All the way back in 2023, when Joe Biden was president and brat girl summer was but a lime green twinkle in our eye, I became the first person I knew to get laid off because of AI. As an Aquarius rising, I have long been burdened with being ahead of my time.
I worked at a small animation startup, backed by the usual VC suspects, where we partnered with celebrities and influencers to create animated characters that lived online. There was a sassy baby doll, a dog who could cook, a Monster High-inspired tween.
Because you can do almost anything for money in America, my job was to run and grow the social accounts of these characters. Once we got enough followers, we’d go out to toy companies and publishing houses and say, “Look at this popular thing we made. Do you want to turn it into a stuffed animal or a children’s book?” Sometimes they said yes. Turns out there’s a ton of cash in kids stuff.
I thought it was a decent model that was showing early signs of success, but in the background, the AI winds were gathering. Not long after we invited an AI notetaker to our meetings, the storm made impact — they fired half of the staff in one day.
“We’re pivoting,” they told us. “We’re becoming an AI studio.”
That was two years ago. I still don’t have a full-time job.
This is not for lack of trying, which anyone who’s even glanced at the job numbers can tell you. Almost a million people laid off this year. Hiring at its slowest rate since 2009. The long-term unemployment rate — the portion of the unemployed who have been searching for more than 27 weeks — has hit 26 percent.
I know some people keep a spreadsheet of all the jobs they’ve applied to, but I lost count somewhere after 70. Besides, the only jobs that matter are the ones you hear back from, and I can count those on one hand.
There was the creative agency that strung me along for seven interviews and a presentation (assigned on Christmas Eve), only to end three months after our first conversation. There was the national magazine looking for an overnight news editor who could immediately tell I’d forgotten everything I’d learned in a newsroom since last working in one more than a decade ago.
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And a couple of weeks ago, there was the AI woman.
She was calling about some amorphous content strategist job I found on LinkedIn during one of my EasyApply sessions, where you upload a resume, go down the list, and click “Apply.” It’s not totally brainless — sometimes they still ask you a few questions, like if you’re a veteran or if you need a work visa. And other times they ask you trick questions to make sure you read the job description. I always close out of those in an incandescent rage. Call me old fashioned, but I’m not answering any fucking riddles until after the first paycheck.
When the AI woman called, I knew she was a robot as soon as I picked up. She was stilted and faraway. I figured it was a pre-screening. The job was through a consulting company that places candidates at evil tech corporations. I’m sure they get lots of applicants.
She asked my name and gave me some vague information about the role. And then she kept talking, launching into a series of questions. Suddenly I was in an interview.
I asked her to pause when I realized what was happening. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet. What was this role again? Why don’t I keep a spreadsheet?
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Fishing through my inbox for the application, I reminded myself she’s just a robot. I talk to a robot, Alexa, every day, when she sets a timer for my eggs. I’m very mean to her, and I hate when she tries to be cute. I can’t wait to fistfight her when she gains consciousness.
The interview took 30 minutes. We got into the meat of my previous roles and my philosophies on building audiences. She had no feedback, of course. You realize how much work a soft “yeah” does during a conversation when you don’t hear a single one.
Ultimately, I thought I did fine and immediately told all my friends about the latest cruel hurdle on my quest to find a job. I told TikTok, too, asking them if it was a scam. No, one commenter confirmed. Their job was programming one of these robots.
“The screening questions are designed to score you as a candidate…based on the requirements in the job description,” they wrote. “If you pass a certain threshold, you’re passed to a recruiter.”
The next day, the robot called back. I figured I must have done well. But instead, she asked my name again. And then told me about the role. Then she began the interview.
I stopped her, explaining we just did this a day ago. Her answer was…robotic. “There seems to be a mistake. I’ll let the team know. Goodbye.”
The day after, roiling in the cosmic joke of it all, I called the consulting company in the hopes of speaking to a person. Their LinkedIn said something about being a business with a human touch. Obviously, no one picked up.
“I think your computer got confused,” I pleaded into the void of their voicemail box. “I wanted to make sure you got the answers you needed.” I still haven’t heard back.
“It’s so creepy,” one of my friends said.
“I know,” I told her. “But at least I got a call.”
TWO YEARS IS A LONG TIME to do anything, much less endure a quiet unemployment. The idle mind wanders into all sorts of dark hallways.
There’s brighter hallways, too. The ones that make you wonder if it’s time to try something new.
I’ve tried a lot of things, and thought about trying a lot of things. I’ve researched phlebotomy certification, HVAC school, how much electricians make in Chicago. I started a short-form YouTube horror channel and Googled “how to sell feet pix.”
I’ve dabbled in watercolor and made jewelry. I’ve consulted an Etsy witch and become quasi-dependent on a YouTube psychic named Linda G.
I’ve volunteered for the elderly and delivered groceries to their apartments, chatting at their thresholds about Jesus and the electric bills. I’ve gotten really into house music, dusting off the mixer I got for my boyfriend three birthdays ago. I did a sick transition of the Verve into Azealia Banks.
I’ve gone online — all day, everyday — doing irreparable damage to my dopamine reserves. I’ve opened my email thousands of times an hour. I’ve mainlined Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter in an endless loop, because I like my news fast, furious, and filled with misinformation.
Recently, I did get a part-time seasonal position at a makeup store. For 10 hours a week, I do the cash register and offer store credit card to people who shouldn’t get store credit cards. If we sign up enough credit cards by the end of the month, we get to wear jeans for a day. If I sign up more than the other employees, I get a 30-minute lunch break.
I’ve resorted to TikTok. Not only watching them, but making them. I get a lot of rage out by yelling about the administration. I’ve acquired 27,000 followers doing this and consider becoming an influencer on a weekly basis. “I should really go for it,” I tell myself. “Sell vitamins that don’t work and make a content calendar.”
I tried that for a little while but gave up.
Above all, that’s the thing I’ve tried the most during these two years: giving up. It’s sort of a new thing for me, but I’ve had a lot of practice now.
I’ve given up over and over and over. On my youth, on the 2010s, on being a size four again. On the media industry and the career that once lit me up. We unstarred MTV, my former employer, from our favorite channels on the TV guide and it felt personal.
I was a writer and editor there, and I couldn’t believe I got paid for it. I went on to keep getting paid for it at other places, too. When I got recruited into tech, it was because the CEO, a college kid at the time, really liked my writing.
Writing has been a part of every job I’ve ever had, but no one seems to want it anymore. One of the darker hallways suggests maybe no one ever did. Maybe it was always luck.
On top of all that, now the robots are here. And they’re not even cool. We’re not meeting them in the chrome-colored utopia we dreamed of. They’re not cute, helpful sidekicks bleep-blooping toward us down the hallway, fixing our tie on our way out the door. Instead, they’re harbingers of a soulless dystopia architected by the jaundiced men who bought the presidency. They’re death doulas for the middle class.
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Sure, they’re helping us crank out cover letters that go unanswered and diagnosing our ailments without a doctor’s bill, but they’re also warping our already tenuous grip on reality. In some cases, fatally. With each additional billion investors pump into their promise, where does it leave the rest of us? What do we get for writing the words and taking the pictures that built their libraries, the foundation of their fortunes? So far, our only payment seems to be more videos of fake bunnies jumping on fake trampolines. More trash to add to our heaping pile of digital slop.
And so it’s becoming harder and harder to tell what that smell is — the end of your career, the country, the way things were, or all three. All you know is something’s rotting.
Photographs in Illustration
Ihar Ulashchyk/Adobe Stock; Adobe Stock
