Have you found a
career in the cyber-economy yet? What, have you been living under a rock? Or a
giant desktop PC? Well if you’re still using a landline telephone, you may not
have received the news: the internet is everything! And there’s nothing else.
You would literally be more of a real person if you existed only on the
internet, as opposed to being alive physically with no internet.
This is especially
the case with the job market. The Industrial Revolution was so long ago, even
it’s Wikipedia page is dusty. These days we don’t make things, we make information. We
buy, sell, and trade data; it’s what keeps the Google Earth™ spinning.
By the way, we
don’t use Classified ads in printed newspapers anymore. (Where do you even get
a newspaper?) We get our job postings from Craigslist, and we get our news from
dumbass blurbs on Yahoo. And in that format, I am providing you with a guide on
the best and worst careers of the Information Age.
The Best
Shady Dating Site Advertiser - You ever notice those creepy, fake-looking
ads for “hot singles looking for hook-ups”? The one’s that say she lives right
in your po-dunk town. But there's no way any girl could be that hot, that single, and
that local, right? You always assume those girls don’t live in your town, that they
don’t even exist. Well, they do. You don’t know it because you spend all your time on the
computer, never even bothering to click on those ads! Really, that wouldn’t help you
much anyway because the guys making the ads get first dibs. They’re like modern-day
Mad Men: rocking chest tats, sick iPhone accessories, and badass t-shirts with
crosses and studs and shit. A typical work day is nothing but snapping pics and
tapping ass.
Ergonomic Program Director - There used to be a conception about
office or computer jobs -- that they’re “cush jobs” because you’re inside in
the air condition, you’re on a comfortable chair, and so on. But modern health
crises have proven: sitting, clicking, typing, and staring at a screen all day eventually
result in blood clots, carpel-tunnel, and arthritis. Even more frightfully,
excessive computer use can result in miscarriages and impotence (this has not
been medically proven, but more importantly, it hasn’t been disproven.) So companies everywhere
enlist the services of an ergonomic consultant. He shows all the employees some
stretches that will hopefully stall their physical deterioration, and then
calls it a day. Talk about a cush job!
Twitter Medium - Because it’s a shame that the Twitter era
and the Anna Nicole Smith era didn’t overlap. Could you imagine the kind of
delightful nonsense she would’ve dropped on the world? Well you shouldn’t have
to imagine it, you should be able to get the gossip live, even if the celeb is
dead. That’s why the Twitter Medium will soon be one of the web’s most
in-demand professions. And one the hardest-working Twitter Mediums happens to
be yours truly; for I am the chosen one. Since earning my online degree with
Hades University, I’ve worked non-stop double shifts. I spend all day on my
Ouija Board iPad app, in a room full of skulls and candles. In the daytime I
work as Andy Rooney’s Tweeter, and at night, I put on the CAPS LOCK and then
I’M SAM FUCKING KINISON!! FUUUUUUUUUCK YOU!!!!
Sex Predator Bait - We all know that To Catch a Predator, you need some pretty tantalizing prey. Before
all the embarrassment and arrests go down, remember that there’s a very erotic
and provocative romance that thrives over the internet between two illicit
lovers. One thinks he’s wooing a kid,
the other knows he or she is duping
the bastard and drawing him into a humiliating trap. So when you consider the
experience of the baiter -- ahem, as it were -- they are, by no means, playing a
passive role in this lustful affair. Amongst the sexual language of the online
courtship, the “kid” is flattered and sanctified as if they were a sacred,
sensual wonder. The baiter experiences that praise, compounded with the rush of
deceiving someone, and the sadistic thrill of ruining the predator’s life. So
how is that not and exciting and
titillating job?
The Worst
Youtube Copyright Violation Inspector - As
technology evolved, so did piracy. And to keep up, all the big networks and
record companies cracked down. Like some kind of web pesticide, anti-piracy
measures take out illegally-distributed media, but leave a toxic trace. So now
a lot of folks browse Youtube for a living -- but instead of entertaining
themselves, they’re deleting the videos that violate copyright law. Sounds
enjoyable, but is it safe? God, no! Because as anti-piracy measures intensify,
so does piracy. And now pirates have to get nasty. Recently there’s been an
outbreak of physical crime involving swords and canons and the slaughter of
hundreds of Youtube moderators. Nowadays, if you get hacked, you literally get hacked. One minute you’re disabling the
audio of an Usher song, the next you’re walking the plank; the only thing to
“cease and desist” will be your life. ARRRRRR!
“Like” Launderer - Creating your Facebook profile is a lot
of fun, right? You feel important because you get to talk about yourself and connect
with others. Too bad you only get to make one profile... Well, that’s no longer
true! Yup, you can get a job making profiles all day. Join the marketing
department at any shitty restaurant. You’ll enjoy a stable career with a
tedious routine: make fake profiles, leave flattering reviews, maintain a web
of testimonial deceit. These days you got to have a certain Yelp ranking before
people will even think about walking into your restaurant. So the escalating
arms race never ends because every business does it. When “likes” are inflated
for the sake of financial gain, they start to lose meaning. And if Facebook
“likes” don’t mean anything, then nothing means anything. Life is just a waste.
The world is HTTP Error code 404, Not Found.
Myspace Marketer - Some of the biggest firms in this diluted industry include ✩!JPZ!LPZ!~MUZ1©✩ and {SMACK.down} PROMOTIONS™. You’d be much more familiar with them if you had checked your Myspace since 2007. You probably have more spam in your inbox than a Doomsday Prepper’s apocalypse shelter. Maybe you should take this opportunity right now -- go ahead and check your inbox and see what “service” these people want to sell. They can get thousands of listeners for your band, including some of the biggest movers and shakers in the music biz! Did your screamo band break up? Well hell! Call up the guys, get out the guitars, because this is your chance to really make it big! Or maybe you don’t have any musical ability? Well lack of ability or talent never stopped any marketer! Not once in the history of marketing; this even goes for the promoters on the very, very, very bottom of the totem pole. By the way, where would you find “thousands” of Myspace users to listen anything*?
*(Superfluous answer to a rhetorical question: It
appears people still use Myspace, but they seem to be mostly Middle-Easterners
or Americans of Middle-Eastern descent. And let me clear! I am not racist! Only
some Middle-Eastern people are
Myspace users, and just because someone is of that creed DOES NOT mean they
would be do something terrible to America, like use Myspace in 2012.)
Social Media Consultant - This is the job on this list that is real.
But it really shouldn’t be. Marketers have convinced every type of business
that their livelihood depends on an arbitrary ranking in the lightning-fast
world of social media, where shit changes like -- BOOM! BOOM! BAM! -- every
second! And it’s rough out there, not everyone can hang. Social media marketers
are the fierce warriors in this thunderdome, battling and bickering for
attention. They sometimes represent a company, but are ultimately out for
themselves. One of today’s most precarious and competitive careers, the job
prospects for social media consultants are contingent on self-promotion and the
range and ubiquity of their ass-kissing. And there’s no forty-hour work week in
this field; they gotta have the phone, laptop, and tablet on 24/7 or it’s a
wrap.
For example: there have been thousands of new tweets since you began reading the last paragraph. If you were a social media consultant, you’d already be
ages behind the rest of the world, unless you were multitasking or conducting “market research” while
you did a little recreational reading. Shit, you should’ve created three new
hash-tags by now! As the social media rep for Tampax, your job is to make sure
people are tweeting about Tampax! And you’re clearly not Tampax material, because
it turns out that the heavy flow of internet babble is just too much for you.
So if I were to
pick a career between social media consultant and janitor, all I have to say
is, “Hand me the mop, boss!” It’s simply a matter of job security. Because social
media jobs will all disappear the moment everyone stops obsessing over a
flavor-of-the-week tech fad. Or when companies (see General Motors) base their
social media presence on actual profits, rather than groupthink. Or when solar
flares and/or asteroids disrupt satellite and electronic communication. These
are just a few things that will completely eliminate the social media industry.
That’s why you wanna be a janitor, cause the world’s always gonna be a damn mess.
