(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Brands and Freedom [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-04
According to Substack gurus, I should not write what I am about to write.
About a decade ago, I worked for the fundraising arm of a major research hospital. You would recognize it if I told you the name. I thought that the job would make me content, that while it would still be a job, serving a higher purpose would smooth down the rough edges and make all of the normal bullshit of work easier to take.
I was wrong.
Before long, I was angry by the end of the week. Then by the middle of the week. Then by the end of Monday. Then on the drive into work on Monday morning. Then by Sunday night, anticipating the drive into work on Monday morning. Seriously, deeply angry. The job was still a job, and since it was fundraising, it was still about sales and marketing. That meant that people’s worth in the organization was established by the normal sales and marketing standards, because that was what the organization’s leaders knew coming into the organization. And that meant that they needed to ensure that they got credit for this or that bit of fundraising. And that meant that we couldn’t do certain things better or more efficiently or try new ideas or systems if we couldn’t cleanly assign the results to existing fundraising organizations.
Normally, those kinds of lost battles don’t bother me. So, we are a half percent less efficient, so we leave some money on the table? I made the argument and I lost — happens all the time. Unless its unethical or illegal, I can live with some Vice President of Thingmajigs getting half a percent less on his yearend bonus because he didn’t listen. But not at the non-profit. It happened so often and every time it did, a little less money went across the street to the researchers and doctors who were desperately trying to save lives.
I want to be clear that these were almost universally good people. They all took much less money than they could have made in the private sector to try and do good work, and they all worked very hard and cared deeply about the mission. I have vivid memories of high ranking, C-suite officials crying in their offices because of the deaths of patients they had just worked with to cut commercials or do fundraisers. They were just caught in a system that most of them could not see past.
And thus we come to brands.
According to the about page of this little newsletter, I am supposed to be writing about bullshit in the technology industry with the occasional piece about hockey, book reviews, or laments about the failure of my own publishing dreams thrown in for spice. According to the best advice about how to grow such a newsletter, that is all I am supposed to write about — I am supposed to focus on my brand. Now, this may very well be true. I, after all, am a tiny fish with hardly any subscribers. That may be because my writing is terrible, and it may be because I am terrible at building a brand, or it may be some combination of the two. But if it is in part because I am terrible at building a brand, I think I am going to have to live with that limitation.
I cannot make myself be a brand. Yes, obviously, I want to be read. I write these little newsletters/blog posts. I send off queries to agents. I am half considering serializing the latest novel (though if it’s not good enough to get an agent, not sure it’s good enough for anyone to read?). I should probably follow the growth guru’s advice if I want to grow. But I want to write what captures my attention, what I find meaningful. And that, obviously, will not always be what my brand says it should be.
Sometimes, a lot of the time, it will. I wrote the blurb the way I did because my day job allows me to see a lot of the bullshit that technologists and the technologists adjacent foist on the public. My background makes me aware of how the tech bullshit and the political bullshit creates or warps systems that disadvantage the average person, and I think it important to speak out on those issues. Hockey and writing move me in a way that say, baseball and film generally don’t, so you get the occasional pieces on those subjects. But that is not the sum total of what I consider important, and occasionally, like today, I am going to write about other topics that move me. Even if the experts tell me I should not.
Fortunately for me, I have the space to do that. I have a day job that is as secure as jobs in late capitalism get and so I don’t need to rely on writing for an income. I don’t even have a paid tier right now for the newsletter. But others are nowhere near as fortunate. The system we are embedded in makes every grasp for what they can get, because it can all be taken away tomorrow. Everyone, then, to a certain extent, needs to be a brand, even in corporate jobs. The hustle is all, because there is almost nothing to catch you if you fall out of the working world.
And thus we come to freedom.
Almost no one in America is free, not in any meaningful sense. All of your basic needs are tied to employment. Food, shelter, health care can all be taken away by the loss of employment. They will not be replaced by the government — any significant length of unemployment in this country means destitution and shortened lives. Even fulltime employment is not a guarantee of adequate renumeration with respect to the basics of life. You must be, then, in public, an acceptable brand.
You must not express opinions that are too radical. You must not engage in behavior that is too far outside the bounds of society’s consensus. You must present yourself in a way that allows you to continue to be employable otherwise you risk ruin for you and the people who depend upon you. Now, this is not entirely black or white. Companies have good reasons, for example, for not wanting to associate with people who advocate for the kicking puppies, to be glib, or the overthrow of the government, to be more serious. This is a more nuanced conversation than it might appear on a t-shirt.
But it does limit the freedom of people in very serious and largely unaccountable ways. We have given over control to companies instead of retaining control in a democratically accountable fashion. If we had a robust universal cradle to grave welfare system, for example, then we could have arguments about what is and is not an appropriate response to perceived anti-social behaviors. Because right now, we are allowing a subset of people — company owners — to define and punish those behaviors without much in the way of oversight or debate. And as a result, we are now less people in public and more brands.
And we less as a society and less as people for that condition.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/4/2191275/-Brands-and-Freedom
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
