But, I still am doing stuff. So if you don’t have motivation and may be suffering, but still want to do stuff please enjoy below!

I still do hobbies. I visit friends almost every day. I work on fulfilling projects for Ms. Anti Work. I attend a lot of therapy and mental health treatment. I go on walks. I make progress towards acceptance and my new normal. I call people I love. I remind myself what to be grateful for. I care for myself and my dogs and other responsibilities. I am still engaged in my local communities I was a part of when it was Matthew and I. And I still don’t feel any real joy.

If you could be a fly on the wall near me during this time, you would see me quietly listening to friends and sometimes responding, making phone calls, attending meetings with my team, occasionally smiling or making someone laugh, or asking them about their day. I still appear normal, but I am still suffering behind the scenes.

This has created an interesting problem for me because I am still doing things. I am still making choices. I am still moving forward in some direction. But almost none of the reasons I used to have for doing things are available to me right now. I don’t really have desires, wishes, hopes, or dreams. I don’t get an emotional or spiritual reward from completing something. I don’t finish a project and feel accomplished. I try a hobby knowing I probably won’t receive joy from it. I make progress towards a new normal that I cannot imagine and currently have no desire for. So if all of my actions provide me no joy or emotional or spiritual reward, what am I doing things in the name of right now? What comes after motivation?

I have reached a point where I have accepted this depression. This depression is a necessary suffering for me right now. That doesn’t mean I am intentionally sitting in more suffering than I need to. I have decided not to go on antidepressants because I have a different approach to this depression that may be of use to you. Maybe you do it with antidepressants or other coping mechanisms. Or maybe you don’t. Your choice is none of my business, I am just sharing with you my choice and potentially offering another way to handle this.

I am still suffering because this is a level of suffering I cannot fix. The only way to alleviate the source of this suffering would be past events changing. Matthew would have not made the horrific choices that he did out of chronic pain and mental health issues. Matthew would still be alive and we would have our normal life and relationship. That would be the only way to change this. I could take an SSRI. I could. It still wouldn’t take away this impending suffering. There is no outside external thing that can change this season of suffering I am in. So I want to face it and embrace it. Not in a fireworks-on-stage-Erika-Kirk way but in a profound and sober way.

Right now I am just in a season of necessary suffering. And maybe you are too.

I recently started reading Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. St. John of the Cross was a 16th Century Spanish Catholic mystic and poet. I am not done with it, but it’s already offered amazing insight into a spiritual path for me that I think can still apply to someone miserable at work or just something else in life. Other mystics and teachers have studied similar ideas as well like Eckhart Tolle. I am calling this out because I seem to get some immediate pushback when I bring up something remotely Christian. I am not the Christian ambassador, so I have no responsibilities in holding your negative reactions (nor power to do anything with your negative reactions) to said thing.

I have been in this space before but didn’t realize it until my current research. You may remember my infamous concussion I received in May of 2021. I hit my head after a few important projects were done at a job I overly identified with, obsessed over, and worshipped in an unrequited manner. This led me to complete misery that I was just pushing through via more work projects. I was two years into corporate out of college.

This concussion led me to not be able to work at the intense capacity I was used to. I couldn’t identify many emotions I was feeling. I was stuck. I spent most of the time healing in the darkness of my bedroom without screens, keeping up with work pings and deadlines. My barometer of what I should do in life, and therefore purpose, was ripped away from me. I couldn’t gauge a good day by how many work to-do’s I crossed off for the day. That’s all I knew prior. How productive I was gave me proof of how worthy, deserving, and lovable I could be. The hyper-responsibility and productivity was my ritual, purpose, and duty to participate in humanity.

The TLDR of how I got out of it was getting a Lazy Girl Job as my next job so that I could heal and redefine what my true purpose was when I stripped away the “work hard play hard” overstimulation and cortisol of a job. And then ultimately becoming Ms. Anti Work.

Now is another chapter and a bigger darkness than my concussion.

Everything I feel is darkness, suffering, and numbness. I sometimes feel yearning and anger. The closest thing I currently experience to joy is forgetting that Matthew died for a few moments. I still smile of course, but that behavior is more rooted in a social norm than an expression of self.

It’s hard for me to think deeply about anything other than my grief. It’s hard for me to talk about anything other than my grief. Becoming Ms. Anti Work allowed me to redefine my purpose to a life of contemplation, judgement, pattern recognition, and observations which I then provide to you all in entertaining formats online. Becoming Matthew’s future wife allowed me to find my purpose in his unconditional love for me, the rest I was able to experience because of that, and a life with someone forever.

Due to my current Dark Night of the Soul, I have lost these two above things. I cannot be Ms. Anti Work like I was before Matthew’s passing. I cannot contemplate work and labor observations at this time. And I cannot be Matthew’s wife and live our life together.

It makes me very silent. I feel like I am still in a waiting period or a lobby. I am sitting in a Beetlejuice lobby that is so eerie yet I am watching characters come in and out of my life continuing their journeys around me. It’s cold and dark but the people visiting me through a revolving door and living their life next to me for a bit provides me something to look at. Something to stare at vicariously for a moment. I no longer have any of the things that made me me. They were ripped away from me the moment he died.

But I still do things.

A few weeks after he died, I began to chose to do things. I noticed this recently because I suffer greatly from suicidal ideation and still do. Don’t worry, I am getting help for it and I will not do it. But in the help I am getting, I learned that suicide is about a gain of control. That knowledge is what helped me turn a corner. So instead of telling myself there is absolutely nothing I can control, I fight desperately hard to understand what I can control every moment that I can. That’s my criteria on the answer to “what things do I do?”. I do what I can control.

I’ve learned so far that I can’t control much, so my life is very simple right now. I can control if I smile or not in the car, but I can’t control what happens when I arrive at my destination. I can control if I choose to try a new hobby or not, but I can’t control if I will like it or not. Or if the drawing or knitted sweater will be good. In fact, I know I won’t like it and the end product will absolutely be ugly. But I just try the hobby because that’s what I can control.

This brings me back to the question I have been trying to answer: if all my actions are based on the small things I can control and all my actions provide me no joy or emotional or spiritual reward, what am I doing things in the name of right now?

Well, St. John of the Cross describes the actions during the Dark Night of the Soul as coming from a place of fidelity. I continue to say yes to what has been entrusted to me even when the feeling that originally made the yes easy has disappeared.

That is what comes after motivation for me right now.

I stay alive because my life was given to me prior to this tragedy, so therefore I must continue living. My choice to live is no longer dependent on the outcome of my desires, my previous values, my choices, etc. I live because I am still living and found loyalty in that. I just trust that one day in the future it will make sense and give grace to myself for not feeling any reward in living.

I work on Ms. Anti Work because this is a privilege, an outlet, a movement for others, and financial security for me prior to Matthew’s death. I try hobbies when I can’t talk or think because I need to trust myself that I don’t have to think or talk profound things in order to have a place here. I can be silent and internally still and still participate in something.

I am writing this Substack on a plane to film for a project I said yes to, prior to Matthew passing. I am still doing it because it was given to me so I must entrust and be loyal to that prior commitment. I trust that that project will give me another step into my new normal one day. I don’t need to feel excited about it for it to still be something worth doing.

I do things without desires, wishes, hopes, and dreams. It pushes me to practice loyalty, duty, and ultimate patience. In a weird way I find a simplicity and profoundness in no longer being clouded by what I do for desire, joy, accomplishment, etc. It’s simple. I no longer have to do things out of motivation, I just stay doing things out of the pure essence of will. And through my immense suicidal ideation and death of the love of my life, I have cultivated a very strong will to live even though I am no longer afraid of dying.

I no longer move because of the outcome. I move because I have chosen what is good, even when I cannot presently desire it. My life remains worthy of stewardship, instead of a timeline to cross off goals I want to manifest in life.

Also, Matthew cannot move anymore. So if there are times I can’t move for myself, I move for him. He cannot do anything, so therefore I can do at least something for him.

This has made me think differently about motivation in general, especially when it comes to work. We assume the solution to hating your job is somehow finding a way to want to do it. Find your passion, get motivated, set goals, make a vision board, find a new job that excites you, take some PTO and come back refreshed. We are constantly trying to restore the desire so that we can continue the action.

But maybe you hate your job because the task right now isn’t to love your job. Maybe you just move through your job in the darkness and peel back every layer of what you desire to learn that you are not getting it from that job. Maybe you have to find a different reason to work because it’s not going to be from accomplishments, pleasure, or productivity. Maybe you’re just in a waiting room of your life and every once in a while just need to make a choice or step out of sheer will.

Depression at your job isn’t actually a forever bad thing. It can be feedback that tells us our job sucks. The typical reaction is to go on antidepressants to make your job feel less bad and keep working at that job. And/or gaslight yourself every day that it’s not bad and then develop a chronic illness in the future. And/or be open about how much you hate your job while doing it. I have also done some of this in the past, so no judgement.

You can do all of that. You may even be doing that at this moment. But just know you are doing the average reaction which will produce average results. Most people hate their job because of this. You are doing what most people are doing.

Why work hard at a job you hate to afford health insurance to take an SSRI to forget why you hate your job so that you can work hard? Maybe you’re supposed to be suffering.

America is very into happiness. We even hear each other say “whatever makes you happy.” What about “whatever makes you neutral”? Or whatever makes you choose to stay alive? Or whatever makes you stay loyal to what you were entrusted with?

I am at such a deep despair that there are no PTO days that would take this away. That’s a huge frustration I feel with some people in my life. They really want me to take a trip, be on a beach, etc. If I did that, I would just spend $3K to sit on a beach in a bikini in the same internal state. Some are worried I am diving into work to avoid my grief. All I do is think about my grief whether I work or not, so I might as well complete the projects and obligations I said yes to prior to Matthew dying. I choose to stay loyal to that. I choose to take another step forward to that. Because the other option is just not doing those obligations but still grieving.

I think that’s the part of the Dark Night of the Soul that is currently the most profound to me. There are seasons where happiness cannot be the barometer for whether you are making the right choice because happiness isn’t available to you. Motivation isn’t available either. Maybe even purpose isn’t available in a form you recognize.

But our will is still there.

One day I will find my new normal. If you’re depressed at your job, or life, you’ll find your new normal again too. Right now, finding the new normal isn’t the immediate task. There’s no need for me to worry about that at the moment.

For now, I can be in the waiting room. I can take care of what has been entrusted to me. I can make the choices that are still mine to make. I can move without needing the movement to immediately take me somewhere I want to go.

I don’t have motivation for that.

I have fidelity.

Without realizing it, I rebuilt the same conditions of corporate America I'd just escaped. I noticed that we fixate on the aesthetics of running a business and perform productivity, and that performance quietly recreates the environment we left.

Alas, I want to share a story of my first year of being solo to paint the picture of what this can look like and how to stop this subconscious repeating ASAP.

I Left Corporate Just to Recreate Corporate

In my first year away from corporate figuring out how to do this solo thing, I found myself still struggling for that same performative control. The first signal was starting to feel very lazy for not having a weekly meeting to report to someone on what I was doing. I remember that anxiety creeping up in the first few months. I told myself that since I don’t have the guardrails of a boss checking in on me, I won’t stay focused and will eventually fail.

Then, there was the systems creation obsession. YouTube tutorials and business advice content became a new obsession where I taught myself so many SOPs and software platforms. Guilt crept in at this stage because I would only learn about these systems, at most maybe start a free trial and click around, but never actually set them up. The real reason I did not need to set these systems up is because I was a new business. I didn’t need these systems yet. I was so new, I didn’t even know what I needed.

The next stage was bad hiring decisions. In my naivety of not knowing what each function of my business would take, I thought the best way to handle this would be to hire it out to experts. I learned very quickly that this is a dumb choice because I didn’t even know what operations or branding should look like for my business, so how could I hire at this stage? I wouldn’t even know what good work should look like.

These are a few embarrassing and dumb decisions I made early and often. When I reflect on the why behind these decisions it was because I only understood work and business in a corporate setting. I used that environment as my north star subconsciously even though I consciously knew that environment wasn’t for me. Our brains are very interesting. And I am always so grateful for the ability to have the agency and time to reflect on my work decisions to this level because I work for myself.

The Real Advantage of Independent Work Is Leverage

Working independently used to be a lot harder compared to the last few years. Personal brands aren’t a new development, but the low barrier to entry we see in today’s media landscape makes this avenue much easier to start.

I do think creator businesses will be the future. Goldman Sachs even agrees, with a new forecast shown by that shows the explosive market projections of this industry.

I don’t think there needs to be any overcomplication about building a personal brand for the first couple of years at least. The biggest overcomplications I see when starting a personal brand are:

1. Overwhelm choosing what niche to create content in

2. Thinking every new topic or niche has to be a separate brand

This isn’t 2015 curated Instagram anymore. You should just spend about 100 videos yapping about hot takes, observations, things that interest you, etc. and see what sticks and what doesn’t. If you have a high paying skill or product already picked out to sell, just yap a lot about that skill and keep reiterating on the failures and successes.

With continuously yapping and iterating it led me into developing skills, services, and products to sell. The biggest priority in my career and business now is my leverage. Here’s how I map out my current leverage:

• audience

• distribution

• intellectual property

• automation

• systems

• contractors and specialists when needed

Going back to the first section’s point, none of this involves weekly stand ups, yearly performance reviews, or 12 teams to manage with too many middle managers. Everything that is truly impressive or worth chasing is the leverage I have as a solo worker. There is no point in chasing the old ways to flex with huge teams and a loaded calendar.

TLDR: The old way to work rewarded organizational scale, but the new way to work on the internet rewards leverage.

What I Actually Needed When I Went Independent

I remembered how much I had to fight for financial hires.

At one point I offered equity to a really bad hire to become CFO. Such a bad idea. In my defense, I was so overwhelmed with managing multiple revenue streams and the looming fear that society gives us about the IRS coming in at any moment and performing an audit.

Again, just another example of feeling I needed an expensive payroll to prove I was a successful business that knew what it was doing.

But I do want to pass along my own bad experience and learned wisdom, so that you don’t have to go through this too. After a lot of understanding and reflecting on my choices around managing my solo finances, I learned it is more about visibility and system. I don’t really need a weekly meeting with an expensive CFO. Leave that for the corporate overlords.

Instead I just needed to understand what money I made, what was safe to spend, and what should be saved. Using Relay, a business banking and money management platform, helped me create separate accounts for operating expenses, taxes, contractor payments, savings/profit, and travel/content production.

Let me share a visual demonstration of what the dashboard looks like:

Having this visual separation of cash flow reduced my constant looming hum of stress when needing to be creative and the face of the brand. Now that things are separated, it is also easier to make decisions. I love being able to just get in, make the call, and get out because it reduces my cognitive overload. With less cognitive overload I make fewer bad decisions. There’s less of this desire to hail mary it and recklessly invest in something that may not make sense. Or the other way, where sometimes I will say no because a price tag scares me but in reality my business can afford it and would benefit from it.

Relay is now my CFO because it’s the financial visibility I need to drive profitability. The gratitude I have to be solo and lean really helps me out in the long run as well.

The Future of Business Is Leaner Than People Think

With solo work I can achieve my goals quicker as I no longer have the red tape and slow corporate ladders to climb. I can do whatever I want for the quarter because it’s up to me and that’s it. This is why we are seeing the exodus from corporate America that we are.

The access to new tools becomes my new departments. With my example with Relay, this money management tool becomes the finance department.

So begone the giant org chart because we don’t need that many cooks in the kitchen anymore to build something that gives us greatness and freedom.

The new status symbol is not building the corporation you left out of subconscious, self-sabotaging patterns. The new thing to chase is owning profitable systems that do not consume your life.

TRY RELAY WITH ME

If you are building an independent business, one of the most important things you can have is clarity over your cash flow and operations. Relay helped me create that clarity without overcomplicating my business!

(This free article was sponsored by Relay Financial).

In case you missed it, the viral NYC Roommate TikTok drama revolves around a 30-part series posted by creator EK (@Cozy Grocery) about being unexpectedly “evicted” from her Bushwick sublet. The situation quickly became a cautionary tale about oversharing online after her former roommate, Marlyn, stepped forward with competing accounts of the living situation. The creator claimed she was blindsided, struggled with housing insecurity, and started a GoFundMe to cover living costs. The primary leaseholder released videos indicating the sublease had always been intended to end, and that the creator’s inability to earn enough to qualify for a permanent lease was the actual issue. Viewers and pop culture commentators debated the situation heavily, and most ultimately sided with the leaseholder.

@cozygroceryoh hi, just wanted to make it clear i take full ownership of the consequences of my oversharing on social media, and i will not repeat this mistake again. i could've handled certain things differently, and instead i allowed extreme stress and survival mode to take the driver's seat; that's 100% on me. to my community + friends specifically: you guys mean the world to me, and i'm so sorry for how out of control this became. this isnt the energy i want to bring to you, and i'm so grateful for your support this entire year, not just this last month. you have no idea how excited i am that i have a lease now and get to become a part of the city for real 😭 part of that will be financial contributions once i'm finally settled, but the other part will be active participation in both the neighborhood i get to live in and the city as a whole. this isn’t something i'm doing to placate social media; so many people have supported me this last year, and i've always wanted to be able to give back. now that i finally have stable housing, i'm honored i get to do that. i hate that this long chapter of my life had such an explosive ending, but i promise the lessons i've learned will not go to waste. i'll see you soon 🖤

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I notice that everyone’s picking a side, but nobody’s asking the right question. This series is actually a spiritual story wearing a financial/political costume. I have often found that money problems and the spiritual condition are the same problem, they’re just never viewed that way in our mainstream secular world. I’ve lived both sides of this, as a 9-to-5er and as someone who found another way to work, and I can tell you the version of me who couldn’t master her material world was also the version who couldn’t access real love, real honesty, or real peace.

There’s a concept I always bring myself back called Good Householder, a spiritual archetype found across religions for the person who masters both the practical and spiritual sides of life instead of running from one to chase the other. So, in this post we’ll actually dig into:

• What Good Householder means

• How roommate girl could use it to get herself out of this mess

• Why it’s a much harder status to reach as a 9-to-5er than as someone who works for themselves.

My own side tangent (with tea): I think part of why this story is so hot is its timing. It’s NYC, right when Mayor Mamdani wants to pass rent limits. A 30-part series about a young woman facing a housing crisis is perfect for shifting the culture, homelessness isn’t just the person suffering on the street, it’s a young Gen Z/millennial woman like you, and that’s why you need to fight the good fight now.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some partnership between her and Mamdani surfaces down the line, or if his team had a hand in shaping the series. I’ve been offered collaborations from Mamdani and his associates myself, where I wouldn’t have had to disclose it as paid, since political and investment money isn’t regulated by the FTC. Influencers aren’t legally required to say a post is sponsored. I think that’s crazy, but I’m just the messenger, I don’t have the power to change FTC regulations for political campaigns. This is just an alleged hunch I have from my own opportunities offered to me BTS in the last 9 months.

Also, the leaseholder Maryln gives influencer trained presentation skills on camera when explaining her situation. If she just a regular girl without a following, she’d be way less composed, defensive, etc… It just feels off and a little staged to me.

Anyways, back to my hunch that her issue is more spiritual than financial….

Enlightenment Isn't Just for Monks

This whole public meltdown reminds me of the concept of Good Householder. It’s a spiritual concept held across many different religions, each with its own route to get there, but the most holistic definition that encapsulates all of them is: an individual who masters both the spiritual and practical realities of daily life. Rather than withdrawing from society to pursue inner peace, a good householder integrates discipline, mindfulness, and service into their everyday duties, balancing family, work, and community.

Good Householder isn’t commonly talked about when discussing spirituality. Recluses, monks, and people who’ve committed to a life of poverty are typically the only archetypes we associate with spiritual enlightenment. But there’s actually another way, and that’s Good Householder status.

In short, you achieve Good Householder by reaching a point with your gifts for the world where you can make enough money to support your actual destined lifestyle. Once that financial security is achieved, you can make exponential impact on your community: being fully present with others, financially supporting others, being a present parent, having the extra time to volunteer. This tracks closely with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once each level of the pyramid is fulfilled, you reach self-actualization. In his later work, Maslow added a sixth, even higher tier called self-transcendence, looking beyond the ego to serve a higher goal, altruism, or spiritual awakening. That sixth tier is what I’m referring to as Good Householder.

Here’s why this relates to work: the 9-5 job structure limits your earning potential and where you can even live, creating an invisible ceiling on the journey to Good Householder. Staying financially independent through your own skills and gifts becomes much harder, and nobody calls this what it is: a spiritual crisis. I do. 9-5ers get pushed through the rat race chasing an illusion of financial independence that most never actually reach, and most don’t even know it. Unable to truly master the material world or comfortably support themselves and their families, they can’t become self-actualized, can’t become Good Householders for their community. I’d argue this is why third spaces have disappeared. Why women are in the workplace more than ever but still unhappy. Why people are buying houses and starting families later. Why we’re in a loneliness epidemic. No one’s reaching Good Householder status to become an altruistic, selfless steward of their community and family.

If you want to be spiritually fulfilled, in whatever way that looks like for your own religion or practice, and you’re not surrendering all material things to become a monk or nun, then my argument is you have to become a Good Householder. Christian monks, nuns, and priests, along with Buddhist monks, represent the other side of that coin. Most Christian priests take a vow of poverty, surrendering the ability to own land or assets, with income coming from their order and any money earned going back to the community rather than their own pocket. Buddhist monks operate similarly: no personal property, everything held by the monastery, surviving entirely on daily donations from the lay community.

The Good Householder Concept

While Christianity and Buddhism appear to be worlds apart, they do share a common archetype at the heart of their communities: the householder. We typically only view the most spiritually ascended person as a monk or a recluse. Instead there is a concept called Good Householder which addresses being real person who manages a household, handles money, and navigates the practical material world while maintaining their spiritual integrity.

The Christian Perspective

In the biblical sense, you aren’t an owner, but a steward. Your income, influence, and your talents are essentially on loan from God, and it’s your job to manage those assets with excellence.

This includes:

• Directing your wealth and resources toward serving others instead of just hoarding them.

• Owning the responsibility for the spiritual and moral health of your household.

• Cultivating a home of hospitality and order where the door is always open and the vibe is respectful.

The Buddhist Perspective

Buddhism clearly distinguishes between recluses and laypeople, but the Buddha made it clear that spiritual enlightenment isn’t reserved for just monks. In the Dighajanu Sutta, he outlined specific material and spiritual benchmarks for achieving success as a householder.

For material mastery in this life:

• Putting in the work to earn an honest living through your skills.

• Being a good steward of what you’ve earned rather than being reckless with it.

• Surrounding yourself with a community of people who have their act together.

• Living within your means and avoiding both stinginess and mindless spending.

For spiritual growth beyond the material:

• Developing deep conviction in your spiritual path.

• Committing to a disciplined and ethical way of living.

• Practicing altruism by giving generously to the community.

• Seeking actual wisdom through understanding rather than blind adherence.

Where the Paths Converge

Both of these traditions treat being a householder as a sign of spiritual maturity, not a “lesser” version of enlightenment compared to monks. Jesus even used the householder as a metaphor for a wise teacher who can draw from a wealth of experience.

The takeaway is that how you handle your practical duties and your material home is the ultimate reflection of your spiritual condition. And vice versa.

As a disclaimer: obviously the summary of both religions input on Good Householder is extremely broad. There are so many sects of Christanity and Buddhisim which can change these definitions sometimes drastically. The point wasn’t to represent every religious persons exact views but rather to demonstrate that this concept of Good Householder does exist throughout many religious paths to show its validity.

It Takes One to Know One

The difference between my time as a 9-to-5er and as a self-employed person is that when I had a job, I had no understanding that my struggles in the material world were a direct result of my spiritual condition, and vice versa, that how I handled (or failed to handle) material problems had the power to affect my spiritual condition. I couldn’t find unconditional love until I found a way to unconditionally love myself enough to walk away from gross entry-level tech jobs and find another way to work that actually fulfilled my Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once free from that struggle, I became a more honest and loving version of myself, for myself and for others.

Personal anecdote aside, here’s why this matters: when we haven’t mastered our spiritual condition by better navigating the material world, we act like a worse version of ourselves. I view the NYC apartment girl as an immature, dishonest baby. It takes one to know one. Every time I’ve been a wallowing baby about business stress or financial responsibilities, it’s because my spiritual condition is a mess and I need to fix my material problems too. I’ll blame other people or circumstances I can’t control for my own suffering, completely bypassing what’s actually in my control and fixable.

How She Gets Out of This

For NYC roommate girl, she can fix her situation quickly. Short-term subletting is stressful enough on its own, but she’s also pursuing an unstable business path, being a full-time artist in one of the most competitive cities in the world, which means her tolerance for other BS is already razor thin. She’s continuously putting herself in short-term living situations that add to the instability she’s already drowning in. By her own admission, her creative business isn’t paying well yet. So the material problem she needs to master is finding a more permanent, affordable living situation. And spiritually, she needs to uncover what this instability is actually giving her. Is it a pattern she keeps repeating to manage her fear of the unknown, one that then fuels self-destructive tendencies, like broadcasting her financial issues in a 30-part series for the public to judge?

She also needs to get real about whether NYC is the right move for her right now. New York isn’t the only place to make it as an artist. She could build her digital presence somewhere more affordable with better housing and still grow her sales. It’s hard to make good art when your housing is unstable, so the constant instability she’s putting herself through, even if she’s telling herself struggling in NYC is how you “make it”, might be exactly what’s keeping her from succeeding.

I don’t live in NYC as a creative because I don’t think the cost of living is worth the quality of life it buys you. I’d pay three times what I pay now in Colorado for the same size house, same story with health insurance, and so on. Would it be cool and sexy to say I’m a 29-year-old work commentator and writer living in NYC? Sure, there’s real social clout in that, and my brand does run on social clout. But I don’t want to spend 15K+ a month on regular expenses to maintain that lifestyle. I still go to New York a few times a year for work, so I spend the money to visit instead of spending far more to live there full time. That may change for me later in life, since I’ve lost my fiancé and the future as I knew it is shifting in ways I don’t fully understand yet.

Going digital also means you’re not strapped to the cost of living or the salary benchmarks of wherever you live. This is another issue I have with the 9-to-5 model: you’re capped by the salary ranges set by the consulting firms and biggest employers in your area. It’s a fake ceiling. Now that I sell products online, do brand partnerships, write a book, and run multiple revenue streams, I can earn what a New York creator earns without New York expenses. Moving away from NYC might feel like an impossible sacrifice to her right now, but there may be a spiritual tweak she needs to make: reframing what a “good” home or living situation actually needs to look like. Sacrifice is deeply spiritual, and the modern world, especially Gen Z and millennials, shies away from it hard. We’re sacrifice-averse, when in reality the sacrifice we’re avoiding might not even be a real sacrifice, it might be the exact thing required for financial and spiritual success. I’m very pro-sacrifice when it comes to my own spiritual and material issues.

Also, also: she could get a part-time job. I had a lazy girl job in tech while my business couldn’t yet sustain my full expenses, and it was a great way to buy some financial security while building something longer term. Constantly moving and apartment hunting is time-consuming and erodes the creative energy her income actually depends on. When you choose to generate your own income instead of having a boss, a set salary, and PTO, everything in every part of your life becomes your business’s business. There’s no separation anymore between personal life and business, they affect each other constantly. I find that beautiful and fun, but when you’re struggling, it can spiral fast.

Spiritual Warfare and the Starving Artist Myth

Also, also: what she’s experiencing is spiritual warfare. That term gets overused and ruined by Christian neo-cons, but it’s real. For her, it shows up as being so consumed by her material problems that they become what she worships. She keeps making bad financial choices because she can’t see a path forward beyond the “starving artist” narrative, common in both the creative and spiritual worlds, where people believe repeated bad material decisions are somehow noble because Jesus or Buddha lived in poverty too. Taken further, this belief frames earning more than the bare minimum as pure greed. My belief is that God just wants us to master our material problems with Him and by His grace. When we have more than we need, He wants us to steward it ethically, responsibly, and with love. That’s it. There’s no extra spiritual credit for being a creative who only takes exactly what she needs from the market and therefore has no savings and no idea if she’ll make rent next month. It completely blocks the path to Good Householder. Spiritual psychosis can even set in, where we get stuck doing breathwork classes and ayahuasca retreats to try to fix our IRS debt. There’s a point where this kind of spiritual martyrdom, common among creative and spiritual people, stops being divinely inspired and becomes just another destructive false belief.

Why I'm Not Sorry for the Critique

I may come off harsh in this post. It may seem like I’m just putting her issues on blast and treating her like a whiny baby. TBH, she kind of is being one. But my greater point is to use that viral moment to explain this esoteric way I live that’s hard to put into words but might be useful for your own financial and spiritual pursuits. I view my “work” as a human as balancing my material and spiritual needs. I don’t view my life’s work as “being an influencer named Ms. Anti Work.” Corporate teaches you your most important work is being an accountant for a B2B SaaS company powered by AI. Wrong. There are layers to our existence. (Hint: this is also why I titled my upcoming book You Are Not Your Job.)

Sometimes it’s easier to see ourselves in a viral moment or a famous person than to confront ourselves directly, radical honesty is hard. And since she’s putting herself on blast in a 30-part series, I view this as fair game. I would never take a private scenario from you, a follower or a friend in real life, and put it on blast here on my blog. But if she wants to play the game of fame and virality, the critique is fair game too. I learned this fast scaling Lazy Girl Jobs. I don’t get to reap all the benefits of the press coverage, interviews, and attention and then be a baby about it: “waaa, why doesn’t this other commentator agree with me,” “why is Kevin O’Leary so obsessed with my work ethic.” I know because I did it. Criticism is the risk that comes with the reward. I don’t get to have it my way, where everyone just oohs and ahhs over me. That’s insanity, and an attempt to control the general population, which is impossible.

The Work Underneath the Work

In practice, the work to fix one side or the other can look separate. Example: I’m being a whiny baby about a bad hire in my business, or frustrated I have to pay for a new window and that it’s “not fair.” To fix that, I might meditate. From the outside that looks nuts, meditating doesn’t fix the hire or the window. But it works, because I’m changing my spiritual condition to better approach the material problem. You can’t do this whenever you want at a 9-to-5. You can’t just walk away from your desk for an hour to meditate. You’d look crazy and eventually lose your job for it. I’m not an HR specialist, nor do I care to be one.

Same thing in reverse: if I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety, I’ll eventually realize it’s because my spiritual condition is off, I can no longer embody the faith required to operate at Good Householder. But the fix isn’t always more prayer or more spiritual practice. Sometimes the fix is paying down debt or handling a financial situation, and that’s what restores my faith.

So I view my “work” in life as mastering both the material and the spiritual, to my best ability, whenever I can. That’s the journey, the suffering, the contrast I want to take on. That is Good Householder. The other path is becoming a nun or a monk, and I’m not comfortable giving up my physical things. So here’s something to noodle on for yourself: are you built to take on Good Householder too? If so, what material things do you need to take on, fix, or walk away from? What spiritual practices could improve your spiritual condition? And how do the two realms blend together for you, in a way that helps you prioritize your everyday to-dos and goals?

But most importantly I remember saying “well I have never been through actual grief because I haven’t lost anyone significant in my life yet.”

My fiancé died the next week.

I will go over some small details because I know you are wondering what happened. This doesn’t offend me, by the way. I am just trying to stay careful with the details until the investigation is done.

I also just want to post things when I am ready for public discourse and articles to be written about it. Journalists are watching my content right now for more details for articles. It’s a lot.

Matthew was an amazing man in every way. He was confident, good looking, honest, charismatic, the life of the party, driven, etc... One day hopefully I can share a longer post on who he was and what he meant to me. In short, everything you love about my online persona is because of him.

He fell in love with my wit and courage wayyy before I knew I had it. And way before I started making content. He was obsessed with me in the best ways. He unconditionally loved me. It is so bittersweet to have a love that I know some people may never have in their life.

I hope you all are okay with me occasionally talking about him for a while. In my real life, I have such a huge support system and I am so thankful for it. At the same time, I try to rotate all of my support system people when it comes to talking about him. I know that people will move on much quicker than I will. Which is really scary and lonley to think about. For now, it’s really important for me to share about him. It’s the only way I can keep going.

This May 1st, Matthew would have been 13 years sober. Unfortunately there were a lot of objectively hard things on all fronts of his life that he had been battling for a couple of years. He was so strong for so long.

The week leading into Easter, his brain broke. I saw it. He couldn’t walk for a week. I’ll share more about that one day. In short, he was chronically in pain and had a hip replacement scheduled for July 8th. He was so close.

Then I never saw the real Matthew come back. The Matthew I knew and loved for 6 years left in late April when I found him overdosed on the floor. What followed was a very short but catastrophic sequence of events until his last day on June 4th.

He died under circumstances that are still under active investigation. I know some truths around all of this. Some things I will just never know.

The real Matthew would have not done what he did that morning of June 4th. It was such a tragic, catastrophic, violent, and public death. The drug-induced psychosis he was in did that. The real Matthew left in April.

After the shock of everything, I’ve come to peace with what I do and don’t know. What I know is that the real Matthew had already been gone for a while. He was suffering. And now he is no longer suffering. That is how I get through this.

So I am also posting this just to be honest with you all. Behind the scenes, from April until now, there has been some really serious stuff going on. I am royally traumatized but I will figure it out one day.

I do feel guilt about how I showed up online during this time frame including my failed course launch, my sponsored content, my Fortune conference appearance, and a CNN interview I filmed that’s coming out soon. I have been really emotionally wrecked for a couple of months and have just been hiding it and pushing through for Matthew and me. There was so much masking happening on camera. I feel some guilt and shame about that, and like I let you all down. And I am petrified that I will never be successful in the public eye again.

Because I am petrified to do this life without him.

I am now barely executing his estate with no will and failing every day at planning his funeral arrangements. And now that I do understand what it’s like to be grieving, I cannot fathom that people do this while in corporate America. This is ontological evil.

There is no number of bereavement days that would help me in this. I absolutely would’ve either already quit, been violent to someone in the workplace (I have never been in a physical altercation in my life), been very close to getting fired for something performance related, or I don’t know….committed a hate crime in the office out of retaliation or done something else that isn’t a “culture fit.” The list goes on….

I don’t know how all of you are behaving with decorum in the workplace during the grief of a loved one.

You all are very strong in a time and environment that has unnecessarily cruel expectations of you in grief.

I can’t even have a single finished thought without thinking of him.

The idea that laptop factory jobs are framed as our utmost priority and purpose in life is so unimaginably untrue.

Of course I always knew that. You know that, that’s why you’re hear. But I now know that in an even bigger way.

Matthew and I spent 6 years together, but really in laptop factory job years that was like 20. Because he met me when I was working remote during Covid lockdowns, so we were almost always together. He has worked for himself for 10 years so he always had ample time for me. Then I started working for myself and could be with him whenever I wanted. We spent closer to 24/7 together for 6 years. There weren’t any long work shifts keeping us apart.

I am so grateful for that. I cannot believe people lose their partners, parents, and other special loved ones while they can only see them on the weekends or a few hours a day.

If you ever wanted to take a risk on working in a different way, do it. Now.

Do it for me and Matthew.

I couldn’t imagine not having all that flexibility and time with him. I cannot imagine the possibility of that regret.

I thankfully do not have any regrets in his death. I showed up in every way I could for him, at any time of day. I was completely out of body from late April to June 4th. I subconsciously knew that death was always on the table. And I arranged my actions as such.

One day I will share more about this. It wasn’t a comforting time but a very profound period of my life.

I gave him my last words at least 3 times during this. I shared some of my last words to him on my recent Instagram post.

And that’s all thanks to not having a work schedule. If I had a regular job, I would have definitely been fired by now and even more screwed. So I want to thank you all in the most profound way possible for the flexibility I have today. So that I could have zero regrets in how I spent those last months of his life.

And that I can grieve on my timeline and not a work shift’s timeline through small cry breaks in a office bathroom or my car in the parking lot. I even sometimes have survivor’s guilt with that. How do I get to greive the loss of my future husband with dignity in my home and in sacred places on my schedule, and so many others don’t get to?

And there is literally no difference between you and me. I just had a Matthew that taught me how to believe in myself. Let him be that for you too.

I promise I will make this loss and tragedy worth it. For me, Matthew, and all of you. I promise I will find a way for all of this to make sense and impact us all to its fullest potential.

I will figure out how to be a 29-year-old widow one day. For now, I just focus on the next moment ahead of me.

I am committed to surviving. I have not yet been able to grapple with thriving without him.

One of my friends, the day it happened, told me: “Gabrielle, it’s just a tragedy. That’s all it is.” I think that saved my life. There were a few other things said by friends who visited me in those early days that were so profound I wrote them down in my journal.

I journal a lot. I am obsessedw ith remembering everything I am processing in the early stages of my grief. I think it’s because I go into prolonged periods of shock so I don’t want to forget anything.

I need to remember that there is nothing else I can do and that this is just a tragedy. I sometimes still get anxious worrying about whether he ate or how I can fix things. I still want to protect him. I miss every part of him. I worry that one day I will forget what his arms felt like when he’d hang on me.

He was the love of my life as I understood it.

And yes, I have a therapist, a ton of friends to call, spiritual programs, and church to get me through this. I promise I am not alone and am committed to getting through this.

One day I will learn how to get through this. It might just take a while. I appreciate the patience.

For now, enjoy this little vlog I made of us years back on my personal Instagram:

He always made sure I felt like I could do anything.

I encourage you to consider the implications of these connections and to engage with the content by sharing your thoughts. This is a deep dive into a complex topic that deserves further exploration!!

1. 00:00 Introduction to Reid Hoffman

2. 02:17 Navigating Epstein Files

3. 04:52 Business Collaborations Explained

4. 07:32 Insights from Email Exchanges

5. 13:30 Hoffman’s Background and Roles

Access the link to the video below. ⬇️

Read more

But if you take one thing away, understand this: associating LinkedIn only as a professional platform is propaganda through the use of euphemisms and framing. You can see it in their own tagline: “Connect professionals to boost productivity and success.” It seems innocent at first glance, but LinkedIn isn’t clear on how they were going to connect professionals and whose success and productivity it’s for. Today I’ll dive into how they really connect professionals and whose success and productivity this platform actually serves using this new investigation done by Fairlinked.

Here’s what you’re going to learn in this post:

Every time you visit LinkedIn on Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Arc, hidden code may be scanning your computer for installed software as well as sending the results back to LinkedIn’s servers. You did not consent to this, you did not receive a notification, nor was this mentioned in their privacy policy. If you’ve ever used a job search extension while quietly looking for a new role, LinkedIn may know and tie this data to your real name and your current employer. If you use a religious, political, or accessibility extension, LinkedIn may have that too. The scan covers 6,222 software products with a combined user base of 405 million people, and it’s growing by roughly 12 new extensions per day. LinkedIn is also feeding your data to third-party companies you’ve never heard of, including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm, through invisible tracking elements hidden off-screen on the page. Moreover, they built this system during the exact period when European regulators ordered them to open up to competition. So, instead of complying, LinkedIn expanded surveillance of the very tools the law was designed to protect. Crazy!

TLDR: My observations from last year around LinkedIn’s capability to surveil is no longer speculation. This is now documented in LinkedIn’s own source code, and you can verify it yourself. I’ll show you how.

But first, let me start with where I left off in December. Here are the posts if you wish to re-read:

Part 1: LinkedIn is a National Security Asset

Part 2: Reid Hoffman and Peter Theil Come from the Same Machine

In the above posts, I identified that LinkedIn has the capability to be a national security asset. I identified that Reid Hoffman was touched by the government long before he announced the official partnership between LinkedIn and the Department of Defense. I told you not to ignore Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, which requires us to consider Bill Gates and Microsoft’s partnerships, connections, and tech infrastructure. I told you about LinkedIn’s integration with Palantir. I told you Hoffman was someone to be critical about no matter how wide and jolly his smiles are.

My worldview, through my own pattern recognition, is that most of these tech players we are expected to praise and glaze are not bootstrapping their ideas. They have help, or they are intercepted by the government during their origin story and Hoffman is no exception. As I walked through with you lastt year, he and Peter Thiel are nearly the same age, attended Stanford at similar times, and their educations complemented each other. These two men are connected because Thiel learned how to build foolproof monopolies through his mimetic theory discipline, and Hoffman became the ethics guy who took classes with CIA-connected professors. These two men still have a relationship today. No matter how much are publicly distancing themselves as Hoffman panders to Democrats and Theil to Repbulicans. And Hoffman has correspondence with Epstein. Although, as I have mentioned prior, none of the declassified files are incriminating, his timeline of admitting that association isn’t consistent through his public statements, and the times he says he was with Epstein are not congruent across his stories. Where there are little lies, we cannot assume there are no big lies. If you have kids, I’m sure you can relate.

So last year I told you LinkedIn was a surveillance platform and now I have the receipts to show how that surveillance actually works; both in how it’s used on us domestically and what it enables at scale. A European association, called Fairlinked, published an investigation in early 2026 documenting how LinkedIn secretly scans your computer every time you visit the site. They’ve since filed legal proceedings under the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Their investigation includes a downloadable evidence pack, and every claim can be independently verified by opening LinkedIn’s own source code in your browser.

Here is a diagram I created with Claude, without the tech jargon, to summarize what I am about to walk you through:

One more thing before I get into the findings because I know a lot of you wonder about my position on these things as a public figure in the career space. LinkedIn is still the king of networking; so therefore, I choose to still use the platform today specifically for business purposes. Additionally, I have a business relationship with them. At the same time, I’m not afraid of the potential to lose that relationship over telling the truth. And if they do retaliate, that will just further prove my point.

Finally, let’s get into what Fairlinked found!

The Scan

Every time you visit linkedin.com on a Chrome-based browser (which also includes Edge, Brave, Arc, and Opera), LinkedIn serves you a JavaScript bundle containing hidden code that scans your computer for installed browser extensions.

Two detection systems run simultaneously. The first brute-forces a list of 6,222 known extensions by firing thousands of requests against your browser to check whether each one is installed. The second walks the entire structure of the webpage looking for traces of any extension activity, catching extensions that might not be on the list.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, there’s no consent dialogue nor informed consent.

The system was built to be invisible. It can wait until your browser is idle before executing, so you never see a performance hit. It can stagger the requests over time so they don’t show up as a suspicious burst in your network monitor. Failed checks are silently discarded with no errors or console warnings. And the results are encrypted before transmission, so even if you inspect the network request, you can’t read what was sent.

One important caveat: LinkedIn controls this system through internal feature flags on their A/B testing platform. This means the code is served to all Chrome-based visitors, but LinkedIn can gate who actually gets scanned. The fact that they’re A/B testing a surveillance system is its own kind of disturbing because it means they are actively experimenting with how to scan you more effectively.

What the Scan Reveals About You

The scan list entails an intentionally curated collection of browser extensions. It includes extensions that reveal some of the most sensitive categories of personal information that exist under law. Here are the buckets they are creating:

• Religious beliefs. Extensions like PordaAI, which blurs haram content, and Deen Shield, which blocks haram sites, are on the list. If the scan runs on you and you have one of these installed, LinkedIn receives that data tied to your session and can make the assumption that the user is Islamic.

• Political opinions. Extensions like “Anti-Zionist Tag,” “Anti-woke,” and “No more Musk” are on the list to gather political learnings about its users.

• Disability and neurodivergence. Extensions built for neurodivergent users, like “simplify,” are on the list. This is creepy to realize LinkedIn is gathering data that can make assumptions on who is neurodivergent or not.

• Job-seeking activity. This is the one that should make your stomach drop if you’re reading this on a work computer. 509 job search extensions are on the scan list. If you’ve been secretly looking for a new role while still at a current job, LinkedIn may have detected that. So the very platform where your current employer’s recruiters, HR team, and managers are active is gathering a list of who is looking for new jobs before having the ability to land a new role and alert their current employer.

Now here’s what makes this different from any other data breach you’ve read about. LinkedIn is not an anonymous forum like Reddit. It’s not even like Instagram, where you can shitpost once a year and still get value from the app. Your relationship with LinkedIn is different, as it only works if you feed it the truth, like your real name, current employer, actual job title, career goals, professional relationships. If you don’t keep that information current and honest, you can’t network, get recruited, nor use the platform as intended. That’s the deal you make when you sign up. Compare that to Instagram, where the most valuable thing you’re giving up is where you went last July for your cousin’s wedding. LinkedIn has everything someone would need to reverse engineer your economic opportunity, your earning potential, your next career move, and your livelihood. And that’s what makes it such a powerful asset as every data point the scan collects is attached to all of that.

The investigation confirms these extensions are hardcoded in LinkedIn’s production JavaScript. What it doesn’t independently prove is that LinkedIn is actively cross-referencing scan results with your profile data to build individual dossiers. But as Fairlinked points out, the aggregation is trivial as LinkedIn already has both data sets in the same system.

What the Scan Reveals About Your Company

This is now where it scales from just creepy to strategic.

Because LinkedIn knows where every user works, individual scan results can aggregate into profiles of entire organizations. Therefore, the technical capability is confirmed. Whether LinkedIn actively builds these organizational profiles is alleged by the investigation, not proven with internal documents. But the architecture makes this claim almost automatic.

If employees across your company have Salesforce extensions installed, LinkedIn can infer you’re a Salesforce customer. If 30% of your team is running job search extensions, LinkedIn can infer you have a retention problem. If some of your employees have security tools installed and others don’t, LinkedIn can map your company’s security posture. If political or religious extensions cluster among your workforce, LinkedIn has a read on your internal culture.

None of this requires any sophisticated analysis. It’s just extension data plus employer data and LinkedIn has both. And this doesn’t only affect you as it affects your employer too.

I can feel some of you already shifting to: who cares about my employer? And also….Ms. AntiWork, why do you all of the sudden care about employer safety?

Because private companies are an extension of the government. I’ve discussed this with you before, but the Department of Def - I mean War, sorry I can’t keep track - works directly with private companies, especially Fortune 500s. Most people have come to accept that, and many of you may even work on government contracts at your private companies and find it innovative. Great. But did you know that the work you do for the government through a private company cannot be accessed through FOIA requests by the public? Because the projects are owned by the private company, not the government. Why would the government want to route so much of their work through a structure that isn’t subject to public transparency? Makes you wonder….

Anyways, I digress. While I do not put employers’ interests over employees’ interests, I am still concerned with corporate espionage. Let’s get into how that works!

Corporate Espionage

Now, this is the part that moves from privacy violation into something that looks like competitive intelligence at scale.

LinkedIn scans for 209 sales and prospecting tools , including Apollo, Lusha, and ZoomInfo, that directly compete with LinkedIn’s own Sales Navigator product, which generates roughly a billion dollars a year in revenue. Huba-huba!

By detecting which users at which companies have competitor tools installed, LinkedIn can effectively compile the customer lists of thousands of software companies without asking or paying those companies or those companies knowing about it.

And this is no longer a theory or a hunch because Fairlinked states that LinkedIn has already sent enforcement threats to users of third-party tools, using data obtained through this covert scanning to identify its targets. The mechanism for how they identify these users is confirmed in the code. Just the scale at which they act on it is what the investigation alleges.

To put this in perspective: if an employee at any of these companies walked out with a USB drive containing a competitor’s customer list, they’d face criminal prosecution. LinkedIn does it to 6,222 companies simultaneously, continuously, and at scale. All Hail, our Democratic angel, Reid Hoffman!

Government Exposure

The scan doesn’t distinguish between a marketing manager at a startup and a cybersecurity analyst at a European defense ministry as the same code runs on both.

Government employees, military personnel, intelligence professionals, regulators, and elected officials all use LinkedIn with their real names and institutional affiliations. The scan code runs on all Chrome-based visitors, subject to whatever feature flags LinkedIn has enabled.

What this structurally exposes: the security tools (or lack thereof) that government employees use. Whether intelligence or military personnel are quietly job hunting. Technology procurement choices that may be sensitive or classified. And, in a particularly uncomfortable irony, the EU regulators responsible for enforcing the Digital Markets Act against LinkedIn are almost certainly on LinkedIn themselves and subject to this scanning.

This is a structural risk of the system’s design. The investigation does not document a specific case where LinkedIn exploited government employee data, but the exposure is inherent in the architecture. So LinkedIn could go exploit our own government or another nation’s government. Which goes back to my December claims: LinkedIn IS apart of our military-industrial complex.

Where the Data Goes

The scan results doesn’t stay within LinkedIn, as the system feeds data to at least 3 external services. This is all confirmed in the production code:

A hidden iframe, zero pixels wide, positioned off-screen, loads from HUMAN Security (formerly PerimeterX), an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm. It sets cookies on your browser without your knowledge.

Side note: American companies will use Israeli tech firms to bypass American regulations and laws. If a company wants to perform a cybersecurity task that would be considered illegal domestically in the US, there are Israeli partners that will perform the task on their behalf. I cannot share my source for this information to protect both my information gathering and the person who shared this.

Now pan out and think about how many tech companies are owned by, operated by, or in partnership with Israeli citizens or how many American citizens who run major monopolies hold dual citizenship with Israel, like Larry Fink at BlackRock and Larry Ellison at Oracle. This extends into social meda, traditional media companies, banking systems, our nations assets management and beyond.

I want to be precise about what I’m saying here: this is not a point about Jewish people, religion, or sovereignty. This is a critique of a specific cybersecurity pipeline between two nations and whether that pipeline serves the interests of regular Americans or not. The only reason I bring this up is because one of the third-party companies I mentioned above that LinkedIn is funneling your data to like HUMAN Security, formerly PerimeterX. And since, this firm is an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm, that detail matters in this context.

A separate fingerprinting script loads from a LinkedIn subdomain, passing your session cookie.

Google reCAPTCHA v3 Enterprise then executes silently on every page load.

Then, all of these integrations are controlled by feature flags within LinkedIn. When enabled, they run without any disclosure to the user. What’s not fully clear from this investigations findings, is exactly what data each third party receives from the extension scan specifically versus the broader fingerprinting system, but they’re all part of the same architecture.

It’s More Than Extensions

The extension scan is actually one piece of a much larger fingerprinting system LinkedIn calls APFC and this system collects 48 distinct characteristics from your browser every time you visit.

APFC collects:

• Your IP address via WebRTC.

• Your connected cameras, microphones, and speakers.

• Your CPU cores and RAM.

• Your battery level and charging status.

• Your installed fonts.

• Your canvas fingerprint.

• Your WebGL data.

• Your network speed and connection type.

• Your timezone.

• Whether you’re in incognito mode.

One detail that says everything about the mentality behind this system is LinkedIn records your Do Not Track browser setting. Then, it explicitly excludes that setting from the fingerprint hash and they note that you asked not to be tracked. Then, they track you. LOL, okay…coolsies.

This fingerprint doesn’t just get sent to you once. It’s encrypted and injected as an HTTP header into every API request you make during your session. So, every action you take on LinkedIn like every profile view, search, message, then carries your fingerprint with it.

The Scale

The scan list has grown exponentially:

• 2017: 38 extensions

• 2024: ~461

• May 2025: ~1,000

• December 2025: 5,459

• February 2026: 6,167

That’s roughly 12 new extensions added per day which proves, the system is actively maintained and expanding. The extensions on the current list have a combined user base of approximately 405 million people.

The timing of this matters as well. The explosive growth in the scan list from 461 to over 6,000 directly tracks the period when LinkedIn was supposed to be complying with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which ordered LinkedIn to open its platform to third-party tools.

EU Compliance Theater

In 2023, the EU designated LinkedIn as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act and ordered LinkedIn to provide access for third-party tools.

LinkedIn’s response was publishing two restricted APIs that together handle approximately 0.07 calls per second. Meanwhile, LinkedIn already operates an internal API called Voyager that powers every LinkedIn web and mobile product at 163,000 calls per second.

In Microsoft’s 249-page compliance report to the European Commission, the word “API” appears 533 times. “Voyager” appears zero times.

While presenting these token APIs as compliance, LinkedIn expanded its surveillance of the exact tools the regulation was designed to protect. The EU told LinkedIn to let third-party tools in, then LinkedIn built a system to find and punish every user of those tools.

In January 2026, legal proceedings were filed against LinkedIn in Munich by Teamfluence, an Estonian software company, represented by the same law firm that secured the first successful DMA-based private enforcement action (that case was against Google).

What This Means

I wrote in December that LinkedIn operates as a surveillance platform with structural insulation from accountability, and BrowserGate now shows us the technical evidence for that claim.

Please don’t let them get away by telling you this was a bug, or an isolated incident, and this is not from one rogue engineer. Do not let them do a Cambridge Analytica Part 2 where they get off by doing damage control by blaming employees. This is a system that was deliberately designed to be invisible, that has been actively maintained and expanded over years, that is controlled by A/B testing flags so LinkedIn can optimize how it surveils you, and that has grown 10x during the exact period when regulators told LinkedIn to open up.

Before we end with some takeways for you moving forward, remember me mentioning LinkedIn’s tagline? “Connect professionals to boost productivity and success.” I told you at the top that LinkedIn was never clear on how they were going to connect professionals and for whose success and productivity it’s for. Now you have the answer.

They connect professionals by scanning their browsers, mapping their tools, their beliefs, their job-seeking activity, and their employer’s entire technology stack. Then they trasmitt all of it, encrypted, to their own servers and to third-party companies, companies which you’ve never consented to share data with.

And whose success and productivity does the platform serve? Not yours. It serves LinkedIn’s billion-dollar sales product by identifying and suppressing competitor tools. It serves Microsoft’s government contracts by sitting on top of the largest verified professional directory in the world. And it serves the intelligence value of a platform that knows the real name, real employer, and real career intentions of over a billion people. That’s the full picture and whose productivity LinkedIn is for.

If you use LinkedIn, and most of us don’t have a real choice, here’s what you can do:

• Check what browser extensions you have installed and understand what they reveal about you

• Read Fairlinked’s full investigation at browsergate.eu

• If you’re in the EU, the investigation includes guidance on filing complaints

• Share this with anyone who still thinks LinkedIn is just a harmless job board

I’ll be covering this story as it develops, especially as the Munich legal proceedings move forward. If you’re a founder, a tool maker, or someone who has received enforcement threats from LinkedIn, I want to hear from you!

This post draws on the BrowserGate investigation published by Fairlinked e.V. (browsergate.eu), a European association of commercial LinkedIn users. All technical claims are documented in their evidence pack and can be independently verified by examining LinkedIn’s production JavaScript. For my previous coverage of LinkedIn as a national security asset, read my December 2025 post [here].

But, the market outside of your 9-to-5 didn’t get the memo. Out there, those same skills, when attached to a specific outcome, still command real money. We’re talking $20K–$48K/month for work you’re currently doing at $5K–$9K/month as a salaried generalist.

So, this post is going to cover 3 things:

Why your role is being compressed (and why your pay isn’t keeping up). Why the “safety” of your 9-to-5 is a lie you’re telling yourself. And what “weird jobs” are — the new wave of hybrid, outcome-based roles that are quietly replacing traditional job titles.

This shift is already happening right now and AI is only going to make it more obvious. I’d rather you understand it now, before it becomes mainstream and everyone’s competing for the same thing.

So let’s get into it!

Why Roles are Being Compressed Inside Companies

The reason this feels so confusing is because all of these things are happening at the same time.

1. Costs are going down.

2. Coordination is cheaper

3. Execution is cheaper.

These 3 factors above are decreasing at an abnormally accelerated rate right now because of AI adoption and innovation. So companies have been responding by bundling roles together where one person does more. This is why your job feels like three jobs now. But your pay didn’t increase with that. Because you’re still being paid for a role, not for everything you actually do. This is also referred to today in pop culture as “quiet hiring”.

Here’s an example using a common job:

Here’s a breakdown of what you’d make if each function was paid separately:

• Content Creator: $4,000 – $8,000/month

• Analyst: $3,000 – $7,000/month

• Project Manager: $4,000 – $9,000/month

• Designer: $3,000 – $8,000/month

• Copywriter: $4,000 – $10,000/month

• Community Manager: $2,500 – $6,000/month

Total (if priced as projects/retainers):
→ $20,500 – $48,000/month

Here’s what you make as a Marketing Manager at a 9-5 instead:
→ $5,000 – $9,000/month

Therefore, at the same time, the market outside of 9-5 work didn’t change how it pays. This is because the market outside of 9-5s pays for outcomes rather than jobs.

In my humble opinion, rooted in 3 years of commenting on work trends (and usually being right), this signals to me there is a huge new opportunity. But, it does require you to leave the 9-5 for good.

Why The 9-5 Will/Should Die For You

We’re going to start with objections right off the bat. In this moment, you’re probably thinking 2 things at the same time:

1. Staying in your 9–5 is safer than working for yourself

2. The job market has never been more unstable

And even though both of those feel true, they contradict each other.

Your 9-5 is not safer, and the traditional work market is unstable. We've even seen newer pop culture trends than the abovementioned “quiet hiring," such as “job hugging”. The entire point of “job hugging” is to label the new surge of employees clinging to their current roles, often despite dissatisfaction, due to fears of economic uncertainty, AI-driven layoffs, and a tougher hiring landscape. This definitely doesn’t signal safety at a traditional 40 hr/week salaried white-collar job.

This is because how you are expected to operate in your 9–5 today is extremely similar to someone who works for themselves… except you don’t get the financial upside or the autonomy that’s supposed to come with that.

At traditional crunchy 9-to-5s, you’re expected to:

• jump between projects

• figure things out without clear direction

• pick up work outside your job description

• adapt constantly

So observing these bullets above, I see most employees are already operating like a freelancer. While doing this generalization of work, still getting paid like an employee.

Additionally, due to the aggressive lowering of costs due to AI, we will see a rise in “weird jobs”. My aim is to get you to understand these new weird job opprtunities, before they become mainstream in the next few years. You do not want to wait to act until this becomes mainstream, because then your competition will be larger. What I am observing below, I predict will be adopted almost everywhere thanks to AI automation. So it’s important to act now.

To my first paragraph, when costs go down, employees tend to generalize more than specialize. This is an Adam Smith school of thought, but I’ll save the explanation on that here because I don’t want to bore you with the economics talk. I’d rather explain via your personal experience in corporate America rn. So we’ll start there and then the end of the Substack will be on what “weird jobs” are and where to find them.

What is a “weird job”?

By “weird” jobs, I mean new roles outside of the box we will continue to see as AI adoption creates new problems for humans to solve. Or, roles we will learn very quickly need to stay human and not be autamated. It’s a role that looks unconventional on paper, but is actually tied to a very real problem that needs to be solved. That’s why it doesn’t fit cleanly into something like marketing or operations. It usually sits in between multiple functions because the problem itself doesn’t belong to just one department.

Weird jobs are starting to show up more right now because the market is changing faster than job titles can keep up. AI is changing execution, competition online is increasing, and companies are running into new bottlenecks they didn’t have before. So instead of hiring a traditional role, they need someone who can move across domains and solve one very specific problem.

The difference is your current Bullshit job has you doing a little bit of everything with no clear output, while a weird job still uses multiple skills but is anchored to a specific outcome. AI can already do medocre work, so they won’t need a ton of Bullshits Jobs because if they wanted tasks or medocre work, they would just use AI. That’s why it translates outside the company. You can point to what you did, explain the result, and sell it again.

Weird jobs are manifestiong to the shift from

“What is your job?”

to:

“What have you built?”

This is where most people in corporate 9-to-5’s are still stuck and won’t understand nor identify this weird job opportunity.. Because they’re only asking:

• What’s my next title?

• What promotion should I aim for?

Which is the old way of thinking.

Additionally, I still see a lot of career media and career experts currently optimizing for the above questions. This is what grinds my personal gears in this career space. To stay ahead in the future, the goal is not the next job title or promotion to add to your LinkedIn profile.

Instead we should be optimizing for:

• What can I create?

• What can I show?

• What problems can I solve repeatedly?

The overall shift I am describing is what turns your career into a portfolio to be able to get these weird jobs from AI disruption. The focus of a portfolio is not to quit your job overnight and become an entrepreneur tomorrow. It’s just the recalibration of how the new division of labor will play out.

We have to reverse engineer your career portfolio execution by examples like this:

• A campaign you ran.

• A system you built.

• A client you helped.

• A piece of content that performed.

So instead of wrungs on the laddder to aim for, it’s a acquiring more projects. This is because every project becomes a proof of skill. Which then helps in cultivating more projects because that proof of skill becomes something you can point to and sell again.

How to get a “weird job”

First, I would not quit your job and go all in on something random. This is typically the biggest mistake people make as they go from one extreme to another. We do all not need to be Alex Hormozi’s to break out of the 9-to-5 strucutre. We don’t even need to be vibe coding for 120 hours a week for the hopes to get a VC firm’s attention. That jump has no nuance and most people don’t have the infrastructure for it.

I personally didn’t even do that. I just made content slowly on the side and then still to this day very slowly teach myself new content streams. Here’s what I would do:

1. Stop caring about my job title.

Completely.

Because outside of the 9-to-5 job listings, no one is reading your resume like that anymore. So, instead of anchoring on your title, I would start asking:

What am I actually good at across everything I’ve done?

Because you’re already operating as a generalist. Quiet hiring already did that to you as we already assesed. You’re doing multiple roles whether you realize it or not. Now, we just need to make that legible.

2. Research weird jobs

With the latter, I see a lot of roles still focused around creativity and strategy. These new weird jobs will be your skills and porjects you can repackage into freelancing/consulting/prodcut-based businesses for yourself.

hat I would do is start looking at roles that already reflect this shift. There’s a job board called Generalist Jobs. (This isn’t sponsored, I literally found it in a LinkedIn comment on one of my posts).

Here’s an example of post on there I find interesting:

This role is a blend of content marketing and distrubution plus buiness development at real world events. I would imagine this weird role is occuring becuase in person events are increasing again becuase digital is getting more competitive due to everyon making content now. Additionally, at the same time digital is still really important so they need someone who’s able to flex back and forth into these two new domains. If I were someone looking to start this new Weird Job trend, I would work this weird for like 9-12 months. Then, through my experience, I would learn what huge new hurdles for humans are available in the B-2-B fintech world and find new opportunities to consult the rest of the market on my own terms. So then I own more of my career rathering then just renting my career forever at a job that’s making me be a generalist without any other ability.

Again, I would just be searching Genrealist Jobs as a brainstorming method at this stage.

3. Start identifying the projects

Then take your resume and put it into something like ChatGPT or Claude and start asking:

Based on my experience, what types of generalist or hybrid roles could I move into?

You can even feed it job descriptions from those boards so it understands the context.

The goal here is not to get one perfect answer with a job title, but instead to start seeing how your experience can be reframed.

Because the opportunity is taking what you already know how to do and repositioning it into something that’s actually valued in the market.

And from there, you can start moving toward work that looks less like a single job and more like:

• retainer clients

• project-based work

• or hybrid roles that pay for outcomes, not just presence

Additionally, if this entire breakdown clicked for you and you’re realizing you’re already doing multiple jobs but only getting paid for one, this is acutally exactly what my new course is built for.

I’m going to show you how to:

• break down what you’re actually doing at your job (not your title, the real work)

• turn that into clear, outcome-based projects you can point to and sell

• reposition your “generalist” skillset into something the market will actually pay for

• identify which of those projects can become retainers or repeatable income

• and start moving out of being paid for a role → to being paid for results

This course is not about quitting your job overnight or becoming some full-time entrepreneur tomorrow. So if that’s what’s most important to you, this course will not work for you. The Safe Exit Roadmap is about learning how to take the work you’re already doing and turn it into leverage.

If you want to be early to this shift before it becomes obvious to everyone else, join the waitlist for my course.

JOIN THE WAITLIST

We are done writing in June! So, it’s definitely crunch time.

Here are some random thoughts I’ve had, while writing this book:

• We should all be writing more. It’s helped me think and speak more clearly, improved my video content, and reduced brain rot.

• And specifically: writing ON PAPER first. Digital tools are overstimulating for early brainstorming. I carry a sketchbook (this one specifically) and a Sharpie S gel pen (they glide so nicely and have a good chunkiness to the ink width) and write thoughts, mind maps, and half-sentences constantly. Humans wrote this way for a long time for a reason.

• Learning how to write at this level while at the same time monetize it has kicked my ass this past year. Still, I’m finally taking a moment to acknowledge the progress I’ve made and I hope you feel it too!

• Reading is essential for good writing. My Goodreads told me I read 37 books last year and started reading obsessively again to study other authors. It’s not about copying, but about surrounding myself with good literature so I can create better literature.

• I’m genuinely ready to sell this thang!! I won’t start until later this year and into next year, but I feel confident and excited about it.

I’ll leave it at that

I don’t want to share the contents of the book AT ALL. It’s a surprise. You’re going to love it. Just trust.

A Chance to be Interviewed:

I am re-opening slots to interview you for my book! Please come join me in the conversation around work as it strengthens my writing and helps me better serve you all!

Click this link to apply for an interview ⬇️

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZ5NtbPXH6GWIVtuS7eCiteo31CRLG_cDjpDJFMQeqG99iNw/viewform

The Girlboss Slop Pipeline

Everyone is afraid of the alt right pipeline that tells you to be a trad wife and tells young men to view all liberal women as communists. Well, wait till I introduce you to the pipeline on the other side of the spectrum: the Girlboss Slop.

Girlboss Slop: is the version of feminism packaged by corporate culture and social media that teaches women to worship work, moralize ambition, and confuse participation in exploitative systems with liberation, while framing rest, domestic life, or opting out as regression.

In short, Girlboss Slop is corporate obedience rebranded as women’s empowerment.

This essay examines Girlboss Slop as a modern ideological pipeline that frames corporate labor as women’s empowerment while discouraging critique of power, alternative ways of living, and real autonomy. I am not arguing against ambition, work, or feminism. I am naming the version of feminism most women actually experience through media, workplace socialization, and financial incentives, and examining how it has functioned as a corporate labor system for women.

What I’m Not Arguing

There will be people who want to dissect different waves and phases of feminism with me. That is not the purpose of this article. Nor am I claiming expertise in those areas. The purpose of this article is to name the mainstream feminism we actually experience through media, workplace socialization, and financial incentives, and to examine how it has become a corporate labor system for women.

I am not criticizing women who genuinely love their careers and find fulfillment in them. I am not criticizing late bloomers like me. I am not criticizing women who had to work hard because no one was going to save them, also like me. The point is to show that just as there is an alt right pipeline designed to distract and radicalize, there is also a girlboss slop pipeline doing the same thing.

ACT II: HOW IT WORKS

Girlboss Slop is not an accident, our fault nor our idea. It was given to us.

The system creates the conditions first. Layoffs, early career insecurity, student debt, fear of dependence, and the desire for independence without a safety become structural features of the economy. Once those pressures are in place, post modern ideology is introduced as the moral and intellectual solution. Independence is framed as virtue. Women’s dependence in the traditional sense like on a husband, family, etc… is framed as failure. And if you opt out, it feels dangerous. We have seen me opt out by claiming the lazy girl job trend and how many weird media puppets shot that down very quickly.

From that framing, girlboss slop is born.

At that point, the message feels helpful rather than ideological. We now just have to work more, invest in ourselves, build independence through career success. We begin to align our identity with productivity. This framing positions girlbossing as the rational response to instability. Women are not told they are entering a manufactured ideology by instead framing it as realistic, modern, and even smart.

Once that belief is accepted, the outcomes are predictable. Working more for corporate creates:

• Unpaid labor

• Delayed retirements

• No rest

• Identity fully tied to work

• Fear of opting out.

For my data people:

Women spend far more time on unpaid household labor than men, which compounds the demands of paid work and reduces available rest time.
Women also report higher levels of job-related burnout, indicating that the strain of juggling paid and unpaid work takes a measurable toll.
At the same time, research finds that women are working later in life and delaying retirement, showing how economic pressures and caregiving responsibilities extend work commitments far beyond what previous generations experienced

This is where the feedback loop begins. Any dissatisfaction produced by these conditions (like I just listed with hyperlinked sources) is not treated as a signal to question the Girlboss slop system. Then, the Girlboss Slop uses these stats as proof that the solution has not been fully implemented yet. So, then the answer becomes more girlbossing.

This is how this disgusting feedback loop forms. The system creates insecurity. Girlboss Slop is offered as the solution. The solution deepens dependence on work. That dependence produces more insecurity. Because the ideology frames constant striving as virtue, there is never space to pause long enough to recognize the trap. There is no moment of stillness where the question can even arise.

That is how the pipeline sustains itself.

Recently, I tipped my hat to our Queen of Girlboss Slop, Sheryl Sandberg on Instagram. Which shows this feedback loop very well. She claims through her fancy McKinsey data that women aren’t getting enough promotions. Which then signals to us to work harder for more promotions in the name of female liberation. Very well done. I award her an A+ in Girlboss Slop. I never said she was stupid, you know….

ACT III: THE RUPTURE

How I Fell Out of the Spell

I want to explain my 2025 because it is how I came to fully recognize Girlboss Slop for what it is. 2025 was a deeply healing year for me because I stepped into the role of homemaker. That shift changed my daily life. I started entertaining people in my home. I spent less time working and more time with family and friends. I got engaged to my fiancé.

I also reached a turning point in my relationship with my hobbies. I was no longer using them solely to schedule time away from work or make myself better at working. I began finding real peace and craving more time with things simply because I enjoyed them. I fell in love with growing plants and watching them turn into living parts of my home. I curated a reading list that I obsess over throughout the day because it brought joy. Knitting helped me appreciate clothing as art and labor. I became genuinely interested in world history and returned to studying religious texts like the Bible, banned scriptures, and mystical traditions within Catholicism and the Kabbalah.

I began to own my own learning and personal development and purely enjoying it with no expectations.

As this joy and rest snowballed, it opened up identities outside of being a career commentator. That is when the pattern finally clicked.

Before 2025, nearly all of my hobbies existed to make me work more or work better. Hot yoga existed to generate better ideas for content. Reading meant forcing myself through business books like The Purple Cow so I could put on the performance of intelligence in professional settings. That was not reading. It was a performance designed to earn cultural clout points in corporate environments. I joined breathwork classed to reset my nervous system for another intense workday. Even my spirituality was framed around the hope that it would make me more productive or profitable.

Then I realized the bigger thing. Dun, dun, dun!!

Girlboss Slop wanted me to fear these parts of life by framing them as incompatible with being a successful modern woman. Then I realized, the corporations are far more afraid of women having enough time, money, and inner stability to build a real life outside of work. Women who are rested, rooted, and fulfilled with things outside of work are harder to control, harder to manipulate, and far less willing to trade more of their lives for a job.

As a woman, I genuinely fell in love with homemaking and my life outside of work even more than I love my work. I never thought that would happen. I have always “loved” work so much that I became a workaholic. Because duh, and I even eventually built a career and platform centered on talking about work.

I am now the Girlboss Slop’s worst nightmare: happy and truly successful.

ACT IV: THE MECHANISM

How Girlboss Slop Works

Girlboss slop identifies a relatable problem in a woman’s life and reframes working more as the solution, while teaching fear toward anything that challenges that formula.

If building a work empire genuinely brings someone happiness, I understand that and share that drive. What concerns me is the dogma, the us versus them thinking, and the quiet coercion that comes with it.

I see it in Sheryl Sandberg using DEI language to push career escalation as moral progress. I see it in Suzy Welch. I see it in the Kardashians flaunting business success while misrepresenting their wealth. I see it in Erika Kirk presenting traditional values while living a life built on constant travel and donor alignment. I see it in Candace Owens portraying herself as a full time homemaker while running a large media operation without transparency. All of it communicates the same message to women: to be a good woman, you must remain hungry for money and status.

Common Forms of Girlboss Slop (I Have Personally Experienced)

• Pretending to read self help and not reading anything else

• Being atheist as productivity posture

• Obsessively planning pregnancies or avoiding them in the name of career opportunities

• Not having hobbies that exist without output

• Believing DEI in the workplace is the only way I could be successful as a woman

• Believing collaborating with my male partner, instead of independence, is a failure

• Rejecting marriage and resorting to situationships to stay more focused on work

• Believing learning how to make clothes is stupid because I can just buy a sweater and not realizing how much privilege that is

• Thinking I can only make it in a big city and suburbs are for people that aren’t driven and important like me

I’ll stop, because this is starting to feel like a therapy appointment.

ACT V: THE BELIEF SYSTEM

Girlboss Slop Replaces Religion

There is a moral framework embedded in Girlboss Slop. The framework quietly teaches who is righteous and who is failing.

Ambition, overwork, and career prioritization are framed as virtue.
Rest, domestic life, disengagement, or opting out are framed as failure.
Alternative values are coded as dangerous, regressive, or anti woman.

Religion used to give identity, purpose, community, and meaning.
Girlboss Slop replaces these with job title, career ladder, workplace, and productivity.

This belief system is reinforced through the above daily behavior:

• Calendars packed to avoid stillness

• Self optimization routines that replace care

• Consuming career advice as daily guidance.

• Treating exhaustion as proof of commitment.

• Rest is only permitted if it can be justified as making you better at work.

This really is not a conversation about burnout. I get clocked all the time as some burnout activist. I am here to shed light on the societal loss of self produced by corporate systems disguised as empowerment.

Women are trained to wrap their entire identity around work, shaping their goals, relationships, and daily lives accordingly. Resulting in peace becoming suspicious and opting out becomes betrayal.

ACT VI: WHO BENEFITS

Who Actually Wins

People think many creators are shillers, and yes, some are. But the most powerful shillers are charismatic women who use identity politics and traditional career advice while hiding their real wealth creation strategies.

They did not get rich through only working hard and it is disgusting to watch them not clear the air on that detail. They gained access to power through NGOs, PACs, and elite networks with some even back tracking to their college education, parents, etc…. Their wealth does not come from salary like yours does. It comes from equity, media deals, and proximity to power.

Sheryl Sandberg and her Girlboss Slop colleagues’ push for more corporate advancement opportunities accomplishes two things. It creates a subconscious desire for women to prove themselves through unpaid labor and additional training. It also positions her as a moral authority so their role in scandals, abuses, and power networks goes unquestioned.

They are successful because they are embedded in systems of power that are never disclosed.

ACT VII: THE COST AND THE QUESTION

What Women Lose

Girlboss Slop functions as the modern form of patriarchy or puritan work ethic that mainsteam media tries to blame instead. Women are told to sacrifice peace, love, and meaning in the name of historical progress. Questioning this is treated as ingratitude or misogyny.

Women are sold a lie. And often times, the lie doesn’t get exposed to women until it’s too late. And now that I am completely out of this trance, it does truly disturb me to watch. I love making impact and money but there are other ways than laptop farm slavery that is absolutely on its way out as an available job sector.

We are expected to morph our entire lives around Girlboss Slop where all time outside of work is to work more. We rush through our weekends. We can’t sit still on Sunday. Girlboss Slop is a psychological operation which changes our entire perception of reality. And again, it’s efforts are to not benefit us but for the growth of companies.

Who Gets to Define Virtue Now

The creepiest part is how Girlboss Slop begins to function as a new religion. Or maybe corporatism itself has become the religion?

Who decides our virtues now? Is it career ideology? Is it media ownership? Is it power structures above corporate leadership that decide what a good woman looks like?

That question is where my work has been heading next.

A exciting announcement from Gab:

I am making a new course on turning your work experience into an asset. We live in a capitalist society where ownership is everything, yet employees aren’t taught this. They’re just taught how to beg for more money at performance reviews.

So stay tuned!

The Epstein Story Is Only the Entry Point, Not the Focus

I just spent a lot of time laying out how Reid Hoffman is on the Epstein list, how he lied in his apology about how …

Read more

My disappointment actually started earlier this year when Kash Patel went on the Joe Rogan Experience and spent an hour dodging and distorting basic facts about the Epstein case.

If I could offer any feedback to Patel’s team: he should probably sit out future podcasts and at the very least upgrade from the Lululemon workout shirt while he is lying please. I would like for my propaganda to look a little bit more polished. Please and thank you.

This piece is about how Trump’s move to investigate the cofounder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, over his Epstein ties isn’t actually about justice. But is instead about political decoy. Most people don’t even realize Hoffman is on the Epstein list because he’s a major Democratic donor and the majority of corporate media leans left. By choosing a left-leaning figure instead of someone on the right, Trump turns a bipartisan problem into a partisan spectacle. And the deeper truth is that Hoffman will never face real consequences anyway, because LinkedIn is a strategic asset to the Department of Defense.

Phew! That was a lot of claims. Let me now show you my receipts.

Reid Hoffman Is on The List

Reid Hoffman has publicly acknowledged his association to the island as well as apologized. Although, I don’t currently accept his apology because, while apologizing, he lied about the number of times he visited the island and he isn’t specific about what he is sorry for. So because of the lie and the lack of clarity on what to even forgive him for, this feels more like a PR move than a sincere and reflective moment he is sharing with us.

I initially learned of Hoffman’s Epstein Island visits through a formal public filing submitted by a third-party watchdog on May 18, 2023. I stumbled upon this this summer. This SEC filing urges Microsoft shareholders to vote against Hoffman joining the board. The document outlines Hoffman’s documented associations with Jeffrey Epstein and explains why they believe this creates reputational and ethical risk. Because it’s filed through the SEC, it becomes part of the public record. Which means these concerns are raised in an official, regulated setting rather than just online speculation.

Now, to apply the same critical thinking to this public filing. The National Legal and Policy Center, the watch dog that filed this, is a right leaning organization. It was founded in 1991 by Peter Flaherty and Ken Boehm, who previously worked for “Citizens for Reagan”. So again another example or partisan investigation rather than unbiased reporting. I am using this filing to highlight that since at least 2018, Hoffman’s involvement with Epstein was known, yet we as citizens were not privy to this. This topic was not the media topic de jour yet for the political theater we call the news.

The records show he has associated himself with Epstein at least twice. There are rumors of three others.

Confirmed with sources:
1. Island visit: ABC News
2. 2015 dinner Hoffman acknowledges: Axios

Rumored but not confirmed:
1. Second dinner
2. Townhouse meeting
3. Canceled trip

A New Yorker article once covered the regular dinners and social gatherings Epstein hosted for Silicon Valley donors. But that article has since been removed/unpublished. When an outlet removes this reporting that mentioned the rumored and not confirmed associations, it signals a motive or reason to bury whatever details were mentioned. And the reverse of this logic is also true. Un-publishing the piece does not prove those outings did not happen. Overall, this only raises more questions about why the article disappeared.

I don’t have a massive investigative research team to dig into the rumored, but not confirmed events further… but if any of you do, please send leads and ideas my way!

Also, side note: a lot of people don’t know that Reid Hoffman is one of the PayPal Mafia guys. I mentioned this in a Reel post on my Instagram recently. Hoffman was one of PayPal’s top executives, serving as Executive Vice President and later Chief Operating Officer, where he handled operations, strategy, and regulatory battles that kept the company alive during its chaos era. He became known inside the company as the strategist who navigated government pressure and compliance issues, which later shaped his influence at LinkedIn and across Silicon Valley.

So yes, this is why Hoffman is so connected to the Silicon Valley monopoly/lobby we suffer from today. That plus his Stanford and Oxford education. (Put a pin in his education because in the future part 2 of my research I have so much to show you).

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk get all the hate for being Trump’s alleged tech oligarchs, yet the same critique rarely gets applied to Hoffman. So just as I’m disgusted with Trump for pushing this hypocritical partisan storyline, I have the same reaction toward corporate media that overwhelmingly skews left. Also, yes, I would have the same issue if this was the right. I don’t fan girl over either establishment political parties.

In an email to Peter Thiel, reported by the Wall Street Journal in August 2023, Hoffman wrote that Epstein was a “mostly fun, very interesting guy, you may find him perverse, but very smart on biology, computation, macro econ.”

So all of this information exists. I’ve personally been aware of his association with Epstein for most of this year. He isn’t criticized the same way as Musk, Thiel, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, etc. because he’s a huge Democratic donor. You can see all of his lobbying and political contributions to Democratic parties and individuals elsewhere online.

Why You are “Shocked” Hoffman Is On the List

A quick note on why most people didn’t even know Reid Hoffman was on the Epstein list until now: the corporate media ecosystem overwhelmingly leans left, and Hoffman is one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful donors. You can see his lobby data here on OpenSecrets.

So this means the incentives flow in one direction. Stories that make Democratic mega-donors look bad don’t receive the same amplification, follow-through, or scrutiny as stories involving right-coded figures like Musk, Thiel, Bannon, or Trump.

This corruption matters because it explains the public reaction and furthers our tolerance for a partisan investigation. The information around Hoffman’s Epstein associations has been available. It just wasn’t elevated because the media filter determines what becomes mainstream knowledge and what stays niche. Hoffman, and pretty much any member of the donor class and politics, benefits from that filter. We the people are the one’s that suffer. We are never given the full truth and nothing but the truth.

And Trump knows that which is why him choosing Hoffman allows him to frame the Epstein scandal as a “Democrat problem,” even though the list implicates powerful people across both parties.

And through this partisan pseudo-investigating from Trump and the media establishment defending Hoffman, we receive the illusion that an investigation really happened. When the only investigation we will ever see is emotionally visceral news headlines and nothing more than that.

Then, rise and repeat the next day with a new topic. Forever and ever….

This is always how the powers that be always get away with it. Everytime.

Here’s an example of ABC news recently downplaying Hoffman’s Epstein association:

This article strategically left out the part where Hoffman lied in his apology statement by saying he had no knowledge of Epstein’s actions. Hoffman’s own public accounts place these interactions in 2014, when he took a one-night trip to Epstein’s island tied to MIT-related fundraising, and in 2015, when he hosted a dinner that Epstein attended. This occurred years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction was already public.

If you are unfamiliar with fundraising or early stage investing, this might sound like an innocent oversight. But in the worlds Hoffman operates in, some level of diligence on the people involved is standard practice.

LinkedIn: The Untouchable Asset

Reid Hoffman controls a platform that deserves the same scrutiny we apply to Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, yet LinkedIn rarely gets examined because it is framed as a “professional” tool rather than the powerful data ecosystem that it is.

In reality, LinkedIn sits inside federal cloud infrastructure thanks to its parent company, Microsoft, and their contracts with our government agency. And our data on this platform is actively monitored by our own intelligence agencies and foreign adversaries. Microsoft operates classified cloud environments for U.S. national security workloads and is a major Department of Defense cloud vendor. As LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft is deeply embedded in federal infrastructure. It would be naive to assume there is zero organizational, technical, or strategic overlap.

Reid Hoffman isn’t just a lucky tech billionaire. He built a platform that plugged into every major power structure that matters: the PayPal Mafia, Democratic mega-donor networks, elite academic pipelines, Silicon Valley political strategy circles, and Microsoft’s federal cloud ecosystem. He funds candidates, influences policy, shapes AI governance, and controls a platform that the government treats as strategically valuable. That combination gives him a level of insulation from scrutiny that mirrors what we see with figures like Musk, Thiel, Bannon, and Trump.

Counterintelligence agencies in the U.S., U.K., and Australia have issued public warnings that foreign intelligence services use LinkedIn as a major vector for espionage, recruitment, and OSINT targeting, meaning the use of publicly available professional data to identify, profile, and approach sensitive individuals. The platform reveals job titles, project affiliations, organizational structures, and talent movements not available anywhere else.

Yes, we love LinkedIn because it monitors our network for us. We get to keep track of how many degrees of separation we are with anyone around the world. But let me shed light on a dark truth: that visual map of your relationships can be (and is) tracked by governments, Palantir, etc…

My personal stance is that our professional world is surveilled every day thanks to LinkedIn. And Trump is absolutely not ever going to truly investigate Hoffman. We as the common people will probably never know what was his relation to Epstein (until maybe 30 years in the future when everyone is dead and someone will unseal the docs in a cool documentary).

Trump and everyone else on this Epstein list, is a secret network of power, data sharing, and systems. They are not going to put each other in prison. This is all show.

Taken together, LinkedIn is not just cultural fade. This is structural. Hoffman’s influence comes not only from owning a large platform, but from presiding over an information system that governments, contractors, and adversaries treat as a strategic asset.

I cannot access a lot of current government contracts and data sharing amongst Microsoft and LinkedIn because it’s classified. But, here is some sources that sheds the tip of the iceberg:

• Palantir’s Foundry product with tech documentation detailing their integration with LinkedIn’s data: https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/available-connectors/linkedin

• Microsoft operates Azure Government classified offerings, including Secret and Top Secret environments for U.S. national security missions: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure/government/national-security

• An example of how counterintelligence is performed using LinkedIn. In November 2025, MI5 warned UK lawmakers about Chinese spies using LinkedIn to approach targets. : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/chinese-spies-are-trying-to-reach-uk-lawmakers-via-linkedin-mi5-warns

• There is a (now unpublished) article laying out the framework for how adversaries exploit LinkedIn style recruitment approaches to target DoD affiliated people: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/3768503/covert-connections-the-linkedin-recruitment-ruse-targeting-defense-insiders

The Real Point

TLDR: Trump is not going to meaningfully investigate Reid Hoffman’s ties to Epstein Island. The media’s focus on whether Trump wants to investigate Hoffman serves a different purpose. It allows Trump to signal that he is “looking into the files” without triggering real accountability, while reassuring his remaining base that he is targeting the left.

A genuine investigation would not be partisan. And Hoffman is unlikely to face consequences anyway, because his platform serves government interests and he personally funds the political coalition that dominates corporate media. That combination creates insulation and makes them immune to real scrutiny.

We as a nation have moved from industries being “too big to fail” to individuals being too embedded to challenge. While the public is distracted by political theater, the bipartisan elite networks spanning government, tech, and Epstein’s orbit remain largely untouched.

This system relies on most people not having the time or incentive to trace how these power structures overlap. The spectacle works precisely because the structure stays hidden.

There are still major threads left unexplored, including Bill Gates’ visits, Hoffman’s relationship with Gates, and how Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn fits into the broader federal ecosystem.

If you enjoy please read my next post, where I focus on the hidden decades long Hoffman Thiel relationship and the intersections between Palantir, LinkedIn, and government power:

And while women were debating whether having a boyfriend is still an “accomplishment,” my brain kept drifting somewhere else entirely:
our post-modern, laptop-factory jobs.

I wanted to respond to the article “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”, but every point I came up with kept circling back to finances and our culture’s relationship with work.

Our economy shapes how we date. Every time life becomes unaffordable, there are historical patterns of male mediocrity and violence that follow.

So it’s not that I disagree with the overall vibe of men right now. I’m not single, but many women in my life are, and I hear everything. It’s a nightmare. And at the same time, most of my male friends under 25 are also extremely single. Some by choice, some not - just like women.

I understand is very hard to find a man who earns more than you and is charming. These are qualities most heterosexual women want.

This essay is about how modern jobs have become so undignified, unstable, and performative that they’ve made everything tied to money (including dating, identity, and our sense of worth) feel embarrassing too.

Why Modern Dating Feels Broken (It’s the Economy, Not Men)

A major reason the dating pool is shrinking is that women’s earnings have risen while men’s have stagnated. Women now earn about 83 cents on the dollar on average, which means a lot of women simply out-earn the men around them. That alone reduces the number of financially compatible matches.

On top of that, women are graduating and attending college at much higher rates than men, which means the two sexes are having completely different formative experiences. And the “charming” energy we used to associate with romance has been repackaged into a MAGA-adjacent, weird “trad wife” aesthetic (traditional wife, for those of you who are employed and too busy to decode TikTok jargon). Most working, college-educated women lean left and the available men lean right. And since political content has been shoved into our phones nonstop since the COVID lockdowns, men and women are now experiencing total cognitive dissonance. Now, both sides are extremely indoctrinated to be repulsed by each other’s politics.

It’s almost likeeee some very mysterious and powerful people designed our media landscape that way. Not by accident, but by the same loud, unserious media and tech owners who shape everything we see. And if that’s true, then of course it’s harder for us to find love or even understand each other…..We’re too busy dissecting our male coworker’s microaggression to notice that BlackRock is controlling our wages, our cost of living, and our government. I’ve already shown that on Instagram.

And because so many women have cut off the annoying men in their lives, a lot of those guys are now completely isolated. They spend most of their time on porn, YouTube, and video games. I am not confident that angry + testosterone + too much free time + bad habits is the formula for creating grounded, healthy men.

And I promise you, your male coworker who complimented your hair when you did not want a compliment is not the patriarchy holding you back. This new talking point from Hollywood liberal creators is getting really tired. He is living on credit cards, he cannot save for a down payment, and he is just as terrified of losing his job to AI as everyone else. The British Vogue article and the constant complaints I hear about low-status men having nothing to offer are proof that he is not getting ahead in life. He is not your oppressor. He is barely holding it together.

This isn’t me calling out women or making excuses for actually horrible men. It’s to clarify that we are actually living inside a three tiered system. Naval Ravikant explains this here:

A lot of the complaints women have right now, including what Chante pointed out in her article, are really just symptoms of women outranking men.

BUT, there is a real group of men who are actually keeping you down. I name them often. They are a quiet little cabal of kings you did not vote for and who never have to worry about term limits. I call them out constantly in my Instagram reels.

This mysterious but not mysterious group of men is also keeping your annoying male coworker down. Jamie Dimon does not care if you are female, male, Hispanic, Black, whatever. All he cares about is that none of us will ever fully own a home before we die. And the men I research and critique, like Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Fink, and Elon Musk, all benefit from keeping you as a debt slave, renting a Greystar apartment in a B tier city, glued to your phone at your laptop factory job for the rest of your life.

So anyways, I believe every cultural or social issue leads back to the money. Let’s follow that instead and ask whether your job has now become an embarrassing experience in the same way British Vogue says your boyfriend has. Because I am confident that our post modern laptop farm jobs are just as embarrassing as the points Chante made in her article.

The Collapse of Job-as-Status Culture

Our job has been our personality for a long time. Your occupation is how you brag about yourself, size someone up when you first meet them, and signal what contribution you supposedly bring to society. You see this the most in big cities like LA and NYC, where “what do you do?” is the opening line and it sets the tone for the whole relationship.

But this status game is starting to feel silly for everyone. Chante argues that boyfriends are no longer a social accomplishment, and jobs now feel performative in that same way. Office jobs were sold to millennials as the safe, lucrative path. Blue collar work dropped while white collar work skyrocketed thanks to Bill Clinton’s Brain Economy initiative.

We do not build the country like our great grandparents did. We check three internal tools, drown in messaging pings, and try not to hit fight or flight every time we open our email. We once built infrastructure for our families’ futures. Now our biggest accomplishment is how many Zoom meetings we survived.

Most of the hurdles in our jobs come from this performative culture: the fake urgency, the bureaucratic decisions from higher ups, the illusion of transparency during all hands. Our jobs demand that we tolerate ridiculous and intellectually insulting moments for most of the day.

People used to equate their job with status, like “look how busy I am.” Now most people see through it. Thank goodness.

Rebuilding Life After Job Disillusionment

Chante points out that many women no longer want to be defined by their relationship status. Being labeled “the wife” or “the girlfriend” is not appealing anymore.

We are having the same reaction to our job titles.

Over-identifying with our jobs has quietly become a societal problem. Lockdown forced a lot of people to confront it. People moved to the suburbs to save money, get more space, start hobbies, buy homes, become digital nomads like I did, or simply live in ways they never would have in the city hamster wheel. It was the first time many people realized how small their life had become inside their job identity.

Many people feel exhausted but cannot explain why. They internalize burnout or career fatigue as a personal flaw instead of a systemic one because their job became their entire sense of self. If your identity is built on your career, any frustration inside that career feels like a character flaw.

Workers have been burned out for years. I recently wrote an article with HubSpot called The Grind Is Broken: What Workers Really Think About Jobs in 2025. We surveyed 402 corporate professionals. Almost 60 percent said they are putting in more effort than last year, but only 40 percent believe that effort is paying off.

This basically means only about 20 percent of people are taking their jobs seriously in the traditional sense. They are putting in extra effort and actually seeing results.

Everyone else is cosplaying a career. It is a daily performance of “work as usual” while quietly knowing most of this work will not lead anywhere. We keep that truth to ourselves or share it only with trusted work besties.

My book coming out in 2027 goes deeper into the identity issues inside corporate office culture, so stay subscribed for that.

Career Superstition and the New Embarrassment

Chante mentioned in dating, superstition shows up as the fear of posting your boyfriend and then dealing with the fallout if things go sideways. At work, the same superstition shows up as the fear of publicly celebrating your career. A layoff can make that celebration look embarrassing months later.

There is no dignity in layoffs. People do not want to tie their self-worth to a job that can disappear overnight.

The excitement around career posting is gone. Posting your new job does not mean someone will steal it, but the enthusiasm has evaporated. Seeing people brand themselves as “Ex-Meta” or “Ex-Twitch” was giving secondhand embarrassment. My upcoming book is literally called You Are Not Your Job, so yes, I am happy that era is over.

People do not post their careers because they already know the truth: getting a job usually means six months of onboarding, potential boredom, a job hop, or getting laid off in eighteen months because Daddy BlackRock said so.

The same way women are hesitant to post their boyfriends because of the “evil eye,” people are hesitant to post their careers because the end of a job is now just as common, and often more humiliating , than the end of a relationship.

This is not about paranoia, but about pattern recognition. Everyone feels the instability, and no one wants their identity tied to something that fragile.

Why Corporate Work Feels So Embarrassing

(A personal story)

I think most corporate America work is demeaning and soulless. My entire experience made me bitter. Management styles were intellectually insulting. Everything was jargon meant to overwhelm you so you stopped thinking critically.

I started in 2019. My first performance review was summer 2020. During this time, every tech company pretended they were broke, refused raises, and acted like we should be grateful to be employed. Meanwhile they were swimming in Silicon Valley Bank money, SBA loans, and zero percent interest cash from private equity and foreign investors.

At the same time, I was overloaded with work and forced to train a new hire who made more than me. He got a promised salary while still in school. My entire cohort was denied the same salary because of “economic uncertainty.”

I became a laptop-screen zombie. I worked constantly, thinking if I could just finish everything, I’d finally be on top of things. Instead, the faster you finish, the more they dump on you. There is an endless buffet of fake, performative tasks in these companies. I had no friends outside of work because I had no time, and that is by design. They want you trapped in the work bubble so they never have to pay you for your extra cognitive labor.

Corporate America taught me that making money is “hard” and slow. You only earn more when the corporate gods feel generous. Then I started making content online part time and realized you can make real money quickly if you’re skilled at something (or have an interesting take) and understand basic business. It was a complete mind shift.

It also taught me to disrespect my own time and everyone else’s. I could not commit to plans with people in my life because I “might have to work.” Looking back, that was rude and unnecessary.

I tied so much self-importance to my jobs because I worked with big brands. I thought it meant something. It didn’t. It was cringe.

So yes, corporate jobs are embarrassing. They kill free thinking. They rely on small-scale coercion, where you spend all day obeying people you do not even respect. It is demeaning.

It took me years to admit it, but once I did, I realized no boss was going to save me from that bitterness. I built a brand out of these frustrations and figured it out. And honestly, if this hadn’t worked, that would’ve been embarrassing too. Or maybe I’m embarrassing now. Maybe we all are….

My embarrassing job affected my definition of success and my dating preferences at that time. Then, when I shifted to working for myself I went through a change again. When money and our method to getting money aka our job become embarrassing, meaningless, etc… the rest of the facets of our lives will follow suit.

Also, I made four operating systems for you to use. They’re all built in Notion, which is my favorite no code low code tool. If you don’t know what that means, don’t even wrinkle one little brow on your forehead because I already designed everything for you.

GRAB THE HEAL AUTOMATE EXIT SYSTEM

The process is Heal > Automate > Exit.

1. Heal your work baggage

I had a ton of work baggage, obviously. I care about healing professional trauma just as much as personal trauma. If we don’t process the stuff we hated about our last job, the universe does that fun thing where we get scared of the unknown and slide right back into old toxic habits. Suddenly you’re nine months into a “way better” new job, and…it’s toxic again. Heal the old patterns so your unconscious doesn’t drag you back.

The Corporate Detox Journal is $29. It’s fun, not that overly serious self-help vibe. It has a Daily Detox section, guided prompts to process that insane manager who should probably be in prison, and my favorite part: the burn book section. Yes, like Mean Girls. And no, no one is going to scatter it around your office.

2. Automate your work and life

Girl, do not buy another planner for 2026. You didn’t even use this year’s. You don’t even know where it is. The Anti-Burnout Life Operating System is an interactive system you can access on your phone or laptop. All the normal life and work tracking tools are in there, but this one actually tracks your energy. When was the last time you stopped and actually reflected on how your week went? Most of us are repeating the same patterns because we forgot we already did the exact same thing last month and hated it. We are on autopilot. It has to stop. This system snaps you out of it.

3. Exit

I made the Exit Plan Blueprint because I get asked all the time: how did you know when to leave jobs? How did you know when to quit corporate and work for yourself?

Do not be like old me when I started my self-employment journey. I am a very Type B personality and slightly insane. My transition definitely could have been more smooth. Be more Type A and have clarity on your financial roadmap. This system has checklists, health insurance SOPs, and everything you need to exit gracefully without losing your mind.

Lastly, grab my entire Lazy Girl Job methodology in one Notion space. The Lazy Girl Job Finder System has resume storage, application tracking, interview prep. Plus AI tools baked in. I even included Tula, my lazy girl job predictor, so you don’t waste time applying to jobs that aren’t aligned. LinkedIn skill matching sucks and doesn’t work. Don’t use it. Use my Lazy Girl Job Finder instead for a curated and organized job search experience.

GRAB THE HEAL AUTOMATE EXIT SYSTEM

First, I want to cover what Career Minimalism is. I was supposed to go on The Current on CBC this Monday with Matt Galloway to talk about it, but I got sick on Sunday and lost my voice.

So instead, I’m going to share everything I planned to say in that interview here. I also touched on this topic today on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

First, let’s hit on the FAQs because I know you have them:

1. What does being a career minimalist really mean?
It’s about doing what matters most and doing less of what doesn’t. You still care about your work, but you stop overextending yourself on things that don’t move the needle or add value to your life. Not a revolutionary thought and is quite popular these days. I would argue this trend started with Gen X as they were the OG job hoppers due to a lot of economic events we don’t have enough room to analyze here.

2. How is career minimalism different from quiet quitting or lazy girl jobs?
It’s not that different. It’s mostly a repackaged term pushed by media or B2B companies trying to sell consulting services. The mindset itself isn’t new as workers have been setting boundaries and rethinking work for years.

3. Can you still be ambitious while living this way?
Yes. Most people want to be ambitious. The problem is that many jobs just aren’t a good deal for employees anymore. If work environments improved, ambition would naturally come back.

4. What does a career minimalist workweek look like?
It looks a lot like my “lazy girl job” philosophy where you compartmentalize work from life. You give your job the structure it deserves, not your entire identity.

5. Is this movement realistic for people who still need a paycheck?
Absolutely. Most people who work do need a paycheck. Career minimalism isn’t about quitting or elitism but about protecting your time, energy, and mental space while keeping your livelihood intact.

Why Career Minimalism is Fake

I talked about the rise of fake work trends a few weeks ago on Instagram. If you missed it, you can rewatch it below:

There’s a difference between a grassroots movement and a fake one engineered through mass media to look like a trend. That’s harmful because there’s a huge gap between a real person’s perspective and something pretending to be that, especially when there’s a hidden agenda behind it.

This kind of manipulation isn’t new. Throughout history, similar tactics have been used to keep the working class confused, pseudo-informed, and stuck in a passive, NPC-like state.

One example is psychological warfare, which is manipulation at scale.
Imagine I’m tasked by the military industrial complex to justify a war with a Middle Eastern country. I might start flooding media with out-of-context footage of Middle Easterners appearing hostile toward Americans. Are there terrorist groups that exist? Yes. But are there also strategically planted images designed to make the public more supportive of unnecessary wars? Also yes.

The second element is one most people already know about: Operation Mockingbird. If you’re not familiar, it was a covert CIA program during the early Cold War that aimed to influence domestic and foreign media by recruiting journalists and funding front organizations to spread propaganda. From that, we can draw a few fair assumptions:

1. The media has been vulnerable to bad actors in the past

2. There’s no evidence it’s no longer vulnerable

3. The media could still be influenced by bad actors at any time

The third element is the concept of a false flag, a hostile or harmful act staged to disguise who’s actually responsible. A well-known example is Operation Northwoods, a proposal the U.S. government drafted (and JFK rejected) to stage an attack in Miami and blame it on Cuba to justify war. Some also believe 9/11 had false flag elements, though time will tell since major events like that usually aren’t fully declassified until long after the people involved are gone.

Is Career Minimalism a Conspiracy Theory?

Short answer: I don’t know.

But because I’ve spent years researching how corporations, government, and media often collude to push narratives, this one doesn’t sit right with me. It feels like a fake viral trend built to serve someone’s agenda, and that bothers me because I live deep in the work trend space. This one hits close to home. I also feel protective of the American working class.

And I can speak on this from experience. I personally built one of the biggest grassroots movements in modern work culture: Lazy Girl Jobs.

I was the first person to say “lazy girl job” out loud online. There’s video proof of it, an older clip that still lives as a digital footprint showing exactly where it started.

I’ll show a few of those receipts below.

When I search for “career minimalism” on TikTok, it’s crickets.

The video I posted today is the highest trending video on this topic. There’s no original poster. There’s no movement of millions of people repurposing “career minimalism” in their own posts like there was with Lazy Girl Jobs.

Lazy Girl Jobs had tens of millions of views as a hashtag on TikTok. It became a real movement that was much bigger than me. To this day, one out of every three people I talk to about work, even if they don’t know me, instantly know what I’m referring to when I say Lazy Girl Jobs. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tired millennial dad or a boomer woman who only watches mainstream media. They remember Lazy Girl Jobs.

No one knows or remembers what career minimalism is.

So I asked ChatGPT to pretend to be an investigative journalist and find the first actual human who coined the phrase. That search was also crickets.

ChatGPT couldn’t identify a specific person, but it did mention a few sources, a blog from Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and several media outlets. Glassdoor is a massive company that’s deeply connected to corporate America. And then there’s Fast Company, which I’ve personally received the most slanderous opinion articles from. They once ran an op-ed full of mental gymnastics to call me racist and sexist. I’ve also seen them smear legitimate activist work from someone I know.

Fast Company thrives on propaganda. It sells sensationalism, contrarian takes, and clicks. Put a pin in that because I’ll come back to it in the last section of this article.

What I’m getting at is that no one actually identifies as a career minimalist. This isn’t a term I’ve ever heard in the real world. When I was first approached for an interview about it, I had to do a quick Google search. That’s a pretty big detail considering I have my finger on the pulse of work culture professionally.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you saw my face on every homepage from The Wall Street Journal to The Daily Mail. I was booked solid for over nine months with interviews, panels, and appearances. It was more than a full-time job to be the face of a work trend that was both relatable and controversial. And it was a trend I would defend to anyone, anywhere. That was a full-blown character arc in my story.

I haven’t seen a single real person doing that for career minimalism.

Something is off.

Why is the Fake-ness Important

When something feels off or fake, my critical thinking hat goes on immediately. My red alarm bells go off. The first questions I ask myself are who’s behind this and what do they gain from it.

I’m genuinely worried that the workplace trend space on social media is being infiltrated. And I don’t unconditionally trust the news, big corporations, or our government. So I want to share my theories on how these false trends could be quietly affecting you at work.

If they make it seem normal to not have a real career or to accept the lack of career development and workplace dignity, then no one questions it. People comply. It becomes the new normal. That’s dangerous if this is the version of the future we’re being taught to accept.

Groups of people are less effective when they’re afraid. There’s only a small group of elites like corporate executives, donors, lobbyists, and politicians, and millions of working-class people. If we’re constantly scared about the future of work, we’re too focused on survival to do anything about it.

There are countless studies showing that the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes fear, is primitive and highly emotional. When we operate from that part of the brain instead of a regulated nervous system, we lose the ability to reason clearly and take meaningful action. It becomes a loop. Step one, you’re told the workplace is terrible. Step two, you believe it and start acting like it is. You take the safest route and avoid risk, which benefits your employer. Step three, those actions reinforce the belief, and your career growth stalls.

The fact that Glassdoor was one of the first major names to mention this trend raises questions. Glassdoor isn’t just a consumer platform for employees to rate employers. It’s also a B2B company that sells advertising and partnerships to those same employers. So how might Glassdoor benefit from pushing this narrative? Maybe by normalizing disappointment at work, people become less likely to criticize bad workplaces. If workers stop expecting career development, they won’t leave poor reviews, which protects companies’ reputations on that platform.

There’s a lot to think about here. And honestly, I want to hear your thoughts too. Drop your ideas in our subscriber chat, it’s free to join.

This was more of a tin-foil hat post. So sorry if you hated it and yay if you loved it.

I understand a lot of communists follow me and may disagree. That disagreement is welcome, just please discourse about this in a respectful and kind matter.

Capitalism Didn’t Fail, It Was Replaced

I like capitalism when it rewards builders: when people can create something, take risks, and earn from what they build. I like capitalism that rewards workers who dare to become excellent at something. That version of capitalism is about opportunity.
But what we live under today isn’t capitalism, but a monopoly with better branding.

Real capitalism requires competition. It makes space for new entrants, new ideas, and better products. Our current system breeds companies so large they no longer compete and instead extract. They set the terms, write the rules, and buy the referees. We still call them “success stories,” when they are actually the death of opportunity.

It’s no surprise that so many have lost faith. They believe capitalism has failed because they’ve only experienced its most predatory form. Some turn to socialism or communism out of desperation, persuaded that collapse is inevitable. Other systems aren’t inherently propaganda. But convincing people their only dignity lies in a system that will never exist here. That is manipulation.

My issue isn’t with capitalism. It’s with governments that protect monopolies while pretending to regulate them. We already have antitrust and oversight on paper, but they’re selectively applied. Google, Amazon, Meta, BlackRock, etc.. are not competitors. They are modern estates. They don’t run growing businesses. They own entire categories or our society.

I believe capitalism has a moral threshold. A company should grow as far as innovation can carry it. But once it becomes essential infrastructure (once opting out is no longer realistic) it must shift from extraction to stewardship. It is a responsibility to safeguard for the opportunity capitalism claims to offer to all of us, not just a few.

What I’m proposing is a two-phase capitalism:

Phase One: Competition — risk, innovation, reward.
Phase Two: Stewardship — protection, responsibility, opportunity for others.

The Plan: How Ethical Capitalism Takes Shape

1. The Transition Threshold

There must be a point where a company stops acting like a market player and starts operating like an institution. When a business becomes so essential that opting out is no longer realistic, it crosses a moral threshold. At that stage, it shouldn’t be governed by the logic of endless extraction. It must shift from private ambition to public responsibility. This isn’t necessarily punishment for success, it’s recognition of power.

2. Incentives for Responsibility

If capitalism rewards those who take risks, it must also reward those who accept responsibility. A company willing to adopt stewardship should gain stability, not lose it. Ethical capitalism should treat responsibility as a form of strength — something earned, not imposed. You should not have to burn a system down to reform it.

3. What This Model Repairs

This approach confronts the two failures people now confuse with capitalism itself: monopoly power that locks out new entrants, and shareholder dominance that demands profit at the expense of everything else. When a company grows beyond competition, its purpose must evolve. Scale should not grant the right to rule — it should trigger the duty to serve.

4. Proof It Is Possible

This idea is not theoretical. Variations of stewardship already exist in companies that preserve mission beyond individual ownership. And in earlier eras, sectors like rail, energy, and telecommunications were recognized as utilities once they became societal infrastructure. Ethical capitalism is not an import or a revolt — it is a return to responsibility.

5. The Resistance

Those benefitting from the current arrangement will call this dangerous. They will say responsibility is an attack on freedom. But the greater threat is a system where power answers to no one. If capitalism refuses any boundary, it will be dismantled by its own excess. Reform is not the enemy of capitalism. It is the only thing that can save it from decay.

This is how capitalism sustains itself instead of devouring itself. Monopoly is not a victory. It is the decay of the system. It closes the gate behind the winner and tells everyone else to applaud.

We do not need to burn capitalism down. We need to stop confusing monopoly for capitalism. And we need to stop believing that surrender (waiting for collapse, waiting for ideology, waiting for a savior) is a solution. Elites benefit when people give up, no matter which doctrine they give up to.

Opportunity is not dead. It is actually being withheld. And withholding is a choice, which means restoring it is a choice too.

This is how capitalism sustains itself, for all of us, instead of devouring itself. Monopoly is not a victory but a rotting system. It closes the gate behind the winner and asks the rest to applaud.

We don’t need to burn capitalism down just yet. We need to stop confusing monopoly with capitalism. And we need to stop believing that waiting for collapse, a new system, or waiting for a savior is a strategy. Elites win when people give up, no matter which doctrine we give up to.

Opportunity is not dead, but it is being withheld. And withholding is a choice, which means restoring it is a choice too!

You should not cancel Netflix because there is a trans character in a show….
You should cancel it because of who built the platform and what it was designed to do.

Most people argue about Netflix through politics, morality, and culture wars. That debate never reaches the deeper truth. Netflix is not just entertainment. It is a psychological instrument, designed by someone who inherited a blueprint for influencing the human mind.

Meet Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix. His family lineage is not random. His great-grand uncle was Sigmund Freud, the architect of modern psychology. His great-uncle was Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, later renamed “public relations.” These were not just storytellers. They were engineers of perception. They believed people do not make decisions through reason. They are guided by emotion, suggestion, and unconscious desire.

So the real question is not What shows does Netflix host?
It is What worldview does Netflix train us to accept?

The Bloodline of Persuasion: Freud to Bernays to Netflix

Sigmund Freud believed humans are emotional creatures ruled by hidden fears, unresolved desires, and childhood wounds. If you can access someone’s unconscious, you can guide their behavior without them realizing it.

Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew, took those theories and asked a more dangerous question:

What if this could be used, not for therapy, but for control?

Bernays helped corporations and governments shape public opinion by bypassing logic and appealing directly to emotion. He made people feel instead of think. He turned cigarettes into symbols of women’s liberation and called them Torches of Freedom.

(Side note, if Bernays’ influence on advertising in America interests you, I HIGHLY recommend the documentary Century of Self by Adam Curtis)

Generations later came Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix. He did not invent propaganda, but he inherited the understanding that if you can guide what people watch, you can guide what they believe.

Netflix is not designed to inform. It is designed to frame reality, quietly, through narrative.

Netflix Does Not Just Stream Shows. It Edits Memory.

Every documentary, docuseries, and “based on a true story” drama is not just content. It is a curated story about what should matter, who should be trusted, who should be feared, and what version of history should be remembered.

When you control culture, you do not need to control politics. Culture decides politics for you.

Even looking at fictional programs, watch how Netflix shifts with the national mood:

• When a Democrat is in office, shows like Yellowstone rise to feed conservative rebellion.

• When a Republican leads, waves of hyper-progressive storylines appear to provoke cultural backlash.

This is not representation, but agitation. It keeps the audience emotionally reactive, arguing about surface culture instead of questioning deeper power.

And here is the quiet part:

Netflix never shows view counts.
Unlike YouTube, there is no public proof of popularity. The Top 10 may not reflect demand. It may reflect direction. You are given the illusion of choice while being presented with decisions already made for you.

From Viewer to Worker: Bernays in the Workplace

Bernays did not only shape public opinion. He shaped identity.

He taught corporations that the strongest form of control is not force. It is self-branding. Make people emotionally invest in the system that exploits them. They will enforce it themselves.

This is how we arrived at corporate slogans such as:

• Do what you love.

• We are a family.

• Bring your whole self to work.

These are not encouraging. They are binding. They turn labor into loyalty. They make a job feel sacred so you never question who benefits from your devotion.

It is the same machinery as Netflix. Do not control behavior. Control emotion. Behavior will follow.

The Only Real Antidote: Inner Sovereignty

The goal is not to cancel platforms or avoid media. Outrage is only another emotional hook.

Propaganda only works when we are unsure of who we are. It feeds on insecurity. It needs us to seek identity and validation outside ourselves.

When you are self-led and emotionally grounded, these tactics lose their power. You stop being programmable.

A confident person can watch anything and remain untouched.
A self-loving person can work anywhere and stay unowned.

It is not about avoiding media, nor having a meltdown about your reality.
It is about refusing to mistake media for meaning.

When you are at peace with yourself, no one can sell you a manufactured dream. There is nothing wrong with choosing to watch something on Netflix. The difference now is that you are no longer watching unconsciously.

Once you understand how narrative can be used to steer emotion, it loses its power to steer you. Awareness ends manipulation. You are not trapped in the story. You are choosing whether to step into it or step out. no longer propagandized by the platform.

Before You Press Play

Ask yourself:

Who benefits when I spend hours inside a story I did not choose?
What worldview am I passively downloading, and is it actually mine?

The real danger is not Netflix, but forgetting that you have a choice.

A Personal Note on How I Handle It

If you’re curious how I personally respond to knowing Netflix is a propaganda machine, it’s actually very simple. I do not give into fear or doom. I do not go searching for another platform to binge on, because I know they are all built on the same psychology.

I will still passively watch something if my fiancé has a movie on in the background, but films and series have never really been my thing. For entertainment, I read independent writers on Substack, listen to podcasts from people who discuss topics I am interested in, or read books I chose for myself.

It does not mean I live a propaganda-free life. Everyone who creates has an intention. I just prefer to engage with ideas I choose rather than react to productions designed to choose for me.

And, I never ever fully turn my brain off and blindly trust anyone. I don’t find this exhausting at all actually! I find it really exciting and freeing.

Look at the meetings, social masks, and the endless need to look busy. From your first job, you were taught that performance equals morality. Follow the process. Stay agreeable. Outwork everyone else. It’s entirely not your fault you’re exhausted. You were conditioned to believe obedience is stability.

Today I’m walking you through my 9-Step Liberation Formula. This is the same framework I used to rebuild my confidence, heal my work trauma, and create real career freedom. This is the foundation for everything I preach!

The Problem: Why Most People Never Escape Work Conditioning

We Mistake Exhaustion for Excellence

Most people don’t burn out because they’re lazy. They burn out because they were trained to obey. The burnout is quite literally by design.

From our first job onward, we’re taught that performance is morality. Follow the process and stay agreeable. And don’t forget to outwork everyone else. We mistake exhaustion for excellence and obedience for stability.

When Obedience Becomes Identity

I learned that the hard way.

After years of chasing every promotion, since I started working at 14 years old, I hit my limit… literally. At 24 years old, a concussion forced me to stop working for the first time in my adult life. For weeks, I couldn’t perform, couldn’t prove, couldn’t “earn” my rest. And in that silence, I saw clearly that I wasn’t burnt out from work, but I was burnt out from obedience.

That pause was my wake-up call, the space between who I thought I had to be and who I actually was. When I looked around, I realized everyone I knew was trapped in the same cycle. We are all hustling harder, producing more, and calling it “purpose”. It’s so inhumane.

The Illusion of Discipline

Most people stay stuck here. Not because they lack drive, but because they were never taught how to deprogram the conditioning that keeps them compliant. You can’t fix obedience with more discipline. You have to rewire it.

And so, rewire it, I did!

That’s what this process is about. It’s the method I used to rebuild my confidence, heal my work trauma, and eventually create a life and business that no longer depend on external validation. I now confidently say I am free of obedience!

So let me show you my 9-Step Liberation Formula.

The Framework: 9 Steps to Reclaiming Your Free Will

Every person who begins to unlearn work conditioning moves through a series of quiet shifts. These aren’t tasks to complete, but psychological checkpoints where you begin to see yourself and your work differently.

These are all of the steps I went through in order to speak on what I speak on today.

1. Indoctrination of Work
   This is where everyone starts. It’s what the world teaches about the American Dream and the traditional career path. You’re told that hard work leads to happiness, that productivity equals worth, and that ambition is the highest virtue. You obey because belonging feels safer than truth. This is where the conditioning begins, where survival starts to look like success.

2. Information and Awareness
   You encounter new ideas that plant doubt in the system you trusted. The first cracks appear. You start to sense that your exhaustion isn’t personal failure, and instead is the design of the indoctrination.

3. Critical Thinking
   You analyze the gap between what you were told and what you’ve lived. The discomfort is real, but it means the trance is breaking. You’re learning to trust your own perception again. You start to ask yourself questions like “When I work past 40 hours a week, who actually benefits?”

4. Acting Out of Free Will
   You stop waiting for permission and awareness becomes motion. You test what freedom feels like by closing the laptop on time, saying what you actually mean, or choosing rest over optics. Each act rebuilds trust in yourself and strengthens self-esteem. You start to see momentum forming, proof that autonomy feels better than approval.

5. Authentic Action
   Your choices begin aligning with your real values, and not your conditioning. You no longer perform the version of yourself the system rewarded. You move with intention instead of fear, and life starts organizing itself around your authenticity.

6. Healing Work Trauma
   You confront the patterns that kept you compliant like people-pleasing, perfectionism, and chronic overperformance. You stop seeing them as flaws and start recognizing them as survival strategies that once kept you safe. You start forgiving yourself for how deep the conditioning ran.

7. Automating Low-Value Tasks
   You create systems that protect your time and energy. This is where survival shifts into strategy. As you gain momentum with these new healthy habits, your self-esteem solidifies. You start to see how much busywork and performative effort kept you chained to the system. You begin to crave and trust a new kind of success, one that doesn’t require being attached to work all day.

8. Regaining Energy and Time
   You notice mental space returning. You rest without guilt. You realize that peace can coexist with ambition. This is the new way you’ve carved for yourself. You’ll find it becomes addictive. You may start to watch your focus shift toward hobbies, new social circles, or even new romantic partners.

9. Exiting the Old Self for Good
   You no longer perform the identity that the system shaped for you. You move through work and life on your own terms. Through the new way you carved out for yourself in step 8, you’ve learned that not only is your life improved, but nothing bad happened like you were told it would. You didn’t get fired. You’re still motivated, maybe even more now that you have balance. (And if you want to now help others, you can start when you reach this step).

Awareness Is Not Enough

This process isn’t linear. It spirals, revisiting old lessons at higher levels of awareness. Each step brings you closer to autonomy and closer to remembering that your worth was never tied to how obedient you could be.

The Integration: Heal, Automate, Exit.

Most People Stop Here

Most people never make it through this process because they try to wing it. They journal for a week, quit a job on impulse with no plan (super risky), or burn out trying to fix the same system that broke them. What I learned the hard way is that you can’t out-discipline conditioning (trust me I’ve tried). You have to reprogram it.

This is the journey of the black sheep. The one who stops performing. The one who starts saying no when everyone else still nods yes. It’s powerful, but it’s also lonely.

When you step away from the system, you lose the validation that used to anchor you. The silence can feel like failure when it’s actually your first moment of freedom. Most people turn back here, not because they’re weak, but because they don’t have structure to hold them through uncertainty.

You can’t rebuild your confidence without rebuilding your systems.
Because confidence without structure collapses the first time life gets loud again.

That’s why I built the Heal, Automate, Exit: A System for Work Freedom!!

It’s a set of four Operating Systems designed to give us black sheep a framework to stand on when the old one falls away. It guides you through all the steps my free short-form content can’t.

Through my TikToks, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn posts, YouTube Shorts, etc… I can get you through steps 1- 5. Every step beyond that is the real work, and that’s where we need these real systems.

Start My Work Freedom System

Heal → supports steps 6–7, guiding you through the process of understanding and releasing your work trauma while redefining success on your terms.

• Corporate Detox Journal helps you process the trauma of being overused and undervalued. It helps you see the manipulation for what it was so you stop mistaking exhaustion for effort. This is where you stop blaming yourself and start rebuilding trust in your own judgment.

Automate → expands steps 7–8, teaching you how to offload the digital and mental busywork that keeps you in survival mode.

• Anti-Burnout Life Operating System gives you guardrails when motivation fades. It helps you manage your energy, build structure, and make burnout nearly impossible.

• Lazy Girl Job Finder System shows you where the ease and the money actually meet through the roles that let you earn, without erasing yourself. You stop playing the corporate lottery and start choosing your peace.

Exit → completes steps 8–9, helping you design a life and career that reflect your new values; whether that’s a softer 9-5, entrepreneurship, or rest.

• Exit Plan Blueprint helps you leave strategically, not impulsively. You’ll map your timeline, your exit strategy, your financial buffer, and the version of yourself you’re stepping into next. You leave on your terms and not theirs.

Without these systems, the black sheep stays in limbo by being awake enough to see the truth, but too exhausted to change it. That’s when people go back. They re-enter the system they swore they’d never return to, just because it feels safer than silence.

With these systems, you don’t drop off out of weakness. You move forward with structure. You heal the old patterns, automate the noise, and exit with a plan.

The difference between staying stuck and stepping out isn’t bravery. It’s infrastructure.

You’ve already done the hard part, which is waking up! Now all that’s left is giving yourself the system that makes this sustainable.

You can get all four here for $97 (valued at $156) or purchase them individually:

• Corporate Detox Journal | $29

• Anti-Burnout Life Operating System | $39

• Lazy Girl Job Finder System | $49

• Exit Plan Blueprint | $39

I want you to think about the cost of staying stuck.

Every month you stay in survival mode is hundreds of hours lost to overthinking, burnout, and busywork. Every year is a raise you don’t negotiate, an opportunity you miss, or a dream you postpone. That’s the real tax of obedience and you pay it with your time.

The Heal, Automate, Exit: A System for Work Freedom bundle costs $97, (valued at $156). The value it returns is thousands of hours and years of mental freedom.

The holidays are coming, and so is the annual cycle of burnout disguised as ambition.
I don’t want to see you carry this version of you into another year.

Start My Work Freedom System

(For anyone who wasn’t around for, or privy to the craze, American Apparel was once a giant clothing brand that defined the hipster aesthetic millennials lived in during high school and college in the 2000’s. They turned into a pretty abusive work environment and some even relate American Apparel’s founder, Dov Charney as a cult leader.)

American Apparel faced years of allegations including sexual harassment, coercion, verbal abuse, and a toxic workplace culture, with many cases dismissed, settled, or forced into arbitration. The Netflix doc leaned heavily on these past claims, featuring staff testimony, “graphic” board filings, and stories of boundary-crossing like welcome bags with vibrators.

Since July I’ve been digging deeper, interviewing victims, and sitting with the contradictions. The more I learned, the more confused and uneasy I became. Why did this story feel off? Why did my attention drift when I should have been locked in?

After weeks of reflection and procrastinating writing this post, I realized the uncomfortable truth.

The victims were never the point of this documentary. They were used for something much bigger and much uglier.

And that is where things start to get disturbing for me.

Keep reading with a paid subscription to see what the documentary was really about (and who it was really targeting).

Read more

Everyone who follows me knows I stand by the protest chant: no kings. But lately, I’ve been noticing a strange contradiction. The loudest political debates center on whether Trump is some kind of king or a wannabe dictator. But through my 3 years of investigating corporate tyranning, I have learned to call Trump a king is to give into the smokescreen. The people who really rule the working class don’t sit in the Oval Office. You didn’t vote for them. They don’t have term limits. Yet, their decisions affect every moment of your life.

Instead, the real tyrannical kings sit in boardrooms. One of them is Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock.

The Overlooked Kingmakers

If you’ve never heard of him, that’s by design. While political media keeps your eyes glued to every Trump headline, Fink is quietly shaping your paycheck. BlackRock owns 5–10% of most Fortune 500 companies, which means they have a hand in managing nearly every major employer in America. That ownership power lets them influence how corporations are run, from public board decisions to back-channel phone calls. No need to win an election when you can simply buy influence in every major company.

Capital Discipline: A Pretty Phrase for Wage Suppression

And it doesn’t stop there. Fink pushes what he calls “capital discipline.” At face value, the term sounds harmless to us. It gives a trusting and credible vibe. And that’s what a euphemisms like this aim to achieve.

In practice, capital discipline means pressuring companies to keep labor costs down so shareholders see sustainable long-term returns. Translation: employees like you and me should never expect more than a 3% raise. And when a firm like BlackRock sets that standard across hundreds of companies, the entire labor market follows.

That’s how wage suppression becomes the norm.

How the Salary Surveys Get Rigged

Now let’s talk about the part no one tells you: compensation surveys. Every big company hires third-party consulting firms to figure out how much to pay employees. These firms gather data by asking Fortune 500 companies what they’re already paying. But when BlackRock has already influenced those numbers, the data is rigged before the consultants even start. Then the “objective” surveys tell employers to stay in line with the market. Next year’s raises are based on last year’s manipulated data, and the cycle repeats itself.

That’s not a free market. That’s a closed loop.

Why This Hits Home

This is personal for me because I’ve lived inside that loop. I’ve sat in performance reviews where a manager shrugged and said, “We’d love to pay you more, but the market rate is X.” At the time, I believed them. I thought maybe I just needed to work harder or prove myself more. But later, I learned the real truth. And that is that the market rate isn’t neutral. It’s engineered by financial overlords who never show their face on the evening news.

And yet, when I try to talk about this, I run into another barrier: politics. My thinking doesn’t fit neatly into the left-wing media narrative. I don’t hate Trump enough to satisfy liberals, but I also don’t worship him like conservatives do. So my voice gets quieted. It feels like there are only two options: love or hate Trump. And if you step outside that binary, people don’t know what to do with you.

That’s part of the distraction. If we’re busy fighting about Trump, we’re not talking about the fact that Larry Fink is helping set your wage ceiling. We’re not noticing how the supposed free market of salaries has been engineered for decades to keep workers dependent on being employees forever.

Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.

Because here’s my wake-up call to all of us: no matter how many hours you work, no matter how many jobs you jump to, the salary market isn’t a free market. The numbers are being manipulated at the very top and trickled down into your paycheck. The real kings of the working class aren’t politicians, but instead are the financial overlords who have quietly rigged the system in their favor.

So the next time you hear someone call Trump a king, remember: that’s the smokescreen. The real kings never run for office. They don’t need to.

The Full Breakdown and Sources: I’ve shared a complete breakdown of how Larry Fink and the BlackRock network operate in an Instagram post, along with all the sources referenced in this Substack.

If I were an evil elite overlord and wanted to destabilize an entire working class, I wouldn’t need secret weapons or complicated schemes. I’d just sell them Labubus.

I’d dress these toys up with scarcity, nostalgia, gambling mechanics, TikTok virality, and just enough emotion to hook a tired working class desperate for a distraction. Each box becomes a $28 lottery ticket with a fleeting dopamine hit attached. The trick isn’t in the toy itself. The magic is in the ritual of unboxing, the chase for the golden Labubu, and the manufactured scarcity that makes people cry if they don’t get the one they want.

That’s how you distract an entire generation from obtaining financial freedom.

A Parody of Ownership

My point is Labubus aren’t just toys. They’re a parody of ownership itself.

Think about what these microtrends tap into: our nostalgia for childhood, our loneliness in adulthood, our longing to belong to something. In an economy where people can’t afford homes, don’t have stable careers, and feel shut out of real ownership, a blind box of plastic suddenly feels like hope.

It’s not just a Gen Z Beanie Babie. It’s a stand-in for everything people can’t have. And the elites know it.

I don’t have to convince you that nostalgia sells. But add a sprinkle of gambling (you don’t know which figure you’re getting), mix it with TikTok virality (millions of views for unboxing videos), and you’ve got a business model that feeds on our emptiness.

Instead of land, equity, or security, we buy Labubus.

The Bubble We Don’t Talk About

People joke online about what counts as a recession indicator. Is it gas prices, mortgage rates, or job numbers? I’ll let you know of another one: grown adults crying over a toy unboxing video because they didn’t get the Labubu they wanted.

This is a cultural signal.

This is a bubble. And not just in the economic sense, but in the way bubbles distract us. They grow fast, pull us in, make us forget what actually matters, and then they pop. And when they pop, we don’t have anything to show for it.

Microtrends like Labubus are the “let them eat cake” of our generation. While wages stagnate and housing becomes more unattainable, we’re offered $28 boxes of hope instead.

My Reaction: Intellectually Insulted

When I first saw Labubus blowing up online, I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t influenced. I didn’t feel FOMO. I felt intellectually insulted.

I feel that way almost every time a micro trend takes over. There’s something degrading about watching our collective energy poured into chasing cheap dopamine hits instead of real mobility. It’s not that people are wrong for wanting joy or fun and I love that people find excitement in small things. But it frustrates me that the system funnels us toward consuming microtrends instead of building wealth, freedom, and futures.

Every Labubu unboxing video is a reminder that the working class is being trained to mistake distraction for fulfillment.

What the Elites Are Actually Doing

Here’s what makes it even more infuriating: elites aren’t buying Labubus. They’re not chasing a golden figure. They’re buying assets like land, companies, influence. They’re future-proofing their children with trust funds and elite education.

While the working class trades money for fleeting moments of manufactured joy, the elite class trades money for more power.

That contrast is the real story. It’s not about whether a toy is fun or cute. This is all about how distraction keeps people from realizing they’re being boxed out of actual ownership.

The Wake-Up Call

So, no, you’re not overthinking it if you look at Labubus and feel uneasy. It’s not just a toy. This is a symptom.

Every microtrend like this is a reminder of how easily distraction sells in a system designed to keep the working class stuck. It’s the modern bread and circuses: pacify the masses with a little nostalgia, a little gambling, and a lot of virality, and no one asks the harder questions.

If I were an evil elite overlord, this would be my perfect plan. And it’s already working.

I ended up taking Monday off too (though not by choice). Let me explain.

The day started strong with a book meeting with my collaborator, Alex. We read through the intro and Chapter 1, and I honestly feel so good about where the book is right now.

But as the day went on, I completely crashed.

Long story short: stomach issues plus a little mental health spiral. Since Saturday, I’ve felt out of my body and really dysregulated.

I’ve shared this a bit on Instagram stories but, right now I’m finishing a 4-month parasite detox. I wrap it up September 15th (thank god). It’s been tough but worth it. The hardest part is every time my period hits during the cleanse, I go into a full spiral. This was my fourth round, and apparently I needed to relearn that lesson because I forgot.

So, that’s the least gross way I can sum up the last 48 hours. The good news is I rested, felt my feelings, ate nourishing food, slept a ton, and today I feel much better.

This inspired me to make this carousel.

What is Rest?

Rest isn’t just “doing nothing”, surprisingly.

At its core, rest is any intentional pause that helps your body, mind, and spirit recover. Sometimes that’s sleep. Other times it’s stepping away from noise, saying no to draining people, letting yourself be in a bad mood, or doing something creative that recharges you.

The key difference is rest restores energy, while distraction just numbs it.

Working on my book has pushed me into a new challenge, so I’ve been inspired to rebuild my rest toolkit.

On Monday afternoon, when my health hit this breaking point, I grab my phone or a notebook and just let it all out.

I ranted about everything: unfinished to-dos, stuff I’m avoiding, people who annoyed me. Whatever’s taking up space in my head went down on paper.

During my research inspired by the latest crash, I learned this practice actually has a name: Mental Rest. And it turns out there are 7 different kinds of rest we all need.

7 Types of Rest

1. Physical Rest

Give your body a break. Sleep deeply, move gently, and let yourself fully recharge.

2. Mental Rest

Step out of overthinking. Clear your head with silence, stillness, or simple routines.

3. Emotional Rest

Release the pressure to hold it all together. Allow yourself to feel, cry, or simply be.

4. Social Rest

Not every interaction is nourishing. Choose spaces and people that don’t drain you.

5. Sensory Rest (My favorite)

Your system needs calm. Unplug, dim the lights, and give your senses downtime.

6. Creative Rest

Refill your imagination. Seek beauty, play with new ideas, and let wonder in.

7. Purposeful Rest

Pause to reconnect with meaning. Do things that remind you why you’re here.

Healing is Rest

I built a system to help you finally let go of old ways of working without another exhausting program or hours of “homework.”

This operating system is designed to walk you through:

• Healing from the stress and wounds your job left behind

• Automating the parts of work that still drain your energy

• Exiting the old “corporate pick me” identity for good

The first step is simple: The Corporate Detox Journal.
It gives you guided prompts, reflection tools, and proven exercises to release toxic work patterns so you can move forward with clarity, peace, and confidence.

If you’ve been craving structure without burnout, this is where you start.