Hustle Culture: 21st Century Self Harm

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You've seen it, you've read it, and maybe you've even heard it. The dude on Twitter/Threads/Mastodon who posts forty-seven automated tweets/threads/toots per day about how you just need to push yourself a little harder, dude. Take your free time and turn it into passive income, bro! Follow these seventy-seven easy steps to financial independence!

There must be some kind of secret cabal of social media coaches telling people that engagement farming (disingenuous posting) and unprompted financial advice, is a great way to garner followers. Except, it's not. In fact, I think people like this mostly just piss everyone off. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would spend their free time posting things like this (especially on Mastodon, where there is no algorithm that rewards you for getting as much interaction as possible really fast). Why do you even care what other people are doing with their time away from work, John?

It's probably because it has nothing to do with that. It's all about putting up a veneer of false confidence and knowledge for follows.

It's always about followers.

You see, the thing is, you can use your free time to make extra money. That's a you thing, a decision you make for yourself, based on your own needs and feelings about your limits. But nobody should have to, and you most certainly shouldn't be urging people to do so.

We should live in a society where one job is enough to provide a stable life.

The thing about seeking passive income through doing more work in the little time you can spare outside your day job, is that eventually you will hit a wall. You will burn out, and if you're especially unlucky, the stress could kill you.

Instead of urging people to hustle, hustle, hustle. Go faster! Make more money! We should be talking about self-care. We should be talking about laying the hell down, and just rotting in bed. Human beings were not meant to spend every waking second in the pursuit of money, so that they can fall asleep, and then never enjoy themselves.

Nobody wants to wake up at the age of seventy and go, "Oh shit, I spent all of my back-pain free days chasing a dollar bill, and now I'm old." Because that's what it boils down to. The accumulation of cash ultimately means nothing, in the end. And, by extension, so does hustle culture.

You should spend as much time as you can doing absolutely nothing. Sure, go to work, do your chores, pay your taxes, mow the lawn. But, also? Throw yourself down onto the couch, and flip through Tiktok on your phone for four hours, who cares? RELAX.

As far as anyone can tell, or know, we only have one life. And until we can prove that there is more than one life, do you really want to spend every second that you could've used finding a lover, or eating a slice of pizza, or playing a cool game, just endlessly trying to get rich?

I didn't think so. Elon Musk isn't happy, Jeff Bezos isn't happy, and whoever the hell owns Microsoft now is so unhappy they've reinvented cyberstalking and burned it into Windows.

So, do yourself a favor. Take off your pants, crawl under a blanket, and turn off that damn brain.