The TikTok Girl is Right: Modernity and the 9-to-5

So there is this video floating around of a woman talking about her first job, and how hard it is to balance work and life. She can’t live in the city because she can’t afford to, so she has to do a lengthy commute into work. She can’t balance a social life because she is doing this lengthy commute into work. She’s fine with her job, but feels like she doesn’t have time for anything - a perfectly reasonable response to overwhelming stressors! Of course, a lot of dumb accounts that don’t know how to read, are sharing the video and saying things like “this is what the real world is, little girl!!!” or “Gen Z girl finds out what a real job is like” which totally misses the point of her video. She said, verbatim, “this has nothing to do with my job” - she is talking about the structure of the 9-to-5. The balance of going into the office for the office job to do office work and how sometimes, it feels like there isn’t much outside the liminal spaces of the concrete walls. And to be fair, th

So there is this video floating around of a woman talking about her first job, and how hard it is to balance work and life. She can’t live in the city because she can’t afford to, so she has to do a lengthy commute into work. She can’t balance a social life because she is doing this lengthy commute into work. She’s fine with her job, but feels like she doesn’t have time for anything - a perfectly reasonable response to overwhelming stressors! Of course, a lot of dumb accounts that don’t know how to read, are sharing the video and saying things like “this is what the real world is, little girl!