Reggaeton, struggle porn, and verminfluencers.

Greetings from Greenpoint, where we’ve been listening to reggaeton because we always follow the AP style guide:


Here in the office, business continues as usual. We’ve celebrated a few employee birthdays (#piscesFTW), had some exciting meetings, and have learned that healthier alternatives to Fruit by the Foot just won’t cut it. The more you know.

On to the #content: 

Back on the Chain Gang

According to The Atlantic, Americans are workaholics and it’s making them miserable. 

Despite (because of?) the rise of startup culture where workplaces have beer and ping pong tables and flavored water and lots more amenities, it turns out work is still... work. That hasn't stopped upper-class, college-educated elites from putting in much more time at the office than they did several decades ago. For this elite class, “workism” has become a sort of religion, an entire source of identity. The more one works and reduces leisure, the higher their purpose and sense of transcendence becomes. It's exemplified by a certain kind of z-list celebrity who seems to exist only to glorify the joys of working yourself to your white-collar bones; there's a whole subgenre of this type of content, mostly on Linkedin and Medium, that the podcaster Nate Eliason has dubbed "struggle porn". 


As you can imagine, it’s not making people any happier.

The thing about this trend is that it doesn’t make sense. Not only is it a sure shot to an unhappy life, but it’s counterintuitive to...everything about economics. Is it a status thing? A passionate defiance against millennial burnout? Or perhaps it's just a clever propaganda campaign by the stock-owning class to make the rest of us feel better about the fact that steady jobs, good benefits, and a social safety net have been replaced by stock buybacks and hedge fund billionaires. Marx called religion "the opiate of the masses" - and for many of these workaholics, the need to work, work, and work more is almost spiritual. 

Now don't get us wrong - as a small business (7 employees as of this writing), we understand the need to grind, and as startup types we are huge fans of capitalism. But we also want people to have lives, and to understand that their hard work often only goes towards enriching the fat cats. As the legendary designer Paul Rand told Steve Jobs "I will solve your problem for you; and you will pay me for it." That seems like a slightly healthier way to look at things.