#automation unemployment
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Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell
I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!
"National conversation" sounds like one of those meaningless buzzphrases – until you live through one. The first one I really participated in actively was the national conversation – the global conversation – about privacy following the Snowden revelations.
This all went down when my daughter was five, and as my wife and I talked about the news, our kid naturally grew curious about it. I had to literally "explain like I'm five" global mass surveillance:
https://locusmag.com/2014/05/cory-doctorow-how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-mass-surveillance/
But parenting is a two-way street, so even as I was explaining surveillance to my kid, my own experiences raising a child changed how I thought about surveillance. Obviously I knew about many of the harms that surveillance brings, but parenting helped me viscerally appreciate one of the least-discussed, most important aspects of being watched: how it compromises being your authentic self:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance
As I wrote then:
There are times when she is working right at the limits of her abilities – drawing or dancing or writing or singing or building – and she catches me watching her and gets this look of mingled embarrassment and exasperation, and then she changes back to some task where she has more mastery. No one – not even a small child – likes to look foolish in front of other people.
Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.
Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:
https://www.ifow.org/publications/what-impact-does-exposure-to-workplace-technologies-have-on-workers-quality-of-life-briefing-paper
As the Future of Work Institute found in its study, some technologies – systems that make it easier to collaborate and communicate with colleagues – increase workers' sense of wellbeing. But wearables and AI tools make workers feel significantly worse:
https://assets-global.website-files.com/64d5f73a7fc5e8a240310c4d/65eef23e188fb988d1f19e58_Tech%20Exposure%20and%20Worker%20Wellbeing%20-%20Full%20WP%20-%20Final.pdf
Workers who reported these negative feelings confirmed that these tools make them feel "monitored." I mean, of course they do. Even where these tools are nominally designed to help you do your job better, they're also explicitly designed to help your boss keep track of you from moment to moment. As Brandon Vigliarolo writes for The Register, these are the same bosses who have been boasting to their investors about their plans to fire their workers and replace them with AI:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/advanced_workplace_tech_study/
"Bossware" is a key example of the shitty rainbow of "disciplinary technology," tools that exist to take away human agency by making it easier to surveil and control its users:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware
Bossware is one of the stages of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: the process by which abusive and immiserating technologies progress up the privilege gradient as their proponents refine and normalize dystopian technologies in order to impose them on wider and wider audiences:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
The kinds of metrics that bossware gathers might be useful to workers, but only if the workers get to decide when, whether and how to share that data with other people. Microsoft Office helps you catch typos by underlining words its dictionary doesn't recognize; the cloud-based, "AI-powered" Office365 tells your boss that you're the 11th-worst speller in your division and uses "sentiment analysis" to predict whether you are likely to cause trouble:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust
Two hundred years ago, Luddites rose up against machines. Contrary to the ahistorical libel you've heard, the Luddites weren't angry or frightened of machines – they were angry at the machines' owners. They understood – correctly – that the purpose of a machine "so easy a child could use it" was to fire skilled adult workers and replace them with kidnapped, indentured Napoleonic War orphans who could be maimed and killed on the job without consequence:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/
A hundred years ago, the "Taylorites" picked up where those mill owners left off: choreographing workers' movements to the finest degree in a pseudoscientific effort to produce a kind of kabuki of boss-pleasing robotic efficiency. The new, AI-based Taylorism goes even further, allowing bosses to automatically blacklist gig workers who refuse to cross picket-lines, monitor "self-employed" call center operators in their own homes, and monitor the eyeballs of Amazon drivers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
AI-based monitoring technologies dock workers' wages, suspend them, and even fire them, and when workers object, they're stuck arguing with a chatbot that is the apotheosis of Computer Says No:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no
There's plenty of research about AI successfully "augmenting" workers, making them more productive and I'm the last person to say that automation can't help you get more done:
https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/augmented-workforce
But without understanding how AI augments class warfare – disciplining workers with a scale, speed and granularity beyond the sadistic fantasies of even the most micromanaging asshole boss – this research is meaningless.
The irony of bosses imposing monitoring to improve "wellness" and stave off "burnout" is that nothing is more exhausting, more immiserating, more infuriating than being continuously watched and judged.
Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying
Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#surveillance#workplace surveillance#disciplinary technology#bossware#taylorism#ai#automation unemployment#wellness#health#labor#parenting#luddism
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"Why are we automating art when we could be automating these MENIAL and DEMEANING jobs instead?"
1) How enjoyable a task is to THE AVERAGE PERSON has zero correlation to how easy it is to automate; we don't HAVE the technology to automate sewer maintenance without flooding the streets with shit
2) There is no work that's inherently menial and demeaning and unenjoyable, nor any such thing as unskilled labor, and in fact if you realized this as much as you say you do when it's not about your fear of art getting cheapened by being available to your ~lessers~ you'd be aware that the skills to work in sanitation in particular - dealing with biohazards - are complicated and hard to learn and deserve respect; safety rules are written in blood (or sometimes in shit)
3) Sure, PARTIAL automation could work wonders for improving safety in some dangerous jobs once ROBOTICS - not just software - advances further, but you do realize that um. The people doing those jobs you're so gung-ho to automate out of existence. Um. Also...need to get paid? To like. Eat? You realize this right? Right???
#ai tag#tech#serious tag#what we need to be doing is working on an automation safety net for the WHOLE FUCKING ECONOMY#automation taxes for companies#beefing up unemployment -> ubi#using unions to enforce realistic expectations and fair treatment for the human role in partially automated work#etc.
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against ai
the end of art: an argument against image ai
youtube
a good explainer. a selection of people's comments below.
— "I spent decades of my life learning foreign languages, only to see the translation industry destroyed by AI. The inferiority of the machine translations a few years back did not stop the destruction of the industry. The machine translation cost nothing, and so the price for all translation came crashing down, because the bottom feeders used machine translation. I found myself paid half price to 'just edit' (as if it was less work) a translation done by machine which was basically unintelligible so that I had to go back to the original and translate it myself. Most clients, the bottom of the pyramid that kept the industry going, did not care about the quality of the translation. If we expect that clients prizing human made products will save industries we are being very delusional. ... the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less."
— "Data-laundering has got to be the most accurate keyword for this discussion. Very well spoken"
— "I was really on the edge about AI art. I'm not an artist at all, I'm a programmer who commissions artists every now and again. It's such a cool ldea but it's unethical and actively stagnates creativity in its current form. Like, if you think of the sum of all human creation as a quantifiable mass, we're not adding anything by blending it up like this without true creative input. Disseminating the technology incentivizes adding less to that mass. This tech hasn't peaked, but there is a tremendous difference between this and a machine with the capability to truly add to that mass."
— "the thing that steven gets that i think other videos don’t highlight enough is that it’s not about the ai. the ai is just the product. it’s about the developers, companies, businessmen, and capitalists behind it who will take a mile if you give them an inch. we’re being bogged down by technicalities and arguments but they’re just distractions. it’s never about the tool, it’s about the people behind the tool and what their agendas are."
— "If they take away the ability and the incentive to create, we will only have the desire to consume. And deep down, it's just that, consumption and more consumption. This is a strong step towards a less "human" humanity. Not to mention that there will be fewer and fewer jobs in which one can learn and enjoy what they do. This is horrendous, almost straight out of a sci fi horror movie. Excellent video and beautiful illustration!"
#ai#art#in the hands of some ai/automation is just a way to pick your pocket make you redundant unemployable expendable#as ted chiang said: we are nowhere near having real ai and what we call ai is just a tool of capitalism i don't fear ai i fear capitalism
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Understanding the Risks and Implications of Artificial Intelligence
Understanding the Risks and Implications of Artificial Intelligence
In the coming years, artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to change the world and people’s lives. However, there is disagreement about how it will do so.
Stuart Russell, a renowned computer science professor and AI expert, participated in an interview with the World Economic Forum. In it, he explained the difference between asking a human to do something and giving that task to an AI system as…
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#AI#artificial intelligence#automation#computer science#fulfillment#humans#objectives#risks#society#Stuart Russell#technological unemployment
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Thinking about the automation of mundane tasks.
Allowing machines to take over more basic tasks could mean allowing people to live their lives and pursue other careers or interests.
Instead of this, we have people losing their jobs in an environment that brutalizes those who don't have resources.
Automation of mundane tasks could mean expanding our collective focus or allowing us to focus on ourselves and relationships. I'm not advocating for abolishing work all-together. Careers can be incredibly fulfilling and there are many organizations that push for environmentalism and accessibility to resources or focus on medical advances. The possibilities are limitless.
But, work culture in America is unhealthy and parasitic, and our infrastructure and systems do not work to support the people.
#current events#automation#america#societal issues#unemployment#corporations can suck my ass#let us live#american workers#american work culture#Late-stage capitalism
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Crianças em 1960 sobre hoje!
1966: Children imagine life in the year 2000 | Tomorrow’s World | Past Predictions | BBC Archive. 14 de dez. de 2021
Pupils from Marlborough college, Roedean and Chippenham schools predict what life will be like for them in the year 2000. With concerns ranging from nuclear armageddon, overpopulation, automation, battery farming and mass unemployment, it’s fair to say that most of them aren’t…
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#10 (Harding School)#1966: Children imagine life in the year 2000 | Tomorrow’s World | Past Predictions | BBC Archive#26 de fevereiro de 1977#automation#battery farming and mass unemployment#bicicleta ou em carros movidos à luz do sol#carros elétricos#Children predict what life in ‘Tomorrow’s World’ will be like in the year 2000. Originally broadcast 28 December 1966#Debora Boscolo – Linkedin in: A.I. Carr#ensino fundamental. Gizmodo#escassez de gasolina#iPhone#jornal Herald Star#Kinect#Marlborough college#mulheres à Lua para explorar#nuclear armageddon#o início da tecnologia#o preço do carvão#originally broadcast 28 December 1966#ouro#overpopulation#Pietro Sincropi#prata e petróleo#preço da gasolina vai subir#preços e impostos mais baixos#Pupils#questões sociais e ambientais#Roedean and Chippenham schools#the Sahara or undersea
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Will AI be the next big revolution in Society and mankind, like the internet was?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a hot topic in recent years, with many people expressing concerns about its potential impacts on society. While AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives, from healthcare to transportation, there are also valid reasons why some people may be uneasy about its increasing presence.
One major concern about AI is the potential for job displacement. As AI becomes more advanced, there is a risk that it will be able to perform tasks that were previously done by humans. This could lead to widespread unemployment and economic disruption, as people lose their jobs to machines. Some argue that this could create a "two-tiered" society, with a small group of highly skilled workers who are able to work with AI, and a larger group of people who are left behind.
Another concern about AI is the potential for it to be used in ways that are unethical or harmful to society. For example, AI could be used to make biased decisions or to perpetuate existing inequalities. It could also be used to automate tasks that are dangerous or unethical, such as military drones or self-driving cars that are programmed to prioritize the safety of their passengers over pedestrians.
There is also a fear that AI could become too powerful, and that it could potentially surpass human intelligence. This could lead to a situation where AI is able to make decisions that are beyond our control, or where it is able to manipulate us in ways that we cannot understand.
Overall, it is clear that AI has the potential to bring about both benefits and challenges for society. While it is important to embrace new technologies and the opportunities they bring, it is also crucial that we carefully consider the potential impacts of AI, and work to ensure that it is used in a way that is ethical, responsible, and beneficial to all members of society.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to bring about significant changes and improvements in many areas of society, including healthcare, transportation, and education. However, it is difficult to predict exactly how AI will impact society in the future and whether it will be as transformative as the internet has been.
One way that AI could be revolutionary is by automating tasks that are currently done by humans, which could lead to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. For example, AI could be used to analyze medical data to help doctors make more accurate diagnoses, or it could be used to optimize transportation routes and reduce traffic congestion.
However, there are also potential downsides to the increasing use of AI. As AI becomes more advanced, there is a risk that it could displace human workers and lead to widespread unemployment. Additionally, there are concerns about the potential for AI to be used in ways that are unethical or harmful, such as to make biased decisions or to perpetuate existing inequalities.
Ultimately, the impact of AI on society will depend on how it is developed and used. It is important that we carefully consider the potential consequences of AI, and work to ensure that it is used in a responsible and ethical manner.
#AI#artificialintelligence#society#revolution#internet#automation#productivity#healthcare#transportation#education#jobdisplacement#unemployment#ethics#harmfulAI#biaseddecisions#inequality#AIimpact#AIresponsibility#AIethics
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I know a lot of people are looking for jobs.
I also know a lot of companies are looking for them.
I think they've set up automated systems for "handling" applications that are complete disasters (submit resume. copy resume into these text boxes. write this stuff. website times out fuck you try again.)
and somehow it's "nobody wants to work!!!"
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Posts On Journal Articles
I found some interesting journal articles that informed me of issues and made me think of "possibilities." I wrote about them in LinkedIn. Here are the posts:
Post 1
(Post in LinkedIn)
My issue today: automation. Just yesterday, I wrote that systems will be assisting with the creation of diagrams in software development (see post: https://fahmeenaodetta.blogspot.com/2022/07/change.html). In past jobs, I have been praised for diagrams I created. I understand why people would resist automation.
I did not realize that automation is an issue for hand hygiene. I found an article that argues: "Human observation is the gold standard for measuring compliance, but its utility is increasingly being questioned with calls for the use of video monitoring approaches" (see article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196655322001511). This seems like a valid argument.
Did you see my proposal for a study on hand hygiene compliance monitoring and its effects on performance and employee satisfaction? Two of the research questions are:
RQ1: Do technology solutions that monitor hand hygiene compliance result in improved employee performance in the short-term because employees develop the habit of cleaning/washing their hands (i.e. is there a steady increase in performance that peaks at a certain level – performance follows an asymptotic curve)?
RQ2: What is the longer-term performance impact of implementing a technology solution that monitors hand hygiene compliance, i.e. the performance impact after 1 year and beyond (after 3, 4, 5 years etc.)?
Read it here: https://w.taskstream.com/ts/moore783/SignatureAssignmentProposalMonitoring.html/acf5e6eq00akfcfkf7e8edfefl
#automation #handhygiene #videomonitoring #research #phdresearch #healthcare
Post 2
This journal article provides valuable information on the career decision-making process:
Journal article: Making better career decisions: From challenges to opportunities
By: Itamar Gatia, Viktória Kulcsár
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879121000178
#career #decisionmaking #jobs #jobsearch #psychology #technology
Post 3
Interesting paper on the effectiveness of a mandatory program for the unemployed in Denmark:
Journal article: How to help unemployed find jobs quickly: Experimental evidence from a mandatory activation program
By: Brian Krogh Graversen, Jan C. van Ours
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272708000777
#unemployedtraining #unemployment #hr #job
#fahmeenaodetta#automation#handhygiene#videomonitoring#research#phdresearch#healthcare#career#decisionmaking#jobs#jobsearch#psychology#technology#unemployedtraining#unemployment#hr#job
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The Economic and Existential Threat of Shareholder Value.
The Economic and Existential Threat of Shareholder Value.
The concept of shareholder value preexisted it’s rise in popularity and even the phrase “shareholder value”, the idea that a business is more than financially indebted to an inverter is an idea that an inverter would like. The concept of it didn’t really take off until the 1960’s when a not Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman published an article in Fortune magazine called The Social…
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#automation#business#economics#employment#nasdaq#outsourcing#politics#shareholder value#shareholders#stagnating wages#unemployment#wallstreet
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Also I've made one of my older posts about AI stuff unrebloggable because it was starting to go around and while my final verdict opinion hasn't really changed - I still strongly consider it a really exciting tool that can be used for both good and evil and despise its use as a corporate cost-cutting gimmick or a new way for trolls and grifters to be giant cockholes but love seeing what people do with it for its OWN value as a tool and how making art out of ANYTHING is such a human thing to do-
digging even a few inches deeper has caused my reasons for arriving at that same conclusion to change a lot lmao
It's kind of my current ultimate example of
[Source]
#personal#ai tag#and also i complain about how its flaws are making.people way too sympathetic to reactionary arguments#this doesnt mean i fail to recognize or hate the way it's used for evil#but hair-splitting about Real Art and Real Labor has NEVER led anywhere good this time will NOT be an exception#and ''we have to shove this genie back in the bottle to Save Jobs'' has always been a losing argument#and beefing up copyright is the exact opposite of preventing the worst uses#but holy shit we need better online privacy protection and vfx unions#we need that shit 40 years ago#and we need automation taxes to go to beefed up unemployment -> ubi#and i hate how theres a kind of godwins law corollary with 1984 because the filters on so many readily available generators are#TERRIFYING#its bad enough when tiktok tries to block you from talking about queerness and mental health and basic facts of life#at least they cant block you from saying it to a friend next to you#but when companies falsely think they can monopolize the entire concept of making images#and decide that various disabilities are ''too violent'' to show..........#yeeeeeah yikes
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Canadian Workers Need More Technology, Not Less
Stanford, J. (2022, April 25). Canadian Workers Need More Technology, Not Less. Centre for Future Work. https://centreforfuturework.ca/2022/04/25/where-are-the-robots/
Jim Stanford writes: “There is little evidence that robots and other advanced technologies are displacing workers and causing technological unemployment in Canada. To the contrary, Canada’s adoption of new technology has surprisingly slowed down in recent years. That is the conclusion of a major new report on innovation and automation in Canada’s economy, from the Centre for Future Work. The report, titled Where are the Robots?, reviews nine empirical indicators of Canadian innovation, technology adoption, and robotization.”
“‘Far from losing sleep over whether robots are going to take our jobs, Canadian workers should be more concerned with the slow pace of technology adoption by businesses,’ says Jim Stanford, Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work, and author of the report. ‘The failure of employers to implement new technologies is causing an over-reliance on low-quality work, holding back our productivity and incomes, and squandering the potential for safer jobs and more leisure time.’”
“The report makes 6 policy recommendations to improve innovation and technology adoption in Canada, including reforming fiscal incentives, expanding publicly-funded R&D, nurturing industries that use more robots and machinery, and giving workers more say in how technological change is implemented in workplaces.”
Additional Information
Stanford, J. (2022). Where are the Robots?: The Surprising Deceleration of Technology in Canadian Workplaces. Centre for Future Work. https://centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Where-Are-The-Robots.pdf
Photo Source: Knight, A. (2017). [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/2EJCSULRwC8
#centre for future work#technological unemployment#automation#innovation#economy#canada#technology adoption
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Kenyan tea pickers are destroying machines brought in to replace them during violent protests that highlight the challenge faced by low-skilled workers as more agribusiness companies rely on automation to cut costs.
At least 10 tea-plucking machines have been torched in multiple flashpoints in the past year, according to local media reports. Recent demonstrations have left one protester dead and several injured, including 23 police officers and farm workers. The Kenya Tea Growers Association (KTGA) estimated the cost of damaged machinery at $1.2 million (170 million Kenyan shillings) after nine machines belonging to Ekaterra, makers of the top-selling tea brand Lipton, were destroyed in May.
In March, a local government taskforce recommended that tea companies in Kericho, the country’s largest tea-growing town, adopt a new 60:40 ratio of mechanized tea harvesting to hand-plucking. The taskforce also wants legislation passed to limit importation of tea harvesting machines. Nicholas Kirui, a member of the taskforce and former CEO of KTGA, told Semafor Africa 30,000 jobs had been lost to mechanization in Kericho county alone over the past decade.
"We did public participation in all the wards and with all the different groups, and the overwhelming sentiment we were hearing was that the machines should go," Kirui said.
In 2021, Kenya exported tea worth $1.2 billion, making it the third-largest tea exporter globally, behind China and Sri Lanka. Multinationals including Browns Investments, George Williamson and Ekaterra — which was sold by Unilever to a private equity firm in July 2022 — plant on an estimated 200,000 acres in Kericho and have all adopted mechanized harvesting.
Some machines can reportedly replace 100 workers. Ekaterra's corporate affairs director in Kenya, Sammy Kirui, told Semafor Africa that mechanization was “critical” to the company’s operations and the global competitiveness of Kenyan tea. As the government taskforce established, one machine can bring the cost of harvesting tea down to 3 cents (4 Kenyan shillings) per kilogram from 11 cents (15.32 shillings) per kilogram with hand-plucking.
Analysts partly attribute Kenya's unemployment rate — the highest in East Africa — to automation in industries, including banking and insurance. Some 13.9% of working age Kenyans (over 16) were out of work or long term unemployed in the final quarter of 2022.
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The reason I keep stressing that The Problem Is Capitalism isn't because I think we should all just give up on doing damage control with the worst of the ways new tech is abused and wait until Capitalism Gets Overthrown and solves all our problems; I think that's an incredibly stupid strategy for anything and damage control matters a lot-
I keep stressing it because ~98% of the proposed "solutions" are at best time-honored losing bets (e.g., "unmake these technological advances! Shove those worms back in the can NOW!") and at worst actively making things worse (agreeing with corporations that use of new tech is Mindless Unskilled Labor not even worth minimum wage) or even indulging in blatant trad and/or fascist ideology abstracted by the computer (if you have accepted the premise that degenerate art is a real thing and a great replacement is possible, you are headed for some DARK places even if you truly believe you're not fighting any human - you're already dehumanizing the people operating the "robot" you hate so much by extension).
We don't need copyright to devastate transformative art, we don't need to shove worms back in a can, and we DEFINITELY don't need to attack random hobbyists as Fake Artists; we need unions and automation taxes. We don't need to clamor for Real Art over Degenerate Art, we need to recognize the work involved in art that's been devalued for decades. We need to, for example, stop shitting on CGI because it's "lazy" and start shitting on the conditions that MAKE it unfairly cheaper than practical effects - i.e., corporate greed combined with the idea that the computer just does it for you and CGI is a cop-out rather than an art that we've been hearing since 1982; we need to push for VFX artists to unionize and recognize them as artists. We need improved unemployment protection as a foot in the door that can be upgraded into UBI, paid for with said automation taxes. We need online privacy protections so we have more control over who has access to personal things in the first place, as far as we can have privacy in a public space at all, and we need to undo Facebook culture and start remembering, and reminding others, that public websites ARE public.
Does it suck that the easy way out is anywhere from impotent to actively detrimental? Yes. Does the fact that it sucks suddenly make it untrue? No!
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So I noticed with several of your posts that your interpretation of Banites are predominately masculine and is massively ‘good ol boys club’ leaning. I’m curious how in a world that operates under a different praxis of sexism, bio essentialism, economic discrimination, and fertility politics than our own, how and why this is the case. Does it have to do with the general personality types that are attracted to Banite worship? The group of people who just happen to have the means and motive to be attracted to Bane? Gortash’s conscious or unconscious bias? What does being a man mean in Banite culture, to you? I’m so sorry, this is way too long and way too serious ……
Eeee I get to get into this one! I'm only on my first cup of coffee and I am trying and failing to not make this a literal essay (EDIT I failed sorry this is long and I don't think I even answered everything)
And I'm also going to pre-empt this by saying I am not a sociologist, or a particularly smart person! So some of these ideas may be very hack!
So the first thing I have as a parameter here that there's three scopes of influence that inform looking at this to me - there is the version of Faerun and Dungeons and Dragons 5e that Larian put in the game (which I LOVE and appreciate very much, I love the direction that 5e has gone in) there is the history of the writing of some of these characters and the influences of those writers across the history of D&D, and there are the influences I have in how I've built my characters and the influences I'm taking. So I'll try and be clear about which is which where I can!
Under the cut for more as this is already too long!
So the first thing to acknowledge is that gender and D&D in 5e is at its best representation of all time, to me. Obviously things still to improve, but as somebody who started out in the days of 3.5 with all the myriad of problematic ways women were represented, and then through the 4e oddness of "Yes, you as a woman can do ANYTHING!" with no real backup in the worldbuilding, I really enjoy this and I like that Larian has gone for it too in a really meaningful way.
I also think that the Dead Three were created at a point of the most edgelordiest writing in the history of the franchise, and they wear that influence on their sleeves.
We're at a really interesting point in Faerun and Larian are really exploring that in BG3. We have the printing press, we have automatons starting to come into civilian life not just inter-planar stuff, we have pianos (!) and I think it's fair to say we are at a point of change and upheaval in how people live their lives. More information is flowing across the classes. There's more social mobility starting to happen. Automation brings different approaches to jobs, and it also brings unemployment, profit margins etc etc.
We're also at an interesting point with worship of the Dead Three. I'll leave the other two for now but The Church of Bane has already gone through a pretty dramatic reform partly due to the Banesdeath and subsequent rebirth of Bane (Sidenote I need to dive into the similarities and differences between Iyachtu Xvim and The Dark Urge at some point.)
My inference is that in a combination of changing socioeconomic and socio-political norms (we can also include what happened to Elturel and Neverwinter in that, two big local powerhouse cities dramatically altered in the past twenty years before the game) has opened up a lot of potential for a lot of uncertainty, fear, and opportunity in both the church and the way power is perceived. I think this is somewhat supported in the game with just how Gort has risen to power. We get tons of ambient dialogue about the sort of cult of personality he's ridden in on in the general public. He will literally say anything to anybody to get his own way, as shown by his political manifestos having different core values. So I think this is also reflected in the Banite worship.
The Banites traditionally are people with means and ambition, which makes sense, but who those people are could be seen to be shifting too. Landlords, foundry operators, new captains of industry are likely to hold as much sway as the fading patriars. I think it offers a great deal of potential both for progress, but also regression of ideas. It also means that it would be easier, I think, to target new members by positing it as a business venture, which I think we have a little, possibly, support of in the text. It's a club for people of means. Oh, and it's a cult. But you're okay with that, right? Here's some money and some contacts.
I've shown the good old boys club of Bane (which was influenced by the lore line that they were as likely to solve disputes through lively debate, it took me right back to gentlemen's clubs) but I think there are a myriad of ways of worship now that basically play to the indulgences of the participants that best show their hunger to usurp each other. Where they were literally killing each other for dominance, it's now a more subtle set of rituals. Gambling, sex, fight clubs. Rather than torture to evoke fear as the offering to Bane, fear is now a pact offering. Everybody has their metaphorical hands around each other's neck in vice.
I do think there are women, and I do think Gortash hosts them just as he hosts the boy's club I've put forward, but in my interpretation he sees value in dividing, in creating these silos of worship and letting people create their own competition to try and destroy. At the end of it he doesn't care about who is under his boot, as long as they are, as long as he has control of them, and as long as they're looking to each other as the enemy and not to him. I think he would absolutely play into gender politics as part of that.
When it comes to influences I bring, I really like the idea that progress is not as linear as we always assume it is. I read a lot of Victoriana and I find it so fascinating that a lot of British ideas of values and things were really completely made up in that era (on a very not smart note, that's what I'm evoking in my writing. It's literally "enforcing gender essentialism and being Victorian style reformers is evil, actually." Not really very deep.) Myths were repackaged, etiquettes re-examined. Attitudes to sex were a huge one - the Georgian period had a huge shift in attitudes to sexuality and then the pendulum swung back. So I'm putting forward that one of the easiest ways to gain followers is to play into people's worst instincts. I'm not retconning the crap gender politics in earlier editions of D&D, but saying they were of the time and history in-game as well, and Gortash is very cynically using them to gain support. He encourages people to think that they are special, that they are the power, and to look down on the other, but he changes who the other is to suit himself (very contemporary politics there, Gortash...)
The Dead Three have historically been very, very masculine, and I don't think this changes if you have a default Durge. There can, I think, be a case for a reading of the gods being of a different era, a bunch of cringefail men, and their choices of chosen which leans into old misogyny when it comes to Orin (who could have a whole post of her own because of course, as a changeling, she isn't bound to gender at all, but is percieved as girlish, more on that later.) Bhaal being obsessed with siriing offspring and the big buff Bane examples etc. and I do think there's something interesting in their values being also out-of-step with the world. They will never win not only because they suck, but because the world has moved on. Again, Kelemvor and Cyric deserve their own posts here...
I really, really like the idea of Bhaalists and Banites essentially swapping their worship styles a bit and this is only from my own readings. Bhaalists becoming more obsessed with hierarchies and secrecy, Banites becoming more of a club for vice and taking on some of the weird gendered things Bhaal is guilty of as a means of control.
(I also REALLY like the idea of the Dark Urge being a woman, non-binary, or gender-shifting through how they identify and/or being a changeling, firstly because I like the idea of Bhaal God of Mess wanting to try something new. I also like different idea of having a womb and being able to birth in changing Bhaal's plan. It's not wide spread of seed, it's gestation, it's something personal and can be seen as sacred. The Dark Urge is a vessel for Bhaal in multiple ways. And thirdly particularly in trans Dark Urge works I love the idea of autonomy in that. Does Bhaal approve or no? Is this defiance or blessing?)
I'm going to stop there because honestly I could go on forever but this is the surface-level considerations in the worldbuilding of my fics.
#long post#banites#this was long and didn't really get into depth with ANY of it#but I hope it's of interest?
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Andrew was entering his third month of unemployment when he sat down at his computer and opened the inbox of his LinkedIn account. He’d received a response to a query he’d sent off four days after his friend-turned-manager walked him into a conference room swimming with sunlight, smelling of cologne and the faintest hint of perfume left behind by a group of attorneys who’d recently vacated the space after a five-hour meeting.
“I’m sorry, man,” Colin Perkins had said. Andrew’s eyes glided to the glass conference table, landing on the silver tray holding a molehill of bagels. He imagined they must be stale by now, having been left there uncovered in the icy office air.
Someone had planted the pointed end of a white plastic knife in an open container of chive-and-jalapeño cream cheese. It brought to mind the moon landing; all that was missing was a tiny American flag. A laugh trudged up his throat, but he disguised it as a cough.
“I told you,” Colin continued, raking his hands over his manicured Afro, “that the last to hire would be the first to go.”
A month earlier, seventeen women and two men had accused the CEO of the company of sexual misconduct. That news had plummeted the stock. The layoffs followed. Andrew had witnessed dozens of employees being escorted by security from the building like criminals. Now it was his turn.
Andrew nodded, placed a comforting hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and squeezed. The crisp cotton of Daniel’s shirt felt cool beneath his palm. “It’s okay, man, I understand. Don’t sweat it.”
He’d spent that first week revamping his résumé, calling friends and old colleagues, people who might know of a job opportunity at their own place of employment or elsewhere. He’d never had a LinkedIn account, but took the time to set one up. To conserve the little bit of savings he had, Andrew dropped his gym membership and went back to drinking tap water instead of the bottled Evian he loved. He gave up Starbucks coffee and the expensive cabernet sauvignon he purchased by the case.
By week three, he was spending his days on the couch, dressed in boxer shorts and sweat socks. He’d stopped opening the blinds and only went outside to empty the garbage. He whiled away the hours playing video games, and watching Netflix and Pornhub. Oftentimes, he went days without brushing his teeth.
When his mother called to check on him, Andrew lied, claiming he had several interviews lined up. When his father took the phone into another room to ask if he needed money, Andrew assured him that he was fine on the financial front, even though he wasn’t. He’d made up his mind to sell his Shelby Mustang before he took a dime from his parents. That was a big decision because he loved that car more than he’d ever loved any woman.
The day he opened the e-mail, the panic had just started to set in. He could feel it creeping along the back of his neck, like the soft scuttle of caterpillar legs.
From: OBF, INC.
To: Andrew Jamison
Dear Mr. Jamison,
We found your resume to be very interesting and believe that you would be the perfect addition to our dynamic team of Client Liaisons.
PAID TRAINING!
Affordable benefits for you, your spouse, and/or children after 90 days!
Opportunities to advance within!
Hourly, overtime, and tremendous bonus opportunities!
If you love helping others, then you will love working for OBF, INC.
OBF, INC. wants to talk to you now! To set up an interview TEXT OBF51893.
Liaison was just a fancy French word for customer service agent. Well, that was his skill set. Andrew was an expert at assisting people.
He texted the number and received an instant response that directed him to call a telephone number and enter his personal code: 1032.
An automated voice offered him two available interview dates. He was instructed to press 1 for the first date and 2 for the second. The mechanical voice told him that he would receive a call advising him where the interview would take place.
It all seemed very clandestine. Andrew was cynical, but his desperation outweighed his skepticism.
A day later, he received a call from a woman with a Southern drawl . . . Georgia, Alabama, Texas? He couldn’t quite pinpoint where she hailed from, but listening to her speak conjured visions of sweet tea and fireflies. She asked for his full government name and the code he’d received via text message. There was a pause, two clicks, and then the syrupy voice asked if he had a pen available. He did. After she’d rattled off the address, she wished him good luck. There were a few more clicks and then the line went dead.
He walked into the lobby of the forty-story office building and was struck by the contemporary opulence of the space. Marble floors, potted palms that towered eight feet into the air, white leather sofas, and a slick-looking Louboutin-red reception desk.
Andrew presented his license to the security guard and was given a name tag, which he clipped to the lapel of his ash-gray jacket. He was told to go to the eighteenth floor.
While waiting for the elevator, he perused the list of companies listed on a plaque mounted to the wall. OBF, Inc. was nowhere to be found.
He smirked, shrugged his shoulders, and stepped into the elevator. On the eighteenth floor, smack outside of the elevator door, was a sheet of lined legal paper taped haphazardly to the wall. Scrawled on its face in black marker was: This Way to OBF, INC. Below that was an arrow.
He started down the hall. A man the color of cedar and as tall as an NBA player speed-walked past him, mumbling to himself. Andrew thought he looked dazed, as if he’d just received news that a loved one had passed away.
“Good morning,” Andrew murmured.
The man turned eyes as wide as saucers on Andrew. He opened his mouth and muttered something that Andrew wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. The elevator doors slid open just as Andrew leaned in and asked, “Uhm, sorry, brother, but did you say run?”
The man leaped into the elevator, pressed his spine against the back wall, and fixed his eyes on the glass numbers above the closing doors.
Andrew stood blinking at his reflection in the chrome elevator doors. After a moment, he shrugged and continued down the hallway where he came upon a second handwritten sign directing him to turn left at the women’s bathroom. He rounded a corner and found himself staring at eleven men seated in folding chairs. They all looked up from their iPhones and Androids. Andrew nodded and headed toward the pretty blonde seated behind a metal desk.
“Good morning,” she smiled. “Name?”
“Andrew Jamison.”
“Okay, Mr. Jamison, please take a seat. Mrs. Americus will be with you shortly.”
He scrutinized his fellow applicants. They were all black men save for the one white guy with a man-bun who was called in as soon as Andrew sat down. Man-bun wasn’t in there long. In less than five minutes, cheeks flushed and cursing under his breath, he stormed across the reception area and out of sight.
Andrew clenched his jaw and made eye contact with another man across the room from him. He imagined the unease in the man’s eyes mirrored his own uncertainty.
“Andrew Jamison, Mrs. Americus will see you now. Just through that door.”
The door opened to a large office filled with cubicles and desks, manned by women tapping away on typewriters or murmuring into the handsets of—
Andrew slowed his gait.
Are those rotary telephones and, wait, Royal typewriters?
As Andrew gawked, a large man with a mustache as thick has a shoe brush appeared before him. Andrew glanced up and then quickly shifted his gaze away from the brawny man’s left eyelid, which was weighed down with a sty the size of a dime.
“In there,” the man huffed, aiming a chubby finger at a closed door not more than five feet from where they stood.
The office was as small as a janitor’s closet. And dark.
The lone window on the far left wall faced the shadowy back of a department store. Metal file cabinets lined the walls; some of the drawers were open, revealing manila folders bulging with papers. He could see, even in the muddy darkness of the room, a layer of dust atop the cabinets. Hanging on the walls were at least twenty framed photographs of people, all of whom were black.
The air was rife with the scent of cigarette smoke.
Andrew remembered people smoking at their desks when he went to visit his mother at her office job when he was young. Once, on a flight to Detroit with his grandmother, he stood at the back of the plane waiting to use the bathroom, and found himself engulfed in a cloud of smoke billowing from the cigarettes of three passengers.
He couldn’t recall the exact year cities around the country began banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but he was supremely aware that smokers had to be at least four hundred feet away from the entrance of any building if they wanted to light up.
Yet here was this woman, puffing away like it was 1975. Andrew eyed the near-empty box of Winstons and then the woman. She was robust—a meat-and-potatoes sort of gal, with doughy cheeks and large blue eyes. Her sun-bleached blond hair fanned back from her face—a style made famous by the eighties icon Farrah Fawcett. Her lips were slathered in tangerine-colored lipstick. The same color rung the filters of a dozen long-dead Winston butts heaped in the black ceramic ashtray. Andrew thought, If she’s going for clown instead of glamour, well, bull’s-eye!
Ornate rings twinkled on seven of her ten fingers, the rose-gold chain she wore around her neck dribbled down her chest and disappeared into her cleavage. She looked to be in her midfifties.
“Good morning, Mr. Jamison. Please have a seat.” Her eyes remained glued to the sheet of paper clutched in her hands. Andrew assumed it was his résumé.
He sat down.
“You graduated from Brown University?”
“Y-yes, I did. I graduated summa cum laude in 1990.”
Her desk was cluttered with newspaper clippings; stacks of aging yellowed papers, and dated fashion magazines. Andrew’s eyebrows climbed. Was that Marcia from the seventies sitcom The Brady Bunch on the cover of that Glamour magazine?
Andrew chuckled to himself. This had to be an elaborate joke. Someone was putting him on. His eyes ranged around the office in search of a concealed camera.
“Impressive,” she said finally, looking him directly in the eye. “Do you have a wife?”
“S-sorry?”
“Are you married, Mr. Jamison?”
“No, I’m not.”
She searched his face. “Are you gay?”
Andrew bristled. “Mrs. Americus, I don’t think you’re legally allowed to ask me that question.”
She smirked.
“It’s a yes-or-no question, Mr. Jamison. I know it’s unusual, but believe me, for this position I would need to know.”
His rent was due tomorrow and then again in thirty more days. His savings were dwindling. “No, I’m not gay.”
“Do you have children?”
“One daughter, she’s twenty-two years old.”
“Do you have a good relationship with your daughter? With the mother?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Americus glanced at his résumé. “Perfect.” She reached for the dying cigarette and brought it to her lips. “And according to your application, you’ve never been arrested. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we will be doing a background check.”
“Understood.”
“Do you have any bad habits? Do you use narcotics?”
“No ma’am.”
“Any . . . um . . . undesirable recreational activities?”
“Undesirable?”
“Porn? Well, not just porn. Kiddie porn.”
Andrew’s mouth fell open.
“No judgment, Mr. Jamison. Again, I just need to know.”
“No, I do not watch kiddie porn,” Andrew spat.
“Good!” she exclaimed, drumming her fingers on the desk. “Let me tell you the specifics of the job . . .”
Some of the faces behind the glass frames looked familiar. Again Andrew found himself squinting. Was that Omarosa? He pitched forward in his chair.
Mrs. Americus stopped talking and followed his gaze. “Um, yes,” she spouted. “That is who you think it is. She’s been one of our best recruits.”
Andrew swallowed.
Mrs. Americus stubbed out her cigarette and laced her fingers under her chin. “Some of our liaisons work directly with government agencies. That’s a promotion of sorts. Of course, before you can be assigned to the big house—I mean the White House—you’d first have to prove yourself out in the field.” She giggled. “In the field. You get it? It’s a double entendre.”
Andrew’s mouth went dry.
She twisted around in the chair and pointed to a photograph of a pair of middle-aged women standing shoulder to shoulder, each holding a red MAGA baseball cap. “Those ladies are Diamond and Silk. Do you know them?”
Andrew shot out up from the chair. For a moment, he thought his knees would buckle. “What does OBF stand for?”
Mrs. Americus reached for the pack of cigarettes. “OBF stands for One Black Friend.”
“One Black Friend?”
“Yes. You see, in these troubling times, times where so many people are labeling white people as racist, we need black people to stand up for us—to have our backs, as your people are fond of saying. Sometimes, Mr. Jamison, a God-fearing, good white person may be accused of a crime or some other offense perpetrated against a person of color, and when the accused does not have a person of color in his circle, it looks bad. The public may see him . . . or her, as a racist simply because their circle is . . . white. Lily.
“And that’s wrong. Not having black friends does not make a white person racist by default. Anyway,” she waved her hand, “that’s where OBF comes in. We provide that one black friend. That one black friend introduces doubt, and more often than not, that doubt diminishes a large percentage of the negative impact our clients might face.”
Andrew just stared.
“Oh, Mr. Jamison, don’t look so shocked. This practice has been around for centuries.” She pointed to the far wall near the window. “You see that guy there? He was actually the inspiration for this company.”
Andrew peered at the photograph. “Who is he?”
“Joe Oliver.”
“Joe Oliver?”
“Yeah, Joe Oliver. You don’t remember him? Joe Oliver, George Zimmerman’s one black friend.” Mrs. Americus raised a black ceramic coffee mug to her lips and sipped. The red decal on the side of the mug read: Black Tears.
Andrew’s stomach lurched, perspiration beading across his forehead. “This is some kind of joke, right?”
“Oh, I assure you this is not a joke and I am very serious. As serious as a heart attack. Is that how the saying goes? As serious as a heart attack?”
Andrew started toward the door.
“Wait, Mr. Jamison. Look here.” She pointed at a photograph hanging above the row of filing cabinets. “This is another one of our liaisons. Since he’s been working for us, he’s paid off his student loans and I understand that he’s just recently purchased a Cadillac.”
Andrew followed her index finger to the photo of a grinning black man holding a Blacks for Trump sign above his head like a trophy.
“Shall we talk about salary?”
The lights flickered.
He thought, Maybe I’m still asleep. Maybe this is a nightmare.
“Andrew? I can see you’re having a hard time processing all of this. But really, it’s not as uncommon as you might think. We live in America, this is a capitalist country, and we monetize everything. Everything.”
Andrew couldn’t remember reaching for the doorknob, but suddenly he was stumbling through the reception area.
He fled down the corridor, rounded the first corner and then the next. A slight man the color of honeyed milk stepped from the elevator. He wore a yellow dress shirt with a red bow tie. His dark-blue khakis were flooded just enough to offer a wink of his orange-and-navy argyle socks.
Upon Andrew’s frantic approach, the startled stranger stepped swiftly out of his path. Andrew didn’t make eye contact. He jabbed at the elevator button until the doors slid open.
Weeks later, Andrew was seated in a truck-stop diner with his fork poised over a plate of scrambled eggs and corned beef hash.
The mounted television was tuned to Fox News. The anchor reported that yet another young black man had been gunned down by a vigilante, another Good Samaritan, named Christopher Parks.
Christopher Parks was heading home from his job as a sanitation man when he spotted young Daniel Latham sitting in Starbucks, dozing over his law textbooks. Parks entered the establishment, woke Latham with a tap to his shoulder, and asked if he lived in the area. According to eyewitnesses, Latham replied that he did in fact live in the neighborhood. Parks demanded to see Latham’s ID and was met with laughter. The law student gathered his belongings and stood to leave—rather menacingly, one eyewitness reported.
That was when Christopher Parks pulled his weapon and fired. The stunned Latham, still laughing, crumpled into his chair and pressed his hand over the whole in his heart. It wasn’t until he saw the blood that the smile slipped from his lips and he began to cry.
The cops were called, but not an ambulance. Well, not immediately.
The police shackled Latham to the chair and took Parks to the police station for questioning. The woman behind the counter gave Parks a high five and a tall Caffè Mocha to go.
By the time an ambulance arrived, Daniel Latham was dead, having bled out all over his take-home final exam.
In the days that followed, it was revealed that Daniel Latham had several unpaid parking tickets and was thrice fined for not scooping his dog’s poop. Not only that—he was also a practicing Buddhist who supported a woman’s right to choose.
A search of Latham’s apartment unearthed a well-worn copy of Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was on his nightstand alongside Jay-Z’s Decoded. This discovery was further evidence that Latham was no angel.
Laura Ingraham looked directly into the camera and told her viewers that Christopher Parks was a hero, a polite and well-spoken man who had been raised by his father after his mother died from breast cancer when he was just three years old. Yes, as a youth, Christopher had been suspended from school for fighting, and as a young man he’d beaten a girlfriend with a pipe. Later, when he was in his early thirties, he’d threatened to castrate his boss—a black man old enough to be his grandfather. All of that behavior, Laura Ingraham said, was directly connected to the trauma of losing a mother at such a tender age.
She paused, and in that moment her entire face pulsed with empathy. “That said,” she continued, “Al Sharpton, along with the Black Lives Matter terrorist organization, have labeled Christopher Parks a racist and are calling for his arrest.” She shook her head and chuckled. “Earlier today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christopher’s longtime best friend, Andrew Jamison . . .”
Andrew lowered his fork, reached for his shades, and slipped them onto his face.
—OBF, Inc., a short story by Bernice L. McFadden
#politics#short stories#one black friend#sellouts#joe oliver#diamond and silk#omarosa#black republicans#blacks for trump#c👀ns#andrew jamison#obf#obf inc#🦝#omarosa manigault
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