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arthurdrakoni · 8 months

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The Dial-Up follows two dudes, one in 2022 and one in 1999, communicating over the Internet. It is also about the power of the Internet to bring us closer together for the better. This is my review.

The Dial-Up begins with a Scottish tech support worker named Lewis. It isn’t the most glamorous job, and the customers can be rather annoying, but it pays the bills. Recently, however, he’s gotten a call that has seriously spiced things up. He’s been contacted by another Scottish dude named Callum. It seems that Callum has never used the Internet before. In fact, he seems to big ignorant about quite a few things. It soon becomes clear that Callum is in the year 1999, while Lewis is in 2022. Lewis and Callum compare and contrast their respective lives. However, they also feel that fate has brought them together for a reason. But what could that reason be?

The Dial-Up is very short. It is only four episodes long, and they clock in at a grand total of thirty-seven minutes long. Still, as is often the case, good things come in small packages. And that’s certainly true for The Dial-Up.

The Dial-Up is very much a two-man show. Well, technically a three man show. Let’s not forget series creator Philip Catherwood. In terms of voice acting, however, The Dial-Up is carried entirely by David Hepburn and Craig McDonald Kelly. I just loved how David performed Callum as a laidback devil-pay-care kind of guy. Craig did a fantastic job performing Lewis as a sensible straight man to all of Callum’s wisecracks.

This audio drama is a bit light on the sound-effects. We, of course, get to hear the iconic sound of a dial-up modem connecting to the Internet. We do get some cool sci-fi sound effects later on. Though, getting more specific would be spoilers. So, overall, a bit light on sound effects, but no shame in that. Honestly, David and Craig gave such wonderful and lively performances, I didn’t even notice the lack of sound effects most of the time.

The major theme of The Dial-Up is about the power of the Internet to bring people together. I’m reminded of something Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the movie Pleasantville. He said, paraphrased, that perhaps it is true that we have more problems than people did in the past, but we also have more solutions and opportunities. Lewis bemoans 2022, and longs for the supposed simplicity of life in the 1990s. Callum is quick to point out that the 1990s had its share of problems as well. For example, yes, people did go out more to places like pubs and restaurants. However, that was because they did have any choice but to do so. Callum also points out that many people from the 1990s would kill to have access to all of the apps and Internet stuff that Lewis has at his fingertips.

You would not be reading this review if it weren’t for the Internet. In fact, The Dial-Up, and pretty much every other audio drama I’ve reviewed, would not exist without the Internet. I’ve meet so many amazing people, and kindled so many friendships, thanks to the Internet. As an autistic person, who struggles with social anxiety, I’m forever grateful for all the ways that the Internet has helped make my life easier. The Internet helped me find seamless socks, and for that I am eternally grateful. I’ve also started branching out into voice acting. Yeah, I technically could do that without the Internet, but it would be a lot harder.

Now, all of this isn’t to say we should all cloister ourselves away. On the contrary, sometimes it is nice to get out and about in the real world. It can be quite good to do so every now and again. Indeed, Lewis does encourage Callum to try some of the fun classes and activities that his community center offers. Any virtue taken to excess becomes a vice, as Aristotle famously noted. Hey, he might have been wrong about the youths, but he was right about that. You don’t want to spend all your time in the digital world, but that doesn’t make the Internet a bad thing. On the whole, The Dial-Up takes an optimistic view about our ability to balance cyberspace and fleshspace.

Have you listened to The Dial-Up? If so, what did you think?

Link to the original review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-audio-file-dial-up.html?m=1

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stories-and-sails · 5 years

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Spelling Test

Based on a Tumblr prompt that I have since lost track of: You are a witch working at McDonald’s. There is this one colleague you secretly hate so you cast a curse that slowly destroys the thing they love the most. Months pass and nothing has changed, but you are starting to get sick.

I suppose it’s a stereotype, but I didn’t expect to run into that many Republicans working at the homeless shelter. I mean, I didn’t have any presuppositions about who would be actually staying in the homeless shelter. I carefully schooled myself away from assumptions about the clients. My colleagues, on the other hand…

He showed up in the middle of September, wearing a freshly pressed dress shirt and, of all things, a red tie.

“Are you lost?” I asked politely.

He laughed. It showed a lot of very square white teeth. “No. At least, not physically. This is my first shift. Are you Gana?” Before I could respond to any of this, he continued. “Herb said that you’d be the best one to show me around, because nobody knows this place like you.” He winked, and I bristled. What exactly had Herb told this cut-out doll of a Yuppie about my history?

“Yes,” I said, and before I got anything else out, he interrupted again.

“Are you going to give me the tour?”

I did, and there were whole stretches when I was able to get out useful sentences like, “This is the staff bathroom,” or “Here is where we fill out incident paperwork,” but mostly I learned all about Daniel Bellview. I will summarize, because I do not wish to subject anyone to the same irritation I experienced in listening to his life story.

Daniel had recently graduated from Dartmouth. He was taking a (third?) gap year from finding a real job. (I didn’t know you could call it a gap year after college, but it seemed like Daniel made the rules.)

His father was John Bellview, Congressional Nominee

His father thought that having a kid working at a homeless shelter would make him seem more sympathetic, especially given that one of the measures he supported would cut funding to social programs like Meals on Wheels

Daniel was more than happy to help with anything that would benefit the Grand Ole Party. And hey, he might learn something working here, right? Anything’s possible.

In the kitchen that evening, as we oversaw the church group that served on Friday nights, I confided in a co-worker I actually liked, Angela. “He’s just so--Republican.”

She gave me a guarded look. “What is that supposed to mean, Gana?”

Which is to say, of course, that she was secretly Republican this whole time, and I had to spend the next five minutes trying to try to make my words less offensive. Daniel’s presence in the shelter had already made me a terrible person.

That night with my Sisters I was able to dump the whole story without any apologies, and they were righteously angry on my behalf. I could always count on them to see things my way.

At the age of fifteen, after I got to know the homeless shelter downtown better than almost everybody, I found my family. They didn’t seem to think it was alarming that when I tried the spells from Harry Potter, they actually worked. Haile and Dora were clairvoyant, Amber could work magic the way I could, and Yajaira was simply very good at keeping us all organized and financially solvent. This was the most baffling kind of magic to me.

Amber, predictably, offered to hex Daniel Bellview into a roach. (This sickened me a little bit, because she had a thriving colony of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches in her bedroom, and probably a quarter of them had started out as men who did something she perceived as unforgivable.) (Only two of them had done something that was truly horrible. That left five men-as-cockroaches in her room that had been irritating but not evil. They had been cockroaches for between one and five months, and I was starting to get antsy about whether she was ever going to return them to normal.) I passed on turning Daniel into a roach.

Haile offered to read something of his, if I could get it home, and Yajaira just told me to eat my dinner and give it time, because I always needed time to warm up to people.

Warm up to Daniel. Unlikely.

Over the course of the next month, my teeth began to wear down from the pressure of clenching them all the time around my ever-present co-worker. Herb told me to be nice to him, because, “We need him to like us. And to think that the shelter is a good thing. He has a good relationship with his dad, and we can use all the help we can get.”

But Daniel was not an easy person to be nice to. At least, not for me. The girls who worked in the front seemed to find him charming because he was a snappy dresser and backed his inane comments with a dentally-privileged smile. He was particularly cheerful (he would tell anyone who asked) because his father was doing so well in the polls, and there were only weeks left until election day.

But I tried to be nice to him, or at least helpful. “You know, you sound like an idiot when you ask kids where their dad is.”

He blinked. There was a moment of surprise before he recovered his Smarmy™ smile. “Okay. What am I supposed to say?”

“You can ask them if they’re here with anybody, or if there’s anybody they need to get in contact with. I know your dad is perfect, but a lot of the youngsters here don’t have both parents in their lives, or their here because their parents aren’t doing stellar at the whole parenting gig.”

“Wow,” he said. “Thank you. Herb was right, you really have a feel for this.”

I scowled. It wasn’t like I was trying to hide my past from Daniel Bellview, or anybody else for that matter. From the glazed look on Daniel’s face half the time, I wasn’t sure he even saw the people who stayed here as people. I didn’t want that expression pointed my way.

But it was even worse to keep wondering what he knew. So. “I spent a lot of time here when I was growing up. Ages twelve to fourteen. I mean, it wasn’t home, but I was here more than anywhere else.”

Okay, so he hadn’t known. He looked insultingly stunned. “You?”

Wow, it was the shortest sentence I’d ever heard him utter. And he was actually waiting for a response. I didn’t owe him anything, so I nodded and handed him a bucket of disinfectant water. “Hard surfaces,” I said. “Go.”

Amber was sympathetic in her usual way. “I know another spell you can try,” she smiled, “If you don’t want to turn him into a cockroach.”

“I’m listening,” I sighed.

“Katastrepe agapate. It destroys what they love the most.”

“That’s horrifying,” I answered immediately. I didn’t want to kill his dog, or sister, or the thing that he probably actually loved the most, himself. “That’s worse than roaches.”

“It doesn’t do death,” she promised, waving away my primary concern. “Usually. And you can put in a spellsafe so he can undo it if he stops being terrible. Besides, election day is only a few weeks away, and I have a guess about what he loves the most.”

I just didn’t want to take any chances. I mean, gods and stuff, if I harmed a pet I would never be able to live with myself.

“Daniel,” I started casually.

He already looked startled. “Daniel? I thought I was Bellview.”

Dammit. He was right, I had never addressed him by his first name. I tried to avoid names all together with him. “What would you say you love the most?”

“Wh-what makes you ask?”

“Just, you know, conversing with my co-worker. Trying to get to know you better.” So convincing, Gana.

He maneuvered a smile back into place. “Other than my own reflection?” He laughed like he was making a joke about himself, or maybe a joke about the way I thought of him. “Probably, the values that make our country so amazing. Virtue. Independence. Innovation. Things like that.”

I was sure that a spell couldn’t harm Virtue, and besides, that sounded like code for “my dad being a senator.”

“What about you, Gana?”

“Huh?”

“What do you love most?”

He had gotten slightly better at waiting for me to answer things, but this took an exceptionally long time for me to answer. “I think--I think it might be this place,” I finally said.

He nodded. “I can see it.”

With three weeks to go until elections, I cast the spell with Amber over a toothbrush that Daniel kept in the staff room. “Katastrepe Agapate.” The silly spellsafe I put over it was that, of course, if he wanted to protect the thing he loved, it was going to have to be Twue Wuv’s Kiss. If things started going bad for a pet or secret sister or something, it should be easy for him to undo. And if it really was his reflection, it should be pretty amusing.

Over the next weeks I waited for the scandalous news to hit and the GOPs poll numbers to crash, but instead:

Congressional Nominee John Bellview climbed several points in the poll after doing a special appearance at my very own place of employment and making A Very Generous Donation.

Several Democratic candidates fell into traps of their own making and dropped in the polls.

I wondered if Daniel was secretly just a terrible Democrat, and my spell had backfired.

Daniel and I fixed five showers and a toilet that had been out of service for over a month. I asked him how he knew plumbing, and he reminded me that this was his third “gap year.” I told him that he couldn't indefinitely call his life a gap year, and he said that it made his father feel better about him not embarking on his eventual journey toward a doctor/lawyer/CEO.

Daniel also asked 35% fewer stupid questions, like he actually heard me when I told him he was being stupid.

Daniel thought I was starting a game by asking him what he loved best, and so every shift together, he would have a new question, like “If you were a constellation, which one would you be?” and “If you could speak any five languages, which ones would you choose?” Some of the questions were more serious, like “What is your biggest regret?” He always listened to my actual answers, which was at first more than I expected of him, but I started to get used to the listening and the honesty.

He did not cease to be irritating, but I started to understand when he was being ironic and when he was simply being stupid. There were measures of both.

I almost wished I hadn’t done the spell.

Especially since I could figure out what it was affecting. He gave no hint that anything was wrong away from work, and everything at work was fine.

The stress and guilt of possibly destroying something I couldn’t even identify was making me miserable. Clumps of my hair started coming out in my brush.

I took this final problem to Yajaira, who combed her fingers through my hair and came away with more fine strands of hair than I wanted to part with. “Maybe you should take some time off work, Gana. Either you’re not eating right, or you’re stressed out.”

She was right. I was stressed. I stayed home from work for the first time in a year and helped Yajaira with the quiet magic of bulk-cooking vegetarian meals and storing them in the freezer. In the middle of stirring a pot of soup and chanting, “Double, double, toil and trouble,” to double the recipe without having to increase the ingredients, the periphery of my vision went dark, and my knees buckled. I was left on the ground, clenching the wooden spoon.

“Dios,” Yajaira cried, dropping to my side with half an onion still in her left hand. “Gana, I’m taking you to a doctor.”

“I’m just tired,” I whispered. “I was trying to do magic, and I haven’t been sleeping well.” Maybe the agapate spell was taking a little bit of my magic at all times, and that was causing my exhaustion.

“Doctor.” Yajaira responded firmly.

“Please not for this, Yajaira. Can’t Dora just take a look at me and see what’s wrong?”

Yajaira seemed annoyed by this and called Dora to come home from school to take a look at me. (Dora was a fifth grade teacher. Being a fifth grade teacher sounded exhausting, but being a psychic fifth grade teacher seemed like actual hell. Dora seemed to enjoy it.)

I napped on the couch like a sick kid. In some corner of my mind, I could remember being five and six and having a place where people had given me a warm water bottle to hold when I had a fever and putting orange juice on a tray by me as quickly as I could drink it. I could also remember being dead on my feet from some flu I’d caught on the street and dragging myself to the shelter, where they found a room to quarantine me and flu medicine that I could never pay for and didn’t have to. It was funny how the state of being sick made me feel like I could reach out and touch those other sick versions of me throughout my own history.

Amber arrived home just a few minutes before Dora and force fed me the soup I’d been making, but when Dora got home, she brushed Amber out of the way and started inspecting me. “It’s good you let me take a look at her first, Jai. This is a spell.”

My eyes snapped open, winced, and closed again. “What kind of spell? Who could--” I’d met some others like me in the past couple of years, but it wasn’t like we had a rival gang of witches living on the East side. I couldn’t see why anyone would target me.

“Gana, I don’t understand. It’s you. The spell is from you.”

Gods or something dammit.

It took a lot of explaining and answering uncomfortable questions, which I could only do between bouts of fortifying soup and closing my eyes to rest. “Amber, are you sure this spell doesn’t cause death?”

She looked horrified. She’d taken off her giant glasses and was cleaning them on the edge of her cardigan rather than meet anyone’s eye. “I told you it’s usually not a death curse. You did use a spellsafe, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I sighed. And what an easy, convenient spellsafe I’d chosen. “A kiss.”

At this, Amber shoved her glasses back on her face and stopped looking miserable, and Yajaira sighed, “Is that all? Somebody go get the boy.”

I struggle to sit up. “No, no, no. Definitely not him, here.”

Dora looked at her watch. “It’s still the middle of your shift. If I drive you in, do you think you can take care of it?”

I felt sick. It was difficult to know if the feeling came from dreading the conversation that would have to occur or if it was the superbly stupid spell. “I blame you, Amber,” I shouted as Dora bundled me out the door.

If I thought it was awkward explaining the situation to my sisters, it was nothing compared to facing Daniel. Could I have lied about the situation? Probably. I did not love lying to people, and I just did not have the emotional and mental capacity to do this right now.

“Wow,” he greeted. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” I returned. “You are terrible. Mostly. Will you kiss me?”

That got a look out of him that I hadn’t seen before. His eyes went round and bulgy, and he choked out, “What?”

“This is going to take forever to explain, but I do...spells? I do spells. And stuff. And I did a spell on you to destroy whatever you loved the most. Which I specifically asked you about, by the way, and you lied. I thought we were being honest with each other. So now I’m very ill, and look terrible, as you mentioned previously, and in order to fix it I need a kiss from you.”

“Oh,” he said, “That’s embarrassing.”

“Yes,” I said, “But I’d rather deal with it than continue to pass out in the kitchen.”

“I meant for me,” he corrected, that now-familiar mockery of a smile on his face. “You know I always think of myself first. I didn’t plan for you to find out like this.”

“How would you possibly have planned for me to find out like this?” I snapped.

“Point. But also the reason I wasn’t honest with you when you asked me about the object of my affections. It seemed like an inopportune moment to spring my feelings on you.” He shrugged. I had never seen him look uncomfortable in this particular way.

“It seems you don’t have to worry about it, because I’ll find a far less opportune way of finding out.”

His laugh sounded tin, and then looked around to make sure we were alone in the room. “You know this is also a terrible thing to do?”

“Oh, yes. I could probably have this conversation a lot better if I wasn’t on the brink of collapse, but I’m very sorry and feel like an idiot and promise not to let my irritation get the best of me in the workplace. I feel very bad about it and not solely because it’s nearly killing me.”

“It certainly communicates where I stand,” he laughed without any joy behind it, and then leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine.

I’d watched his lips as they smirked and schmoozed and I had never once imagined them pressed against mine, and at the moment that seemed like a terrible oversight. I made a soft, happy noise against him, and it startled him into tugging away.

I instantly felt much better, although it was still impossible to tell if I was relieved that the conversation was over, or if the curse was broken, or if it had just been a really nice kiss.

He whistled and turned away to find something to do with his hands. “Hope that helped, colleague of mine. Now I need to go--I don’t know--drink something strong.”

“You’re still on shift,” I pointed out. “And I am too, I guess, since I’m no longer sick.”

Having found nothing else to do with his hands, he just looked at them. They were not clenched, but they kept making tight little motions at each other. “I can ask to be transferred to another shift. I’m not ready to leave yet, but you don’t have to see me.”

“I don’t have to see you?” I frowned. “You’re the one who should never want to see me again. Like you said, that was pretty terrible. I’m sorry.”

“And also like I said, that gives me a pretty clear answer regarding how you feel. As if you’d ever left any real room for doubt. A little bit of distance would probably be good for your health.”

I don’t know why it caused such a pang of regret to hear him say this, but I felt an undeniable urge to make it better. “Having you around was pretty good for my health today.”

There was a sad little cousin of a smirk on his face. “There’s that, at least.”

“I think you should hang around a little longer. It takes me a notoriously long time to warm up to people. Give me a chance.”

He looked at me closely. “Are you sure? You’re not still fevered? I’ve heard my kisses can be intoxicating.”

What a dumbass. “I’m sure.”

#writblr #writing prompt #internet story time #~magic~making people admit their feelings #spooky september #help me find the original prompt

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bluewatsons · 7 years

Conversation

Bourree Lam, Why ‘Do What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice, The Atlantic (August 7, 2015)

Bourree Lam: Your book started as an essay, “In the Name of Love,” (which was later republished by Slate) that really touched a nerve with people. What were you talking about in that essay and why are people so drawn to it?

Miya Tokumitsu: I’ve noticed in other mainstream outlets that there’s been a lot more writing about work and work culture, particularly professional work. I think there really had been a kind of simmering widespread frustration with the state of work. American wages have been pretty flat since the 1970s, Americans are working longer, they’re more productive than ever, and they don’t seem to be getting much more in return for all of that. At the same time there are these cultural icons that project these pictures of work through media and social media as this blissful thing. In the old-media case it’s Oprah, and in newer media it’s Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop.

Bourree Lam: And Steve Jobs.

Miya Tokumitsu: Steve Jobs, yes. There is this pantheon of super successful blissful workers who are held up as these cultural ideals, and there is this kind of lifestyle peddling that goes along with it, the imagery of which is saturating our visual landscape more than ever. But even as we see more pictures that world, it is even more of a fantasy. So I think frustration had just really been there.

Bourree Lam: I’m interested to hear a little bit about your background and research focus. You’re an art historian, but you analyze work culture and work myths.

Miya Tokumitsu: It seems kind of unintuitive at first, but one of the most valuable things that I got out of my training as an art historian was the ability to question with sensitivity the visual world, such as all these images of what seems like success or images of what seems like happy successful work. Those [images] don’t just exist—people make them. And one of the things that I’m struck by with this whole “do what you love” culture is how visual it is. For a while I followed a few [corporate] accounts on Instagram. These accounts are maintained by people, whether public-relations managers or interns, and they didn’t just post photos of the products or events [they are promoting]. A lot of times they would post photos of business trips or backstage at like a catalog photo shoot, presenting pictures of their work as super fun and joyful. I thought that was fascinating that they were using pictures of their work to sell products. My training in art history connected me to this phenomenon. In art history, you also learn to question what it is you're not seeing. For example, service workers— who are a growing pool of workers today—they’re much more hidden from view.

Bourree Lam: Right, it’s only glamorous work that gets glorified.

Miya Tokumitsu: Glorified and visualized, and then those pictures get repeated over and over. And I feel like certain outlets, such as Instagram and Pinterest, seem especially designed to make these beguiling pictures for people to look at.

Bourree Lam: What are some of the other myths surrounding work?

Miya Tokumitsu: I think this idea that work somehow makes you a good person is something that is very American to me. There’s this idea that it has something to do with your character as a person. I feel that it’s very ingrained and I don’t completely disavow it, too. Work is held up as something that is more revelatory about your character than the interests you have or the way you care about other people or care for other people. I feel like it comes from people who are earnest in their striving and want to do good things and want to be good people, but it leads to this culture where people are just working all the time.

Bourree Lam: You focus on one big myth, which is “do what you love.”

Miya Tokumitsu: People take it as this absolute, but it’s an idea that’s not even that old. People have told me, “Yeah my grandmother thinks this idea is totally selfish and narcissistic.” So if you go back one or two generations, it’s not an intuitive idea for people.

Bourree Lam: Do you know where it came from?

Miya Tokumitsu: So in my book I have my theory about where it came from. I really feel like it comes out of post-World War II prosperity. The Protestant work ethic is work, work, work—work is a calling, work is virtuous. I felt like that was with us for a long time, but pleasure never factored into that much. But then come the Baby Boomer generation—you have the wars seemingly over and there’s a lot of prosperity, though it’s been spread pretty broadly throughout society. And that gave people the opportunity to indulge themselves a little bit. And within the U.S. particularly, there arose a culture of self--thinking about what makes me happy and how to improve myself. [I argue that the] virtue strain of work and the self strain of work combined in the late 1970s and 1980s, and in a way pleasure-seeking became the virtue.

Bourree Lam: The way you describe it in the book, this has almost reached absurdity. Even menial jobs now require a worker to be super passionate.

Miya Tokumitsu: When I found that Craigslist posting [for cleaners who were passionate], I was super depressed. You’re demanding that this person—who is going to do really hard physical work for not a lot of money—do extra work. On top of having to scrub the floors and wash windows, they have to show that they’re passionate too? It’s absurd and it’s become so internalized that people don’t even think about it. People write these job ads, and of course they’re going to say they want a passionate worker. But they don’t even think about what that means and that maybe not everyone is passionate

Bourree Lam: I’m constantly curious about the question of how passion became so central to work.

Miya Tokumitsu: I think there are a lot of things behind it. The most cynical explanation is that employers demand passion because they don’t want to hear complaints. If you make passion a job requirement, you can’t complain about your workload. A couple of writers have pointed this out, but in today’s service-oriented economy I really think that emotional access and feelings are really important. Employers are looking to harvest social interaction and worker authenticity for profit. Paul Myerscough had a really good piece about Pret A Manger in the London Review of Books. Pret A Manger has a really really lengthy, specific code for how its workers have to behave and how they always have to project happiness. One of his theories is, it’s not just the sandwiches that they’re selling at Pret A Manger—the way that they make customers feel is as important a commodity.

Bourree Lam: In some ways I feel McDonald’s pioneered that. Do you remember the free smiles?

Miya Tokumitsu: Yes, and the high fives! I think McDonald’s just recently reintroduced that thing where they were encouraging their cashiers to high-five customers, or kind of do a little jig or do all of this work that was all about generating feeling in people. In Peter Fleming and Carl Cederstrom’s Dead Man Working they talk about authenticity being something that the boss is coming for to monetize for profit. While I think that might be extreme, I do think there’s something to it. I think that’s where all these appeals for passion is--You don’t just want a maid service to come and clean your house. You want them to make you feel good.

Bourree Lam: We’re so greedy.

Miya Tokumitsu: We are. I feel like this whole culture of feeling good too is just really kind of hedonistic. And I also feel like it’s a little bit dark. There’s almost something in it to me that speaks of like addiction or something. We can never be at just baseline contentment. We always have to be relentlessly seeking these ��good feelings.”

Bourree Lam: But this is very American, and how does that contrast with, say, the work culture in Japan where you compartmentalize your personalities. You’re one person at work, you're another person after work, and another person at home. In the U.S., all these narratives have to converge into one.

Miya Tokumitsu: Japanese work culture is ridiculed in the U.S., [for example] the caricature of the soulless Japanese salary man. It’s not the answer to emulate any one country, but I feel like in Japan there’s a lot more respect for service workers: You do your job, and serve the public, and then you retreat to the private world. I also think there’s a sense of purpose in work that’s not based on achieving yellow smiley-face happiness. There’s a certain satisfaction to be taken from performing a certain role in society, whether you’re driving a taxi or working at a convenience store. “I’m doing something that other people are relying on,”—and that’s such a different way to regard work.

Bourree Lam: Let’s talk about what you call “hope labor”—the idea you have to pay your dues and hope that you're going to eventually “make it.”

Miya Tokumitsu: I think with economic liberalization and this whole world of neo-liberalism that we’re living in, there’s just less and less room at the top. One of the really frustrating outcomes of this has been this whole proliferation of basically first- and second-class labor systems. I see some of my students, who are undergraduates now, they talk about internships and they just accept that they’ll have to do that after they graduate. When I was in college, that wasn’t the case. That whole narrative is used basically to exploit people. And again it has a lot to do with these images of wealthy, successful, happy workers. It has a lot to do with meritocracy too—if you’re the best then you'll kind of get all the prizes.

Bourree Lam: And no one wants to drop out of the rat race because they don’t want to signal that they’re not the best.

Miya Tokumitsu: Exactly that's the thing. That's what’s kind of genius about it. The whole notion of meritocracy is kind of genius, because if you walk away—then it’s obviously because you couldn’t hack it.

Bourree Lam: One thing that I want to bring up that challenges your framework is the new focus on wellness at work. For example, working out at work, meditating, and the four-day workweek.

Miya Tokumitsu: First of all, I feel like it’s very attached to worker surveillance. It’s all about opening the worker up, even your body and your interior thoughts, to potential monetization by the employer. They want you to stop smoking so you’ll stop taking cigarette breaks. They want you to lose weight so you’ll be more attractive as a salesperson.

Bourree Lam: But what about the four-day workweek? That’s working less hours.

Miya Tokumitsu: I think that’s actually a good point. I think a lot of the wellness things that I mentioned do come out of a place of caring, but I think it’s also at the end of the day about profitability. And one of the reason that these four-day workweeks—and also in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden they were experimenting with a 6-hour workday—they explicitly say, “we want to see if it will increase productivity.” So at the end of the day, it was about making workers happy so that they will produce more. Again I feel like these things, I don’t want to say that employers are all totally evil and cynical, but it's a little complicated. A lot of employers truly want both. They care about the people who work for them, and they care about the profitability of their business. I actually tend to be somewhat optimistic, especially when you meet individuals themselves. People tends to care about the people that they’re working with, but they wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t some perceived benefit for the bottom line. I think it would be interesting to follow up with those companies to see what if productivity declines? What happens if the business starts losing profits?

Bourree Lam: Why do you think people need an excuse to work? Why can’t we just go to work to make money?

Miya Tokumitsu: I have wondered that. And one of the things I want to do is celebrate the job that just pays the rent. I feel like that is so maligned in our present culture. I think work is where we spend a lot of our lives. And we wed our identities so tightly to our job titles in the U.S. You don't want your identity to be someone who just puts in eight hours and checks out. I’ve tried this little experiment when I meet people in non-work situations and try to see how long I can talk to them without asking about their work or have them ask me about my work. It's actually really hard to last longer than four minutes.

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