Kafka, in color

Is there anything so pathetic as being the fastest stenographer?

I could see Franz Kafka with a smile on his face because of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/microsoft-excel-world-championships.html

This corporate sponsored, corporate benefitting, corporate cosplay, fake fun is 21st Century Kafka. They’re not pushing paper. They’re using computers to input data. The data itself had to be dummy text for this event, but isn’t the real Excel data just dummy copy too? Don’t get me wrong, I won’t blame someone for needing a job (even if they have to work for Microsoft or use a Microsoft product).

But the false consciousness jubilation, surely aided by the cameras eyeing them and the fake adulation of the crowd, is something to behold. If you’ve got a shit job, just admit it; better than having no income. But when bosses convince you that you’ve got a great job, but pay you shit, and constantly order you to smile, it’s cognitive dissonance, as studied assiduously by Leon Festinger. And it’s emotional labor, pretending to feel a way your mind and body are telling you are not authentic, which has been linked to disease, according to Susan Cain in her book Quiet.

At least Lucy and Ethel were in on the joke:

The overlords are probably sneering and cackling, tossing out a few bucks to over-eager workers willing to run the rat maze, unintentionally making office work seem fun.