I do feel this as a societal pressure at this point. I'm not good at marketing myself and when I find out everybody and their brother have a website for their work portfolio or X amount of social media followers, I wonder if I need to.
All I am interested in at this point is being satisfied with contributions I've made to society, not hating my work and managing to save enough to not be destitute if I make it to retirement age. Would be nice to travel -- but if I have to engage in making videos, upkeep of an online presence, feeling gross about selling stuff people don't need, I do not see how I could do that. I'm not passionate about any of that, it sound like too much work for to little return.
Instead I.... checks notes.... volunteer? Those causes are the ones I am passionate about.
Lately I've been feeling like I need to change how I feel about it and figure out a way to cash in. Is that peer pressure (subtle and unintentional) or reality of living in a society that is Capitalism on steroids?
I'm going to have to disagree with you here, Noah, because NeoLiberalism needs to Go Away, now and forevermore.
That doesn't mean end Affirmative Action, because that predates NeoLibs and was designed to, and still is meant to, level the playing field between Straight White Christian Males and everybody else who lack the privilege that's so deeply a part of Western culture that most SWCM don't even know it's there, and a lot of them refuse to acknowledge that it even exists!
I do feel this as a societal pressure at this point. I'm not good at marketing myself and when I find out everybody and their brother have a website for their work portfolio or X amount of social media followers, I wonder if I need to.
All I am interested in at this point is being satisfied with contributions I've made to society, not hating my work and managing to save enough to not be destitute if I make it to retirement age. Would be nice to travel -- but if I have to engage in making videos, upkeep of an online presence, feeling gross about selling stuff people don't need, I do not see how I could do that. I'm not passionate about any of that, it sound like too much work for to little return.
Instead I.... checks notes.... volunteer? Those causes are the ones I am passionate about.
Lately I've been feeling like I need to change how I feel about it and figure out a way to cash in. Is that peer pressure (subtle and unintentional) or reality of living in a society that is Capitalism on steroids?
I'm going to have to disagree with you here, Noah, because NeoLiberalism needs to Go Away, now and forevermore.
That doesn't mean end Affirmative Action, because that predates NeoLibs and was designed to, and still is meant to, level the playing field between Straight White Christian Males and everybody else who lack the privilege that's so deeply a part of Western culture that most SWCM don't even know it's there, and a lot of them refuse to acknowledge that it even exists!
Neoliberalism is bad, but the point here is that identity politics of resistance are not neoliberal.
Fair—I agree with that, completely.