• they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)


I'm unemployed and I feel unemployable; despite our system's best efforts so far at struggling back towards handling the concerns of daily life we are constantly stalling out, getting panicky and paralyzed over small challenges, and even going outside is a struggle. as a result...we spend a lot of time on purely personal pursuits. we try to read new books, watch new media, work slowly on refreshing skills we lost through disuse (and trauma); we don't set ourselves a schedule or a structured curriculum, nor do we have clear goals other than a vague general plan to get better at...well, everything if possible.

it feels a lot like playtime and I don't enjoy the feeling. it's like we're endlessly goofing off. I try to tell myself that at least we are putting effort into maintaining a household, so it's not like we are total idlers, but I am growing sick of this chaotic and aimless way of spending our days.

which brings me to an especially irritating feature of modern capitalist society: it's nurtured a culture of elitists in managerial and executive roles—not to mention a huge cloud of "entrepreneurs" who don't really seem to have a job other than using their money to scam for more money—who seem to be living out an extended playtime, and who have been trained to regard it as "hard work". rich folks who play around their whole lives aren't anything new, I guess, but there's something novel and bizarre (to me) about seeing so many "investors" and "founders" and techbro corporate officers, people who brag about having no restraints on their time and who would still get their "passive income" whether or not they bothered to get out of bed in the morning, talking like they've been digging trenches or sweating at a construction site seven days a week.

Elon Musk fans churn out fake software-generated images of their hero's face pasted onto the body of a factory worker and praise his work ethic, even as they revel in Musk's constant goofing-off. it's like how Donald Trump was the hardest-working President ever no matter how many days he spent on vacations and cheating at golf. surely the doublethink is the appeal: it's lovely to think that you're somehow "working" even into your third hour of a liquid lunch with the boys from the boardroom. it's a mark of high social status to be able to call your playtime "work", and get away with it.

now...I think it's highly likely that Musk and Trump and all the other capitalists who think they're such hard workers do, in fact, exhaust themselves every day. Musk in particular is known to be constantly interfering and "nanomanaging", picking fights over trivial whims because he's at leisure to cause endless problems for others—in a way, that's part of the eternal playtime he inhabits. Musk doesn't just play with games or computers or money; he plays with people's lives, and that's the rarest fun of all. almost certainly, Elon Musk feels himself very busy and put-upon, constantly sighing about his responsibilities, and therefore a "hard worker" even though he's merely a busybody and a bad manager.

one senses that such people haven't ever lived any other way. it's the cushioning effect of whıte privilege and exalted social status: if you're sufficiently privileged you can coast from childhood into an adulthood that's not much different from the childhood, except that the toys and games get bigger and bigger, and the rewards scale upwards towards infinity on the exponential slope of capitalist "wealth creation". sinecure jobs and sweetheart deals and massive loans fall into your lap; you can take vacations on a whim and leave underlings to deal with any awkward complications; if you suddenly want a pony, you can get one!

of course I'd love to live that way myself. I'm lazy; I like feeling like I can turn my attention to anything on a whim. but we are definitely not in the right leisure class for it.

~Chara


You must log in to comment.