I Guess It Could Be Worse

They once forgot to pay me for 8 extra hours that they needed me to work on Thanksgiving weekend. They simply needed me to be present for 8 hours in order to quickly fix any problems that happened during their busiest weekend, and no such problems ended up happening.

When they saw the mistake and paid me for it, the gross pay for that day was $420 (base of $35 x 8 hours x 1.5 for overtime).

The first thing I noticed was how that compared to what I got paid at my warehouse job before I became a programmer. When I started the job at the warehouse, I got paid $10 an hour. For a full time week, I got paid $400.

I got paid more for that one day of doing practically nothing as a programmer than I did busting my ass at the warehouse for a whole week.

The effects of the writer's strike are months down the road which made it a whole lot easier to support because as third parties we weren't really being affected (yet), the effect of the actor's strike is going to be immediate and we're going to get a lot more propaganda of "these people are overpaid to begin with."

Remember our desire for content does not supersede these people's rights to live.

Look at something 20 feet away, then 10, then 5, then one, then if you can your nose.

Repeat twice, then again without glasses.

Face forward look out of the corner of your eye. As far as you can look. Slowly move to the other corner. Repeat twice.

Look down as far as you can. Slowly look up. Repeat twice.

Roll eyes twice.

Close eyes for five minutes.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.