Tara McMullin

I’ve spent the last year and a half telling everyone that TikTok saved my career. But that’s not true. What saved my career was writing a great fucking book.

It is often only in the interludes that we come to realise just how much our busy lives are an active conspiracy against the very things that supposedly give our existence a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

This is, for many of us, the dream: unfettered commitment to externalizing our innards without concern for any gaze but our own. Reclaiming one’s time, you could say. But it requires nothing short of a battle.

Worldbuilding, for me, was a form of expansive hope—a necessary imagination for being alive.

Not only do today’s platform-based workers exist in a nascent labor category, but their participation is decentralized, making it harder for them to connect with each other. As the industry has matured, and consolidation has led to monopsony power, platform labor has reached a turning point. Platforms are increasingly governing participants’... See more

Platform workers’ liminal status makes them much more vulnerable to exploitation. In the United States, most gig workers and creators are classified as “independent contractors,” a categorization the IRS defines as “people who offer their services to the general public” in an independent trade, business, or profession. In practical terms, this... See more