something way more dystopian than the current system. Just look at the horrors of "hip" startup culture and the side hustle economy.
35:12 this reminds me of the singing woman outside Winston's window in 1984. Not necessary the woman’s role but the outer appreciation of someone able live a moment. I hope people will be able find a mode of work that feels natural and meaningful.
37:50 "i was having a meeting about a meeting" i felt it in my bones...i hate all meetings as most of them could be emails, but these specific b*llshit ones are SOUL CRUSHING!
This is a greatttt video essay. I’ve been thinking about this topic non stop as I enter my 3rd year of college on my 6th major change trying to figure out what to fucking major in if I want to make a modest living and protect myself and my family but also not want to kill myself because I have mental and physical health issues that are triggered by stress. I have always been a well rounded scholarship student, but I am super passionate about graphic design and art. I did graphic design for two semesters at a private liberal arts college and hated it. I saw ppl with practically no talent but good appearances and well connected rich families get internships before they even knew how to use photoshop. Their work sucks. All they do is party, but they won’t Venmo you for an Uber and act like they can’t afford anything bc they are a “broke college student,” despite getting allowances and rent paid by their parents. But they are 100% more set for their careers than I will ever be, no matter how hard I work or slave away at a computer. My professors told me my personal style was “too much,” even though I was getting great responses from other creatives, and their last job was doing corporate design for Monsanto campaigns 15 years ago. So I switched to advertising and visual communications, but then I realized how useless and meaningless it felt to do something so abstracted from what I love in a saturated market that doesn’t bring tangible value to the world. I transferred to a new school with a better more creative design program that appreciates my style, but I decided not to follow through because of how competitive and uncertain it is, and switch to accounting, my original major before I did design, because I just need something boring and stable and I’m good at math. I hate corporate America and finance, but I don’t care. I can’t care. I need stability and benefits to survive, and I can’t do super strenuous physical work due to a back injury, and I don’t wanna do a job that overworks me and uses up all my talent in advertising management. I hope to use the finance info I learn to help start my own creative business on the side later on in life, but it makes me so angry to think of how many people are in the art world using working class values and aesthetics to further their own personal suffering narrative to “improve” their art and make themselves a more complex, virtuous image, only to make kinda shitty nonsense art that is soulless, while I know so many people who are so talented and creative but have to give up their hobbies and creative endeavors to support themselves and their families doing something else that demoralizes and drains them.
Really hope this video gets to more people. We need to start opening up about our realities more. I belong to a country that is very exploited in terms of work. Corporations come here, hire us, only to pay less for our job and making us work more hours. We are all so miserable but we pretend it’s “necessary.” We tell ourselves being exploited means we’re strong. It fucking sucks.
@@pagemeltI had a similar sort of thing happen to me a few years ago. I worked for a video game company, and when I was hired I had to sign something that basically asked me to list out any intellectual property ideas I had, and then had verbiage afterward I was supposed to sign in agreement to that said something like the things I’d listed above was an exhaustive list of all my ideas, so any ideas I hadn’t listed for the duration that I worked for the company were created for the company and belonged to them. It was written in a very loose way that implied all IPs, not just video game IPs. It made me extremely uncomfortable so I refused to sign it as-is. Thankfully they didn’t push me on it.
Hi, Pagemelt! Like many others, I clicked on this video due to it's length and strong indication of it being a video essay. I can certainly say you've absolutely nailed it in terms of presentation, source material and eloquent rhetoric. This is an absolutely wonderful piece of work and you should be very proud of what you've created. On less fun stuff, I completely agree with everything you've presented and mentioned throughout - I think the rise of a cultural epoch that heavily ties identity to work is mega-depressing and soul crushing. The questions you've asked at the end of the video are also very thought provoking. I totally agree that everyone does indeed want to do work, even the less 'desirable' jobs (think of Perfect Days directed by Wim Wenders) but the ultimate cultural norm of people entirely relying on what can only be described as wage serfdom simply causes more harm than good. Crazy good video, well done. PS. you totally remind me Tim Rogers from Action Button and I think you would immensely enjoy his gargantuan and ever-introspective game reviews.
Thank you so much for this video essay. I needed to hear this, because the past while I've been working has felt bullshit, and all other options have felt bullshit. What you've said about doing work that 'no one wants to do' struck a real chord with me; Ironically I had the luxary of rebelling against art-school-enthusiast parents, and instead I'll be going to lawschool soon, because I genuinely enjoy the components of legal work and I find the end result fulfilling - But I'm terrified of entering a system that makes me choose between soulless evil work or overwork (ie. public defenders). I guess I just wanted to say that this video gave me a bit of hope.
I recently found your channel and love your production style, really well paced and communicating great takes and pontification. Also your husbands music is dope.
This was such a deeply enjoyable watch. Thank you for making this video, Mel! I took breaks from it to complete care work this evening and loved being able to let the ideas marinate a little before going back in for more.
as a first year uni student, studying BUSINESS this video really hits. im dreading the time when i have to leave education to get a corporate job and make an evil corporation marginally richer. it just depresses the hell out of me. thanks for make this video, im going to be thinking about it for a while
Especially the lack of safety at work with threat of job and not caring of him passing away, just like the similar passing away of girl at Walmart bakery. Infact this whole film and a few films I've watched 10 years ago is coming up to mind lately like distric 9 that I didn't get ar first watch but now I'm understanding. Have you noticed that badly written forced "happy" ending they are pushing in recent dystopias? With out getting to core of issue
I used to work warehouse, I've been working corporate for 2 years and I hate i want nothing more than to go back to warehouse but it just doesn't pay enough
As an accountant who picked up reading novels again a few years ago, thank you for putting into words and explaining why modern novels have stopped giving more detailed explanations of the financial situations of their subjects. I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith earlier this year and it was so refreshing to get exact numbers, multiple times, about how much the characters were making, how much their rent was, how much food cost and what they ate day to day, etc. It was very enlightening to learn that the pro-capitalist forces during the Cold War made a concerted effort to do away with that kind of writing.
i’m so thankful to have stumbled across this video. i feel like it gave me some sense of direction. thank you for all the new ideas (you still own them don’t worry)
I loved this so much. I also fully felt the part where you said you switched out of an English degree because you loved writing and therefore did not want a job doing it. As someone who thought that I would get a job in creative writing, preferably editing, out of college, it is one of my bigger regrets. I work at a Law office now as a demand writer and, while not necessarily a BS job, it is very draining. I struggle to creatively write in my free time and even just struggle to read for fun sometimes. The jobs drains me just enough to leave me wanting to do more, but I don't have the energy to do anything more. Its a frustration every day. I clock out feeling demotivated. I spend all work day putting off ideas for writing and looking forward to the book I'm currently reading, only to clock out and need to make dinner and not want to sit at my desk anymore because of back pain and only able to read 10 pages before I find myself waking up to my husband taking my book out of my hands and putting in my bookmark. I've stopped freelance editing because I'm just so tired all the time.
This video is haunting .. I personally experienced only wanting to go into my corp job to get paid. I have turned down multiple offers to be promoted with various excuses only to later have to accept them because it was all but stated, accept it or leave. The life dread that comes from the additional hours and responsibilities with only slightly higher pay is wild. And others expect me to be not only happy and excited but thankful... It makes me want to vomit lol
Hello fellow software person (I used to be on the development side, and you're on the design side, wow I admire people who make things useful and beautiful!!!) Anyways, this video is eye opening. I still don't think my job is bullsh** but you made me question it, and that's something! I'm happy your video got recommended, looking forward to seeing your other stuff!
as a jr dr (who works in non-for-profit corporate), I'm curious where doctors fit into the designed adversarial dynamic between blue collar and corporate - we are blue collar workers, but often wealthy comparatively, often with eventually better work life balance to many other healthcare workers, and often assigned special privileges for our work rather than vilified for it (same is probably true for firefighters, not so much police for many reasons).
gamedev here that went AAA to indie, the double fine segment is terrifying. Thankfully my company was chill with me working on stuff on the side but the fear of our small studio getting acquired and completely changing was so real and yet something employees had pretty much no say in.
i usually get turned off really easily by video essays with a decided lack of visuals but your cadence and scripting is very engaging. excellent video 💯
I've been saying a lot of the things said in this video for years now. My "inciting incident" was getting laid off for 3 months at the start of the pandemic and just getting to live free from having to labour for a while. I was happier, healthier, I slept more, my house was tidier, I was eating better, etc.
Then I was offered a job and the panic started setting in. My start date was pushed back a few weeks due to Covid so I had time to stew in the thought of going back to work. As my start date got closer and closer I started feeling more anxious about going back to work. This eventually came to a head a few days before my start date when I had my first full blown panic attack about it. I was hyper aware of what working full time looks and feels like because I'd spent the last 10 years working full time before this. I suddenly felt, deep in my core, the existential dread of having to live like that again.
Just 5 days on, 2 days off, 5 days on, 2 days off, 5 days on, 2 days off..... the cycle repeating every week, likely until I'm dead because retirement is a pipe dream. Except unlike the last 10 years I now KNEW for a fact how much better life is when I'm free of this cycle, and that makes this so much worse.
I tried to figure a way out of this, desperately trying to find some justification for not having to return to work, I was manic, but there was no escape from it. I had to go back. I cried myself to sleep the night before my first day while trying not to scream, my partner at the time consoling me as I did so.
I woke up, suppressed my emotions as best I could for the day, and kind of disassociated my way through it to be honest. I don't really remember the time at work that day. What I do remember is getting in my car, driving a few blocks, turning into a relatively empty parking lot, parking in the back, and just fucking BALLING.
Just tears, and snot, and screaming, and holding myself back from breaking things in my car due to all of the hate, fear, anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion, anger, and frustration I'd been holding in all day bubbling to the surface. To this day I'm not sure I've ever had a more powerful outburst of negative emotion than what I let out that day in my car after my first day back to working full time. I had another panic attack that evening, and the following day, and eventually they became less frequent as I got back into the routine of working and my doctor and I found a good dosage of the medications I now take for anxiety, ADHD, and depression.
I'd love to say that things are better now, but they aren't, I'm just more used to feeling miserable about it again. Every day I spend at work I just can't help but think about the fact that I'm forced to give up the majority of my waking hours, on the vast majority of my days, for the vast majority of my years, to labouring. I have to spend most of my days somewhere I don't want to be, doing things I don't want to do, for people I don't even like, surrounded by people I only associate with due to proximity, while my life continues to tick on by day after day, just so I can afford to eat food and live indoors.
This isn't living. I spend more days longing to live than I do actually getting to do it. Things don't have to be like this, they shouldn't be like this, we all deserve better.
you've perfectly encapsulated how i've felt ever since starting my first "big kid" job after graduating college, how i've grown to hate the clock and calendars, marking when my time is up, and their time begins
When COVID started I had just started a new job at Whole Foods.
My new job was about as kushy as it gets in retail. I worked with one other person or alone in a refrigerated room in back-of-house cutting up and packaging various fruits, guacs, and salsas. I liked my coworker ok, we listened to podcasts or our music all day, we got to decide what to do when, and it was ALWAYS ok to not finish everything we could've done. If we didn't get to something before our shift ended, oh well, they don't pay us to be here longer. I liked my job more than I had liked any of my other jobs, all customer service. It was easy, I wasn't micromanaged, and I never had to deal with upset customers.
But then COVID hit. And I started having anxiety attacks almost every day before work.
It started being just harder to get out of the car and go in, but then it kept baking up to earlier and earlier in my commute, and lasting longer and longer in my shift. I would be anxious the whole car ride but it would dissipate a few min after I started my shift, then it took 30 minutes for the anxiety to leave, then an hour, then it never left. Eventually I started pulling the car over on my way to work to breathe heavily or cry and try to force myself to go in, because I had to pay the bills. But more and more I'd just end up driving around the City, finding nice parks or cute neighborhoods to park in. Feeling the freedom of time I "should" have spent working, but now spent alone.
What was the most confusing to me at the time is that the anxiety seemed totally disconnected from my feelings about my job. I actually kinda liked it. The cubing of fruit is an oddly satisfying activity for me. Finding the best way to make the most even pieces, the repetition. Even the cold room didn't bother me; I preferred it to the summer heat. So I couldn't understand why I was having the most undeniable anxiety I'd ever had in my life about it.
I think now though that I was feeling the reality you described noticing once you didn't have to work. Some part of me knew my job was close to useless and taking so much of my life that I want to spend on things that actually matter to me!
Eventually I quit by just continually not showing up.
Now I'm back at work as a barista and I actually like it ok. It has a lot to do with my coworkers, and working for local shops not a big chain. But the main reason I'm not feeling terrible about work anymore is that I spent almost two years not working, one of those on a hippy Commune. It took *that long* of relative rest for me to relax and reset my nervous system enough to be able to come back to working a job and not feel dead inside. Oh, and I also only work like 25hrs a week. Because 1) fuck full time, and B) I'm living with my parents.
All that to say, yeah, I feel your pain.
We give up our lives so a few percentage of elites can live theirs-comfortably and with unlimited power. I wish more people woke up to what’s happening so we started changing our mindsets around how the world operates, and actually achieve change.
so, i'm Malaysian. I've lived in Malaysia all of my life, and i used to work in advertising here, was a copywriter. that part about how we don't own our minds at work hit pretty hard.
the most insidious part about an advertising job, besides the standard corporate culture mentioned in your vid, is this propaganda they feed us - that our work, creating pretty lies to sell products and brands, is supposed to be creatively satisfying, culturally significant, and defines the very value of our existence.
We exist to consume in this capitalistic hell
@@creepcraddle I really don't understand what an activity without consuming something should look like. Can you give some examples.
Even our lives are consumed by death
I've been in the ad industry for 15 years and this is true. It's all a con. The quicker we leave the better.
Hey Pagemelt - I just want to say as someone who works within the gaming industry - that portion aroud 55:10 ish is even darker than it looks.
"If you want to make a startup, then quit and make a startup"
A Microsoft exec says on the heels of purchasing tons of startups, crushing their spirits, getting rid of competition for Microsoft/Xbox, and not only that but as of the last couple of months we now know that Microsoft went on to disband and get rid of many of the studios they had acquired.
That message was clear as day to me: "Go try it on your own, and we'll fucking crush you"
Why did anyone think big company startups? They either take the patents and ideas and throw out everyone or they integrate it and any creativity and flexibility dies. So you can only sell take your money and run or don't sell.
Teacher here. You've made me glad to stay in teaching. We work our butts off, especially in elementary schools, and don't get as much pay as we deserve, but we never question the validity of the work. (We do question our sanity every day. Kids have that effect.)
spectacular video. thank you for sharing it.
I also wanted to add, on the topic of "meaningful work" and the way a full-time do-it-or-die working culture will erode that meaning away - I previously worked as a nurse providing abortion care through the pandemic and the overturn of Roe v. Wade. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most meaningful work I've ever done and could ever hope to do. I moved from that into family social work.
What I learned is that it is profoundly easy for important, community serving work to be exploited. I've seen it ever since in my work as a nurse and it has consistently made me so catastrophically pessimistic about our ability to care and provide for one another under capitalism that I almost checked myself into voluntary inpatient care after quitting my last job. When work has real meaning, real value, when it is genuinely imperative to the community, that human need for care and meaning becomes a gun to your head.
It doesn't matter how abusive or exploitative the employer, how dangerous the working conditions, how brutalizing the schedule, how unforgiving the working culture. If you don't do the work, these people don't get care. It turns valuable work into a game of chicken with employers who want to see how far your compassion for the people you serve will stretch before it breaks, or you die.
I have worked both blue collar and white collar jobs, both suck in their own way but blue collar - without fail - always pushed me to a mental breaking point of crying. You body hurts, your physically exhausted, and you are stressed because all you do is work and you can’t eat regularly. Bottom line, corporate job is definitely easy in comparison but it’s not all roses either. Take this comment with a grain of salt bc variability in every job field for every person. I’m a big white dude, so I’m on easy mode in life lol
My experience has been the opposite. White collar jobs left me working 12 hour days (literally working on my public transport commutes to and from work) 7 days a week for maybe a 20% pay increase to when I was a factory worker working 9-5 5 days a week and actually being able to clock out physically and more importantly mentally.
Jobs on your feet are exhausting but at least it’s physical that improves your health. Mental exhaustion and stress from overwork and always being on call (rarely with paid overtime for all those extra hours) for me was much worse.
Like you obviously just my own biased experiences but my view of friends who work in office jobs vs friends who work with their hands is that aside from my white collar friends who are engineers and my blue collar friends who work in hospitality the blue collar jobs are almost all better pay, better hours, and less stressful. Obviously the compounding effects on the body aren’t ideal but I know enough office workers in their late 20’s to early 30’s with severe back problems and arthritis from sitting and typing all day that I’m not terribly convinced by that argument either.
I believe some people are better suited for other positions but I also believe these people shouldn't be relegated to a full time position just because they're the best fit. The janitor should be allowed some say in what gets done and how, alongside their "manager" (everyone is a manager, I hate this title).
i'm the type of guy who will put on nearly any video essay-style vid i see on my recommended just to have something going on in the background, and so much of it is fairly mediocre, but this video truly captured my attention. i absolutely adored your use of grabbing from so many different example sources and connecting it back to your wider point without rehashing the same thing over and over. this video doesn't have fluff and deserves its whole hour and eighteen minute runtime. absolutely delighted that i found my way to it :) i'm excited to see your future endeavors!
This is going to have me thinking and yapping for days.
im genuinely so glad thoughts like this are increasingly becoming part of our cultural imagination. thank you for doing the ~work of spreading these ideas.
Your point about Not the Worst Cleaner *wanting* to clean particularly stands out to me. I am a handyman and I got into it because I enjoy construction and maintenance. I *like* fixing houses. I often do handiwork for my community for free or for trade. I also was a barista for about 5 years. I’m working corporate right now but I’ve always said that if handiwork or baristaing paid even marginally better, I would have been happy to do either forever because those jobs are so enjoyable and fulfilling to me. I don’t desire a lavish lifestyle but I do want to have a savings account and own a home someday… and for that it seems like you kind of have to Climb The Ladder 🙄
Giving people time as long as the coffee cup lasts is a precious gift. Thank you for doing it for us.
I'm Native. You've described what decolonization looks like to me. We do the work to care for our loved ones! Our community! We're only gonna make it if we care for each other
Damn straight.
Sounds like a great goal to me.
One idea I'd like to contribute:
The names of these good societal plans seem to me to be vague, controversial and antagonistic. Hear me out because cooperation is good
For instance
"Defund the police" while the real plan is a not-controversial and not antagonistic to police. It is about a shift towards public outreach, prevention, de-escalation, reducing necessity of Militarized equipment. All good stuff.
The implications from the name, to a lay-person sounds like get rid of the police.
Decolonization as a name sounds a lot like the worst possible interpretation. Sounds not like a plan to focus on moving away from corporate capitalism, on sustainability, stability, family and community. It sounds like a call to get rid of Europeans.
I wish the left would stop using outrage as a slogan and truly begin to focus on getting everyone on-side and cooperating on specific issues rather than focusing on totalization and full ideological conformity.
As someone outside the space I didn't realize I was arguing for the same goals but disagreeing with "defund the police" and "de-colonization" because nobody really explained that their goals aren't nearly as radical as the slogans seem to portray.
This is concerning for me because the vast majority of people are normal, good people but there are some who use these slogans to push radical change and hide the severity of their language and hate.
Two people can say "we want to de-colonize ___" person A intention is to put severe limits on corporate greed, build housing and focus on building strong and diverse communities. While hypothetical person B is a rare radical hiding their hate and desire to eradicate "white people"
I've seen the two ends of the spectrum from real neoNazis and the extremists who want the same national socialism just exchange Jews for whites. It's disgusting how both aren't seen as the same evil scum. There's a big blind spot to radicalism in society today causing a rift and lack of cooperation in the middle
How you gonna decolonize when you are a colonist?
@@LoafingMushroom exactly what I meant by my previous comment. You're just as evil as the Nazis with your blood and soil rhetoric.
What about mixed people? What about people so goddamned mixed they don't have any identity?
@LoafingMushroom without using banned words, your blood and soil rhetoric is the same as painter man. Just as disgusting.
Working as a systems software developer in a company that recently went public and was acquired by a parent. One of the most exhausting things about that acquisition is the amount of corporate speak and drivel that has come down the pipeline that we're expected to pretend to care about. Everyone on my team has features to design and implement and test, system architecture to read up on, bugs to fix, code to review, etc., and in between all of that we're inundated with corporate emails and trainings and finance meetings that interrupt the work that we're being payed to do.
Great video, and your monologue of how you feel about your job rings very true to me.
hey, thanks for this! I didn't want to get too in-the-weeds about my personal experience with my day job in this vid for fear of doxxing myself, but this is basically exactly what I'm going through, and the craziest thing is it we're just supposed to pretend like the culture hasn't completely shifted under our feet. I'm sorry you're dealing with it too, but it's nice to know I'm not crazy 😅
When you said "paying their friends' bills isn't charity because they get something in return: they get each other" i DID start crying a little bit!!
I’m so happy this popped up in my recommended. This is such a well thought and well worded explanation of a feeling I’ve had as a zoomer in corporate America. Excellent stuff, thank you for making it.
the closest i've ever felt to feeling "fulfilled" at a job was when i worked big industrial sewing machines making leather products (primarily guitar straps). it was difficult on my hands and at times mind numbing to repeat the same action literal hundreds of times. i dont have any kind of passion for guitars or leather working in general but i loved having the feeling of accomplishment that i made something tangible. i actually really enjoyed helping the ceo with a side project where i was almost entirely in control of the process and the way the materials were organized and got to work with my boss on different styles of straps. i looked forward to working on it during the last hour of my shift everyday. and even with all of this i still developed alcoholism at only 22 to cope with how my life was structured because of work. my next job as a gas station attendant made it exponentially worse and nearly killed me because of the existential dread i tried to bury with vodka and the promise that i would be dead instead of having to life through another day. I started my new job at an extremely physically demanding job 3 days ago and i am already in pain and exhausted and it is the first time in a long time i considered stopping at a liquor store after almost a year of being sober from the stuff. its exhausting in a way that nothing else is and i appreciate this video for being so upfront with the horror of existence in this system. i wish i could just create. i think in another kinder life im basketweaving for a community i care about
I'm glued to the screen--I'm so proud of you!
aw shucks, thanks darlin
watching this directly after getting off work was maybe a mistake.. my brain is gonna chew on this for the rest of the day like a dog with a dangerous bit of plastic. Amazing video!
LET'S GO BOYS I'M SETTLIN IN
i'm 20 and have grown up with abuse and mental health problems, not to mention living life with autism and adhd, and coming out of the darkest period of my life, with finally prioritizing my mental health and feeling like I'm myself again, just to now have to shove that down the toilet to 'work', is a nightmare. To have to have a career. Turning to older people and just not understanding how they manage, asking them and getting indiscriminate answers like "oh you're just not doing the right work" or "once you find what you're 'meant to do' it'll all work out" is soul crushing. Not to mention the pick between a laborious job, which will destroy your body, or a desk job which will crush your soul is insane. How do i as a young person make this decision? how do we expect a change from the inside when, like the workers at double-fine, our ideas and thoughts have to be kept secret or else proves our disloyalty?
Disability is so close to our discussions of work. I saw a little snippet of a speech that Joanna Hedva gave on disability, where they say, "Illness could be a major subject. It could be like love, war, coming of age, identity, family. It could be this thing that we understand ourselves going through as a crucible that forms us. Why then, do we keep telling ourselves that it means 1 or 2 things?".
Mainly expanding on your point on disability here, but, if we could understand our body's and souls, as people who will be disabled one day, then maybe potentially we could have a better understanding of jobs which house meaning, and building structures in place which don't have to make people 'grateful' for suffering to death.
ahh also great video!!
@@EepyHarmony Thank you as a disabled person who is in the process of getting work, you have given me hope. Thank you🙂
@@EepyHarmony thank you so much for the advice!! i'll definitely ponder on a lot of those options. I love the bit about not doing what i fall flat in autistically, i think that'll really help :))
I am 50 and have ADHD and can share my experience. Yes it is hard, but one can find more caring and helping people as one thinks, Many are like you and more than we think care.
You’re not disabled. You’re just weak.
I started watching this before bed thinking "oh neat a video essay that I'll probably fall asleep to but be able to rewatch some in the morning"
I'm obviously still awake, and much like you with Elysium, i don't think I'll be able to stop thinking about your ending monologue and final quote for a long while.
"sand the texture of your soul" is exactly what i feel my corporate job is trying to do to me everyday
What an absolute treat of a video, your way of constructing an argument that follows a comprehensible and chronological progression through your point and into the watchers perspective of it is an incredible talent. I love watching your other projects on patreon and I’m so happy you were able to complete this project! You’ve clearly put a lot of effort in and it really does shine through so massive kudos!
Watching this during the 3 days i took off work to have a surgery, already dreading going back. Thanks for this great video, as someone w a corporate job i appreciate how directly you clocked the abject bullshittery of so much of it
wow this entire video is literally exactly bar for bar what ive been feeling and thinking about for the last few years and i just couldnt express it ANYWHERE even remotely close to this well, lowkey made me tear up, im so happy you made this video genuinely i love you, people like me who are maybe a bit slow or have a scattered brain or dont have enough time to indulge in such an analysis by themselves for many uncontrollable reasons, it truly does mean a lot that you can communicate something like this so well
in the beginning of the video you said something about how this is more focused on an american experience, but truly its barely any different here in most places in europe, younger people nowadays finally are realizing how bullshit all of this is precisely because so many of us had to see our parents and grandparents break their backs and ruin themselves mentally all just to upkeep their image as the "hardworking guy", all just to reach arbitrary social success goals, this is also the reason for so much racism and discrimination against immigrants and roma people, because theyre seen as "lazy", "cowards" and "get to do nothing because we pay their meals with tax money" or whatever, even i, who is studying illustration in uni, get really condescending and lowkey bitter attitudes from my wider family because i can just tell they think im a slacker who doesnt do shit all day, while also envying me in the same breath. My mere existance isnt worth as much as theirs, because im not working 8hours on minimum wage every day at a factory with 3 broken fingers so i can afford renovations on my newly "bought" house(40 years in debt) with my 2 kids that i had at 18years old while my husband makes disgusting sex jokes about me at family gatherings, like literally what is the point in any of that. My ENTIRE family has this miserable history of overworking themselves within a company that could not give less of a shit about their wellbeing, its genuinely too much to even write here, but they still go on and dont do anything about it because they think this is just the price they have to pay to perhaps have one day off a month where they get to drink a beer on a terrace with their neighbour and coincedentally most of their conversation topics are just complaining about work and how long they have left until retirement. However with younger generations coming in and telling it how it is, ive seen their determination and confidence shake, and theyre realizing theyve spent 40 years working a job that provided no value to anybody whatsoever, realizing that its just stolen the time they couldve had to be close to their loved ones instead. Its honestly sad to watch. But theres also a hint of hope when they talk about the young people being "bratty", WE need to change something because i dont intend to suffer like the rest of my family
This is incredible, especially loved the last section. I'm burned out from existing in capitalist society. But what if I didn't have to stress over working or obtaining work? If I wasn't incentivized by money? What would I have the energy, the spoons, to do, to help? How can I start re-claiming some of that energy now?
I quit my full time coding job last year, freelanced for a bit, and am now going back but in a much more creative direction (tho still coding). I'm hoping that this direction will be more "fulfilling", tho I've also recently arrived at that realization that I won't find The Meaning Of Life in my work. Truthfully, I don't understand how anyone does this long term, tho I'm ND which maybe plays a part.
This video put words to a lot of half cooked thoughts in my brain, lol. It was also a comfy watch. Excited to watch more :)
This video kicks ass - best use of the RUclips algorithm to serve this to me
This is an absolutely incredible video, the kind of thing that you think has 500 thousand views but somehow has almost none. Your style of citing and including sources is really engaging, I hope to get to the point where I can use sources with as much talent as you do here.
At first, I, for some reason, didn’t want to watch the video, but now I regret it, this is brilliant. Thank you so much, it was worth the time, would definitely rewatch.
have not yet finished this video bc i was playing it in the background while i worked my corporate 9 to 5 and work has ended lol but it has already impacted me so profoundly. thank you for making this video
"there is no self-actualisation to be found in work"
procrastinated going to bed for fear of work by watching this❤ jokes aside this was incredibly thoughtful, well researched and astute. definitely put into words a lot of the scary feelings I've been having as a young person starting their career!!
Really well made video. I think this is going to be one of those essays that i keep coming back to. Cant wait to check out the rest of your channel
This rules, thanks for making it. That quote from the double fine doc by Matt fucking Booty was so harrowing when I first saw it. I'm glad someone recognized the madness happening there and called it out for what it was. I work in the games industry and was laid off a couple months ago, and not only are my personal projects my lifeline during unemployment -- both structurally, to stave off depression, and financially, albeit in a small way, they're also the kindling of the entire reason I fucking got into this into the first place. Everything important I learned about making games, I learned myself -- and brought that to work. It's fucking agonizing to hear that the entire reason my resume was good enough to get into this industry is also radioactive the moment I make it in. My last job was shitty in many ways, but I am thankful that my last employer had the sense to realize moonlighting was worth allowing folks to do.
first time a video essay has made me cry
This is an absolutely incredible video. I struggle to find the words to describe how I feel about the work culture in America but you perfectly articulated it all and more. I’ve seen it devour my friends and wound the soul of my family.
6 months into my first “real” job I knew I wouldn’t survive a normal 9-5. I ended up starting my own business with its own up and downs but I do feel the work I does helps people, and I feel very thankful for that.
Kid you’re brilliant and you have good vocabulary words. This is some level of hell, I’m trying to figure out how to live in the wind.
Only 15 minutes in (while sitting in my soul crushing corporate job) and already so grateful the algorithm brought this video to me. What a nuanced and thoughtful approach to a terribly important topic. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the video has in store
Huge news! I'm very excited!
what a banger of a video, the most comprehensive and approachable, and at the same time profound essay on the hell that is work
i am right now in a temporary state of just living my life being supported by a bit of savings and help of a beloved partner. for the last 3 years i was working in corporate IT, fully aware that no meaning or value is being created during these paid hours. i felt my soul and body decaying every day and i knew the cause of it. i ended up severely mentally and physically ill by this fall, and quitting working a corporate job resolved those issues in a month.
i don't know how to try to approach looking for a new job again, and i know that i am blessed for having this break of having my life belong to me for a little bit
I'll eventually continue working for the knife, as mitski eloquently put in her song, but i will not stop trying to save my soul and peace. i encourage everyone who is struggling to keep trying as well. we are so much bigger than our bullshit jobs or our meaningful but criminally undervalued jobs
Yes! I join you in the struggle to keep our souls and our peace. Never give up that striving. It is the *real* good work. ✨🤍🫂
This is exactly like me! My body nearly shut down physically (heart and lungs got infections) and I had to spend some time in the hospital as a result. I'm now back in school to switch career paths into something more meaningful
Thank you for drawing on the robust scientific consensus about animal training to explain work without coercion. ❤
So glad you’re on youtube now! Deleted tiktok but when I had it, every time I saw a video of yours I would listen intently without fail. Same is true when I get an hour straight of content 🙂 So impressed by your ability to quickly and effectively distill large social issues and make connections throughout history and media types. I rarely comment but I appreciate your videos so much I felt compelled to!
This is such a sentimental well thought out take on the world of work and I'm all for it. I like your introspective take and I'd love to see more content like this. You've earned my sub, great job putting this video together!
This is incredible, the end made me honestly well up with hope and tears. “Well I will” is very special and something I wish our society has more of.
This was mwaaah, thank you for your art and effort and perspective
When i learned Elysium was made by the District 9 guy, that was the first time in my life i realized “oh, directors can fall off”
Budgets and manpower limitations also exist 😅
Watched all in one sitting. Moved me to tears.
this was great! i foresee this channel going places, please keep at it!
Very glad the algo brought this to me, most thoughtful youtube essay I've seen in a while :) Love your work
This was amazing!! I’m so proud all the work you’ve done!
I'm lucky to live in Europe. I get a entire months worth holiday or vacation for you Americans guaranteed and protected by government this applies from the lowly service worker too. My company cannot fire me on a whim and must give me 1-2 months of heads up and full pay before I leave the door. I have to be given breaks for every 6-8 hours worked. I have to paid overtime for every hour worked outside my contract.
It's crazy that America is so overworked.
A) Thank you for keeping me company while I make my first ever bundt cake, B) this video took me viscerally back to my retail/customer service days, which I exited by getting a dream job in the gaming industry... which required such an enormous weekly word count from me that I now have permanent hand pain! Which I guess makes a nice change from all the foot and back pain I had working in a shop 40 hours a week. Abolishing work so we can live and build community sounds amazing to me.
Great vid, well worth all the time you spent on it.
This was an incredible video, and very thought-provoking. Thank you for making this. I look forward to more of your content.
Mel, I loved this video! I always find you so smart and thoughtful and deeply interesting to listen to and that very much continued here. I am so excited to see what you do in the future and to read/listen to/watch some of the works you mentioned here. Also, great background! I loved tracking the changes.
@@EbayleyA thank you so much friend ♥️♥️
Incredible video. Also, I majored in English and spent many years blogging for small BnB tech companies. I actually did try and I’d stand by anything I ever wrote. But so many of those sites are dead now, and gone is all the fruit of my labor 😅
I’ve been trying to struggle with this type of overarching setting and ressentiment that builds in my own writing. This video has unblocked a few chakras and liberated some stratified bullshit. Thanks Mel!❤
really beautiful video. I was watching office space again recently for the first time since I was a kid and was persistently thinking about Graeber’s work throughout so I’m glad to see those connections validated and explored so thoroughly here. thank you!!
I mean this from the bottom of my heart: this is one of the best videos on youtube. The first thirty minutes changed my brain chemistry.
I am less optimistic about the solution of making work like play. I don't see any reality where that doesn't result in something way more dystopian than the current system. Just look at the horrors of "hip" startup culture and the side hustle economy.
35:12 this reminds me of the singing woman outside Winston's window in 1984. Not necessary the woman’s role but the outer appreciation of someone able live a moment. I hope people will be able find a mode of work that feels natural and meaningful.
Thank you for shedding light on and vocalizing a feeling I have been having for awhile
Wow this is KILLER. Only half an hour in but top-tier stuff
"Conservative in the way a hotel room is conservative" oh my god
Hey! I know you from tiktok. I left the app, so I'm glad the homepage recommended your video to me. Subscribed!
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️
Amazing video, you’ve put so many thoughts I didn’t know I had into words!!! Now I desperately want to re-read Bullshit Jobs!
37:50 "i was having a meeting about a meeting" i felt it in my bones...i hate all meetings as most of them could be emails, but these specific b*llshit ones are SOUL CRUSHING!
super excited for this!!
thank you for this video, i think about the "hopueful on main" chapter ideas all the time
Haunting, ominous, and hitting all too true. Thank you for the discussion and I hope for a better world soon
100/10!!! Love your content of any length and happy to report long form is truly delightful. Excited for whats to come!
This showed up on my feed and now I'm a subscriber. You're so insightful! Thank you so much for making this.
This is a greatttt video essay. I’ve been thinking about this topic non stop as I enter my 3rd year of college on my 6th major change trying to figure out what to fucking major in if I want to make a modest living and protect myself and my family but also not want to kill myself because I have mental and physical health issues that are triggered by stress. I have always been a well rounded scholarship student, but I am super passionate about graphic design and art. I did graphic design for two semesters at a private liberal arts college and hated it. I saw ppl with practically no talent but good appearances and well connected rich families get internships before they even knew how to use photoshop. Their work sucks. All they do is party, but they won’t Venmo you for an Uber and act like they can’t afford anything bc they are a “broke college student,” despite getting allowances and rent paid by their parents. But they are 100% more set for their careers than I will ever be, no matter how hard I work or slave away at a computer. My professors told me my personal style was “too much,” even though I was getting great responses from other creatives, and their last job was doing corporate design for Monsanto campaigns 15 years ago. So I switched to advertising and visual communications, but then I realized how useless and meaningless it felt to do something so abstracted from what I love in a saturated market that doesn’t bring tangible value to the world. I transferred to a new school with a better more creative design program that appreciates my style, but I decided not to follow through because of how competitive and uncertain it is, and switch to accounting, my original major before I did design, because I just need something boring and stable and I’m good at math. I hate corporate America and finance, but I don’t care. I can’t care. I need stability and benefits to survive, and I can’t do super strenuous physical work due to a back injury, and I don’t wanna do a job that overworks me and uses up all my talent in advertising management. I hope to use the finance info I learn to help start my own creative business on the side later on in life, but it makes me so angry to think of how many people are in the art world using working class values and aesthetics to further their own personal suffering narrative to “improve” their art and make themselves a more complex, virtuous image, only to make kinda shitty nonsense art that is soulless, while I know so many people who are so talented and creative but have to give up their hobbies and creative endeavors to support themselves and their families doing something else that demoralizes and drains them.
aaah thank you for posting on RUclips again and on this topic!!!
this is genuinely so good, subbed
Really hope this video gets to more people. We need to start opening up about our realities more.
I belong to a country that is very exploited in terms of work. Corporations come here, hire us, only to pay less for our job and making us work more hours. We are all so miserable but we pretend it’s “necessary.” We tell ourselves being exploited means we’re strong. It fucking sucks.
The Doublefine stuff is so terrifying and dystopian for me.
yeah this was the only part of the video that affected me so much during editing i had to take a BREAK
@@pagemeltI had a similar sort of thing happen to me a few years ago. I worked for a video game company, and when I was hired I had to sign something that basically asked me to list out any intellectual property ideas I had, and then had verbiage afterward I was supposed to sign in agreement to that said something like the things I’d listed above was an exhaustive list of all my ideas, so any ideas I hadn’t listed for the duration that I worked for the company were created for the company and belonged to them. It was written in a very loose way that implied all IPs, not just video game IPs. It made me extremely uncomfortable so I refused to sign it as-is. Thankfully they didn’t push me on it.
Random drop after 2 years goes crazy. I used check weekly if u had any new videos after i watched the captive prince one
This was a great video and I'm really glad that it was suggested to me
Hi, Pagemelt! Like many others, I clicked on this video due to it's length and strong indication of it being a video essay. I can certainly say you've absolutely nailed it in terms of presentation, source material and eloquent rhetoric. This is an absolutely wonderful piece of work and you should be very proud of what you've created.
On less fun stuff, I completely agree with everything you've presented and mentioned throughout - I think the rise of a cultural epoch that heavily ties identity to work is mega-depressing and soul crushing. The questions you've asked at the end of the video are also very thought provoking. I totally agree that everyone does indeed want to do work, even the less 'desirable' jobs (think of Perfect Days directed by Wim Wenders) but the ultimate cultural norm of people entirely relying on what can only be described as wage serfdom simply causes more harm than good.
Crazy good video, well done.
PS. you totally remind me Tim Rogers from Action Button and I think you would immensely enjoy his gargantuan and ever-introspective game reviews.
Thank you so much for this video essay. I needed to hear this, because the past while I've been working has felt bullshit, and all other options have felt bullshit.
What you've said about doing work that 'no one wants to do' struck a real chord with me; Ironically I had the luxary of rebelling against art-school-enthusiast parents, and instead I'll be going to lawschool soon, because I genuinely enjoy the components of legal work and I find the end result fulfilling - But I'm terrified of entering a system that makes me choose between soulless evil work or overwork (ie. public defenders). I guess I just wanted to say that this video gave me a bit of hope.
This is a very well put together video, thank you!
this was so eye opening and beautiful. thank you.
this was amazing, sharing with many friends now !!!!!
and gosh, what a rich reference list!! excited to dig into your footnotes
I recently found your channel and love your production style, really well paced and communicating great takes and pontification. Also your husbands music is dope.
This was such a deeply enjoyable watch. Thank you for making this video, Mel! I took breaks from it to complete care work this evening and loved being able to let the ideas marinate a little before going back in for more.
I’m excited to be incredibly sad, the Elysium hook is 100/10
as a first year uni student, studying BUSINESS this video really hits. im dreading the time when i have to leave education to get a corporate job and make an evil corporation marginally richer. it just depresses the hell out of me. thanks for make this video, im going to be thinking about it for a while
watching this at work
Great discussion, thanks for sharing!
Especially the lack of safety at work with threat of job and not caring of him passing away, just like the similar passing away of girl at Walmart bakery.
Infact this whole film and a few films I've watched 10 years ago is coming up to mind lately like distric 9 that I didn't get ar first watch but now I'm understanding.
Have you noticed that badly written forced "happy" ending they are pushing in recent dystopias? With out getting to core of issue
I used to work warehouse, I've been working corporate for 2 years and I hate i want nothing more than to go back to warehouse but it just doesn't pay enough
As an accountant who picked up reading novels again a few years ago, thank you for putting into words and explaining why modern novels have stopped giving more detailed explanations of the financial situations of their subjects. I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith earlier this year and it was so refreshing to get exact numbers, multiple times, about how much the characters were making, how much their rent was, how much food cost and what they ate day to day, etc. It was very enlightening to learn that the pro-capitalist forces during the Cold War made a concerted effort to do away with that kind of writing.
i’m so thankful to have stumbled across this video. i feel like it gave me some sense of direction. thank you for all the new ideas (you still own them don’t worry)
I loved this so much. I also fully felt the part where you said you switched out of an English degree because you loved writing and therefore did not want a job doing it. As someone who thought that I would get a job in creative writing, preferably editing, out of college, it is one of my bigger regrets. I work at a Law office now as a demand writer and, while not necessarily a BS job, it is very draining. I struggle to creatively write in my free time and even just struggle to read for fun sometimes. The jobs drains me just enough to leave me wanting to do more, but I don't have the energy to do anything more.
Its a frustration every day. I clock out feeling demotivated. I spend all work day putting off ideas for writing and looking forward to the book I'm currently reading, only to clock out and need to make dinner and not want to sit at my desk anymore because of back pain and only able to read 10 pages before I find myself waking up to my husband taking my book out of my hands and putting in my bookmark. I've stopped freelance editing because I'm just so tired all the time.
This video is haunting .. I personally experienced only wanting to go into my corp job to get paid. I have turned down multiple offers to be promoted with various excuses only to later have to accept them because it was all but stated, accept it or leave. The life dread that comes from the additional hours and responsibilities with only slightly higher pay is wild. And others expect me to be not only happy and excited but thankful... It makes me want to vomit lol
Hello fellow software person (I used to be on the development side, and you're on the design side, wow I admire people who make things useful and beautiful!!!)
Anyways, this video is eye opening. I still don't think my job is bullsh** but you made me question it, and that's something!
I'm happy your video got recommended, looking forward to seeing your other stuff!
as a jr dr (who works in non-for-profit corporate), I'm curious where doctors fit into the designed adversarial dynamic between blue collar and corporate - we are blue collar workers, but often wealthy comparatively, often with eventually better work life balance to many other healthcare workers, and often assigned special privileges for our work rather than vilified for it (same is probably true for firefighters, not so much police for many reasons).
Fantastic work - hope for more in the future! Commenting to show increased engagement so that the algorithm recommends this more widely.
Brilliant work, thank you!
gamedev here that went AAA to indie, the double fine segment is terrifying. Thankfully my company was chill with me working on stuff on the side but the fear of our small studio getting acquired and completely changing was so real and yet something employees had pretty much no say in.
loving this yap sesh