A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours the Office

your beliefs and identity etc. just march in lockstep with economic forces, they don’t come from you and your powerful original brain, you're not generative

e.g silicon valley / bay area tech people, in the beginning the money is huge -> house prices -> supply squeeze -> congrats now you pay $2k/month for a closet in a basement; people have to live with 3+ others to make it work, what happens to romance and partnership? well it cant happen in that context, cant afford it, so performative asexuality or polyamory becomes your cope against the shitness of never being able to find and settle with a mate in your own house.  "We don’t even have a TV" yeah because sitting around the TV is something that a small group of close people (like a family) do when they are relaxing together one evening and bonding over shared entertainment.  You're atomized and no-one in your techworker group-house wants to know or care what you watch let alone watch it with you, so don't act like you're making a statement about "rejecting mainstream corrupt legacy media" while you flow through the youtube sidebar on your laptop.  "young people are rejecting car ownership in favour of green transport" no fuckwit, car ownership is expensive and slow and requires space, none of which are acceptable anymore if you live and work in a major city.  "they prefer to WFH" they would prefer it if their workplace wasn't 1 of 2 flavours of soulcrushing: featureless beige and gray box in a nondescript outer-urban officepark, cubicle walls with that fabric covering that has lost 80% of it's tension and now the underlying foam is buckling outwards, everyone looks like they've been working there for 40 years, on Fridays the managers encourage some office exuberance because the food truck from the city is making it's last stop here at 1:30 for the lunch run so go out to the car park and be social! and enjoy the atmosphere of bitumen and the smell of mexican food from a bain maree, 'what did YOU get?!' 'I got the taco' -'classic' 'i got the burrito', Oh I had that one three weeks ago, is that the one with the cilantro?'; or 2nd flavour = super open-plan hotdesking nightmare. open the app on your phone that lets you book your desk for the day to find the same pattern of green and red icons, “it encourages everyone to move around and be dynamic” but no so it’s a game of pick the least uncomfortable place to sit and hope the last person to use your desk didn’t break the HDMI ports on their way back down from standing to slouching toward bethlehem. chris the safety rep and fire warden interrupts your teams meeting to remind you that if you report a safe learning moment in the safety portal you can get nominated to receive 1000 points worth of corporate kudos. they are as illiquid as my neglected coffee from before.