platform employment
Where do you work?
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and Youtube.
You work for all those companies?
Well, of course— we all do…
Many still don’t realize what a user of social media is.
To be a user of a platform with no pay-wall is to be the employee turning on the lights each day. You are the engine driving it forward and the entertainer keeping things interesting. You bring in all the profit and dictate the progress the platform logs.
If you’re unemployed and rich, this is a wonderful thing— no checks and balances (from 2025-2028), a limitless supply of cronies to capture each post, and the creation of a platform to shout from when you find you finally (think you) have something to say. A screaming bargain.
If you’re unemployed and broke, not so much— the promise of fame & fortune seduces and you quickly find followings aren’t so easy to build, Zuckerberg-bills don’t cash so easily, and you’re in yet another rat race that has fewer & fewer guard rails from the cliffs of doing irreparable harm to your reputation in a single post. Not so screaming a bargain.
If you’re employed, doing good financially, and want another job managing a personal social media account, you face a problem.
I imagine you have a job, a life, a purpose. You’ve been told it’s essential to get another of all three on X, Y, & Z—not explicitly, of course, as making a grand-stand like that only endears companies to their investors— which means you’ll incur some “essential” costs.
As with any ideology that pressures users into service (read “service” whatever way you like for that to fit), the belief that avoiding social platforms is a non-starter has its roots in one incredibly strong profit incentive. To reach the critical mass required to have a silent majority, not just a vocal minority, pushing the grass-roots campaign for your product speaks to the level of influence these platforms exert on our lives. To become a de facto component of the adolescent & societal starter kits speaks to a greater shame we all feel trapped within as we linger on unable to break the cycle.
If you still can’t see what it is, hear instead from one of its creators:
You are the product. Social media puts you on a hamster wheel to generate its profit… It feeds treats to keep you happy and enjoying your enslavement. It finds ways to remind you why you’re so committed… And the machine keeps churning because no one wants to be the first to hop off and quit looking like the rat we all know ourselves to be.
