Reviews and Comments

This year, I decided to start re-reading David Graeber's books. Bullshit Jobs was the perfect one to begin. The first time I read it, I was in a BS role. I was getting paid too much for a job that used to take me less than 10 hr per week to perform. The real performance for me was to be in the office, trying to act as if I were doing more. I did not understand what was going on. It was my first "white collar role", in a really small business, and I was earning more than members of my family who were working in professional blue-collar roles that contributed more to society than mine. That dissonance quite destroyed me. Apart from that, knowing that I needed to perform daily to not lose the job, among the fear of losing it in the middle of a recession and just after the pandemic, made me hate to do what I was doing. I started to study short courses while working. I ended with 5 or 6 short courses done before my first year. I tried to read, but it was impossible. I watched Netflix. I ate while looking at the bright screen of my laptop. Finally, I quit. I could not continue with that. And I felt like shit because, folks, they were paying me really well by that time.

Anyway, after that, I have met more people with similar situations to mine. I have also met people who truly believe their BS job is important and that it is doing something relevant. Also, I have met some libertarians and neoliberals who truly truly believe that essential roles are not as essential as their roles (when they work in crypto, AI or fake altruistic stuff). Bullshit.

Re-reading this book, I focused more on the idea of "value" and how we describe and accept whether something is valuable to society. How can one of those "bros" not see that, in reality, society does not need them? How do they see the world to believe in their bs?

I still have questions to answer, but Graeber made me realise (again) quite a few things.

Just WOW. I knew what this manifesto was about but I had never read it before. I think what is most striking for me is that Valerie uses a language we are used to, but changing the gender of the sender and the receiver. Let me explain my point, as much as we criticise misogynist or incel discourses, we also have normalised that language, the one that is used from men to women, the one that positions (naturally) men over women. However, Valerie takes many of those discourses and turns them up side down. Gender determinism, essentialisms, gender roles and their implications in the world... As if establishing that the system of dominance is (or should be) from women to men. When turning it over, it is much more evident to see how those narratives are socially constructed, both in Valerie's ("anti-men") sense and in the sense we are used to (the misogynist and patriarchal sense).

If this manifesto is considered so alarming, it is because we are not used to seeing this language used against men instead of women.