Kam
Okay so. After sitting on this for a while I think I’ve got a better handle of what this does and what it doesn’t.
What it does well: portray the life of an immigrant worker in an increasingly dystopian tech industry. Social media moderation and its deleterious effects have been covered in the Filipino movie Deleter (2022), and will be covered in the upcoming movie American Sweatshop (2025). While Deleter had mixed reviews, it at least had the advantage of accurately portraying who actually handles content moderation for the big social media outlets: people, typically women, from Third World countries willing to accept a fraction of the pay and thrice the psychological abuse their white counterparts would be willing to put up with. American Sweatshop, on the other hand, has a VERY pale cast, so I find myself intensely doubtful of its quality based on that alone.
Moderation, however, shows the truth. The moderation team of Reeden, the fictional tech company the protagonist Girlie nominally works for (”nominally” because, like her other fellow moderators, she is a contract worker hired via staffing agency, the name of which changes every year to save costs on things like providing benefits and health insurance to employees), have more in common with the nurses, caregivers, and domestic helpers whom Girlie calls her “ancestors”, and who make up her family: people willing to clean up the shit and slop the Western world generates and refuses to deal with.
Another of the novel’s strengths is how it portrays the way tech companies work: the greed, the rapacious acquisitiveness, the tendency to strip anything and anyone for everything useful and leaving the rest behind as soon as it is convenient. Everything that doesn’t materially contribute to the company’s bottom line can be sacrificed, tossed aside: from people to values to politics. Nothing matters more than the pursuit of endless growth, no matter how mythical that is. And the novel highlights the effects of such thinking - and nowhere more clearly than in Girlie’s cynicism towards the world around her: a cynicism that, ironically, makes her one of the best moderators.
Alongside the themes of tech dystopia are the themes of family - especially immigrant family - life. The one that stuck with me the most was how the novel tackles the concept of utang na loob towards one’s family, especially one’s parents. Girlie’s relationship with her mother is fraught, mostly because she blames her mother’s poor decision-making leading to them losing the family home in Milpitas during the 2008 financial crisis. On top of this, there is lingering resentment towards the expectation that Girlie alter the course of her entire life, just to keep her family, and especially her mother, afloat. The moments when Girlie lets her resentment show are someone of the sharpest indictments of utang na loob I’ve read about in a while, and they speak to me very personally.
But while the novel handles these ideas quite well, I do find myself wishing that the romance hadn’t interfered so much with the aforementioned themes, especially towards the end. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a romance in a novel like this (not least because it’s a well-executed slow burn of the kind I personally enjoy), I found that the focus on it in the novel’s ending reduced the power of the narrative’s earlier concerns. While a conclusive ending isn’t necessary, I would have appreciated a more sustained focus on the issues of tech labor, immigration, and family that were a core of most of the novel.
Overall, this is a very different novel from America is Not the Heart, but still a delightful read regardless. Girlie is a very fun character to read about, as well as an engaging narrator, with the writing style giving her a personality that some readers may find themselves relating to deeply. However, while the romance is pretty good, I do wish that it had not been quite so prominent towards the end, when tackling the themes of Big Tech’s failings and its effects on people like Girlie would have been a more interesting - and more timely - focus.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.
Okay so. After sitting on this for a while I think I’ve got a better handle of what this does and what it doesn’t.
What it does well: portray the life of an immigrant worker in an increasingly dystopian tech industry. Social media moderation and its deleterious effects have been covered in the Filipino movie Deleter (2022), and will be covered in the upcoming movie American Sweatshop (2025). While Deleter had mixed reviews, it at least had the advantage of accurately portraying who actually handles content moderation for the big social media outlets: people, typically women, from Third World countries willing to accept a fraction of the pay and thrice the psychological abuse their white counterparts would be willing to put up with. American Sweatshop, on the other hand, has a VERY pale cast, so I find myself intensely doubtful of its quality based on that alone.
Moderation, however, shows the truth. The moderation team of Reeden, the fictional tech company the protagonist Girlie nominally works for (”nominally” because, like her other fellow moderators, she is a contract worker hired via staffing agency, the name of which changes every year to save costs on things like providing benefits and health insurance to employees), have more in common with the nurses, caregivers, and domestic helpers whom Girlie calls her “ancestors”, and who make up her family: people willing to clean up the shit and slop the Western world generates and refuses to deal with.
Another of the novel’s strengths is how it portrays the way tech companies work: the greed, the rapacious acquisitiveness, the tendency to strip anything and anyone for everything useful and leaving the rest behind as soon as it is convenient. Everything that doesn’t materially contribute to the company’s bottom line can be sacrificed, tossed aside: from people to values to politics. Nothing matters more than the pursuit of endless growth, no matter how mythical that is. And the novel highlights the effects of such thinking - and nowhere more clearly than in Girlie’s cynicism towards the world around her: a cynicism that, ironically, makes her one of the best moderators.
Alongside the themes of tech dystopia are the themes of family - especially immigrant family - life. The one that stuck with me the most was how the novel tackles the concept of utang na loob towards one’s family, especially one’s parents. Girlie’s relationship with her mother is fraught, mostly because she blames her mother’s poor decision-making leading to them losing the family home in Milpitas during the 2008 financial crisis. On top of this, there is lingering resentment towards the expectation that Girlie alter the course of her entire life, just to keep her family, and especially her mother, afloat. The moments when Girlie lets her resentment show are someone of the sharpest indictments of utang na loob I’ve read about in a while, and they speak to me very personally.
But while the novel handles these ideas quite well, I do find myself wishing that the romance hadn’t interfered so much with the aforementioned themes, especially towards the end. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a romance in a novel like this (not least because it’s a well-executed slow burn of the kind I personally enjoy), I found that the focus on it in the novel’s ending reduced the power of the narrative’s earlier concerns. While a conclusive ending isn’t necessary, I would have appreciated a more sustained focus on the issues of tech labor, immigration, and family that were a core of most of the novel.
Overall, this is a very different novel from America is Not the Heart, but still a delightful read regardless. Girlie is a very fun character to read about, as well as an engaging narrator, with the writing style giving her a personality that some readers may find themselves relating to deeply. However, while the romance is pretty good, I do wish that it had not been quite so prominent towards the end, when tackling the themes of Big Tech’s failings and its effects on people like Girlie would have been a more interesting - and more timely - focus.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.