In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
April 8th, 2008Yikes! I like the one about the guy who stirs protein powder in with his coffee.
Madness.
It sounds like these bozos don’t need to worry about going to hell; they’ve made it real in their lives already.
Now, where are these $30,000 per-year-to-start blogging jobs? If that’s the going rate in a “digital-era sweatshop,” Becky, Owen and I are living (well) on less than half of that, thanks to the generosity of about 1% of the people reading this.
It’s very common for folks with six-figure household incomes to be going broke right now. I wonder: How would these people do on about $14,000 per year? That’s about what Becky and I made from all sources, and we’re managing to save money. We have no debt. We eat delicious, nutritious and clean food. We’re both at home with our baby boy every day. We even get to watch DVDs if we want * gasp *.
Our biggest expense is our totally ridiculous and extravagant satellite Internet connection. It costs us US$95 per month for 3GB metered, 256kbits/sec down, 128kbits/sec up. I know. You don’t need to express your shock. While it was technically possible to do this work using dialup (Firefox set to not load images and all ads blocked), it was… not much fun. Oh well, if you choose to live near the edge of civilization, some things are going to cost more.
That’s ok. Here’s the view outside my “sweatshop” from a few evenings ago.
Rain, pasture, sunset
* grin *
Via: New York Times:
They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.
“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
“This is not sustainable,” he said.
It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.
The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.
…
Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.
“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”
All that competition puts a premium on staying awake. Matt Buchanan, 22, is the right man for the job. He works for clicks for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets. Mr. Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office.
He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.
But make no mistake: Mr. Buchanan, a recent graduate of New York University, loves his job. He said he gets paid to write (he will not say how much) while interacting with readers in a global conversation about the latest and greatest products.
“The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write — that’s kind of cool,” he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, “I just want to lie down.”
Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.
wonderful ! the new-age scribes. Now, instead of dying from lead or mercury poisoning absorbed from their inks, they can work themselves to death. all they need now is to get some modafinil, then they can complete this dystopia, once and for all.
Sad.
Life really is all about the simple things as you have discovered, Kevin: time home with your lover, and your son. Sure doesn’t cost much either, once you wean yourself of the tapeworm.
keep the light.
cybele
That’s a breathtakingly beautiful vista.
Speaking of sweatshop labor, did you decide to obtain that washing-machine for dealing with all the baby-laundry? (As much as people such as ourselves respect low- or no-tech, you really have to hand it to the individual who invented the modern clothes-washer.)
@ dagobaz
It’s funny, you mention Modafinil.
Cephalon, the manufacturer of that drug, was one of the angels in a now defunct neuroscience related startup I worked for.
https://cryptogon.com/images/eegkev3.jpg
I’ve thought about writing a book about the maniacs I encountered who are involved with that field.
@ Loveandlight
I did the nappies by hand just one time. It was the wringing out that made it seem not worth doing by hand.
Within about 24 hours, I graciously accepted my mother and father in laws’ kind offer of the extra washing machine that they had at their place. Oh man, it’s a life altering appliance.
That was a beautiful picture.
Your work is worth so much more than the compensation received. (I find myself noting that about a few people these days, come to think of it.) But your life sounds good, and sound and fulfilled, and that’s more than a paycheck.
Myself, I would love to simply have income at all, even at the cost. At 53, I’m starting to burn out as it is from physical labor dayjobs. For all that it warns, this article had me drooling for one of those gigs.
To bad Matt mixed the protein powder with his coffee. He destroyed the antioxidant properties of the black coffee!
Oh but, Kevin. TRUTH (you seek it for us), and BEAUTY (oh my gawd, is that really your VIEW?). PRICELESS! And still you get to watch DVD’s?
I’ve just spend about 14 hours in the last 2 days doing U.S. taxes for myself and Mom. I am a accountant,and while I can do the numbers easily, this system makes NO SENSE. The whole charade of wealth redistribution, the staggering amount of money that I pay to taxes is enough to make me wonder why I keep my day job. Really, I’d be MORE THAN HAPPY to grow food (someday on a larger CSA scale), raise chickens, etc, and hang out with Mom in the sunset of her life! That has been my dream for many years. Seeing yourself, Becky and Owen actually living the life makes me so proud that I “know you.” When I see the statistics that 13% of all U.S. taxes collected goes to “national defense,” read WARMONGERING it makes me SICK. I have much better uses for that money, and I know I could live very happily with much less.