The Dialectic of Quiet Quitters and LinkedIn Lunatics
How can "nobody want to work anymore" while the grindset is alive and well? Let's examine how both can be true at the same time, and why.
As someone who is interested in socialism, and the class war that necessarily precedes, I feel like I need to do my best to understand the working class and what its place, its needs and its behaviours are in today's working society. It's clear as day that despite the fundamentals being one and the same - by this I mean the contradiction between worker and capitalist, employer and employee – professional and social dynamics have changed quite a bit since Capital dropped. This has been leading people to come up with new concepts such as splinter classes and the concept of the “professional-managerial class” that essentially is blue vs. white collar discourse in a different dress, often insisting that the working class is on the decline and no revolution can be done with the wage recipients of today.
I do not find it helpful to divide the massive class of workers that despite internal differences has the same material interests into opposing camps. PMC discourse is a topic for another post, but for this one, we will acknowledge that highly educated, moderately to well paid desk jobs are part of the same class as the guy who takes out the trash and delivers the fruit basket at their office, while also recognising that there are phenomena manifesting within some professions that cannot be found in the same way among fruit basket delivery people.
In my quest to analyse the current condition of the working class, two popular attitudes in the world of desk jobs have caught my eye. I will give them the following labels: the LinkedIn Lunatics and the quiet quitters. Many of you might already have an image appearing in your minds upon reading these labels. As I’ve spent some time wrapping my head around how and why it has happened that the modern working world is so divided into two seemingly opposite camps of the endless hustle-and-grinders and those who do even the bare minimum only with the utmost reluctance, I’ve realised that these two types of workers actually have a great deal in common.
Emergence of the #grind and the inevitable backlash
Throughout the 2010s, one specific mindset seemed to dominate the culture of office workers. I'm sure most of us are familiar with hustle culture. Even before my own baby steps into employment, I could not move through society and culture without being bombarded with messaging concerning what a good worker has to be like, and what the average person's main priority in life should be (it was to be a good worker).
This period had work-life separation spinning in its grave, with work-life balance becoming an increasingly meaningless buzzword. The poster person of the aspirational lifestyle was constantly busy, always on the go, outsourcing everything in their life that they do not get paid for, living with little to no close relationships because they would distract from the grind, their human interactions being as quick and transactional as handing over their laundry to the pick-up service, and they were said to be thoroughly enjoying this mode of existing, until people eventually started dropping like flies and it was discovered that burnout might actually be a real thing to watch out for.
For a good amount of time, this was simply how a successful worker was expected to live. As the passionate employee that will do anything to help the business prosper. The self-starter who will take on additional responsibilities and hours without asking for anything in return. The resilient hard worker who considers it an honour to go above and beyond. The dedicated teammate who will take a promotion without a raise. The eternal learner who spends their free time expanding their skill set for work.
A notable thing to mention is that the type of #grindset culture that is gaining popularity today, one that is centred around building a business and being a true Sigma by depending on yourself only, was barely seen ten years ago. The focus used to be entirely on employability. All of one’s efforts and dedication were expected to be invested into generating profits for someone else and entrepreneurship was not yet an inspirational marketing term being thrown at us by questionable life coaches the way it is today. To understand the culture of LinkedIn Lunatics that has lived on to this day, we need to remember the 2008 economic crash that I perceive to be the Lunatic’s origin story. One would have been either nuts or incredibly financially secure to want to start a business during this time period, but ensuring stable employment was a reasonable ambition to have.
Within a labour market that was so heavily weighted in employers’ favour, workers had very little choice but to be the perfectly employable, dedicated, enthusiastic worker bee. It is a behaviour we had to adopt to get by more than a reflection of our true desires. What differentiates the LinkedIn Lunatics who manage to do okay in their live-to-work existence from those who burn out is that the former have learned how to participate in, and even identify with, their own exploitation.
“Quiet quitters” are a separate but related phenomenon that inevitably emerges after a high enough concentration of Lunatics in the office world has made their habit of enthusiastic overtime the new standard. On the one hand, it needs to be mentioned that even those who used to simply be considered regular workers are now perceived to be slacking off when compared to the new ideal, but on the other, the culture of self-exploitation has led to people identifying with their unwillingness to be the Above And Beyond worker in a predictable sort of equal and opposite reaction to the prevailing expectation to be a LinkedIn Lunatic.
Many of these people were once Lunatics themselves. They’ve seen themselves or their coworkers be laid off for no apparent reason after investing all of their energy into their jobs as they’ve been taught to do. They’ve spent years in the same position with no salary increases or promotions, which in many places are handed out based on how well liked an employee is by their boss rather than being related to merit and performance. Everything except for their labour is becoming more expensive, which intensifies their frustration. They have been overworked and underpaid and made to think that if only they persevere and out-grind everyone else, they will be rewarded. They have gone through enough defeat to finally realise that they are a disposable number in an expense graph and will be shown the door as soon as it is economically convenient. This breeds resentment and kills any remaining motivation to do more than the bare minimum. The outcome will be the same whether they grind or chill, so what’s the point? This realisation marks the moment of a worker becoming a quitter by taking the grill pill.
“While the grill pill could be interpreted in a reactionary sense, it could also be interpreted as the rebellion of the individual against a faceless and unfeeling social context that robs the joy from life and prevents us to enjoying even the most trivial enjoyments that life has to offer, which are also the most authentic enjoyments that life has to offer.” (x)
Both the quiet quitter and the LinkedIn Lunatic are motivated by the same personal needs. Whichever side of the grindcoin one may find themselves on, our approaches to the working world of today are only in opposition when you look at the very surface of their manifestation. Of course, getting the bag is the primary reason for us to leave our beds at 7 every morning, but since the professions populated by quitters and Lunatics tend to be decently enough paid to ensure survival, we need to look at secondary needs within our life of corporate doom – such as self-empowerment and self-realisation – if we want to understand what makes quitters and Lunatics behave the way they do.
Control and empowerment as a worker within capitalism
A new idea of an empowered worker has emerged through the appropriation of worker’s empowerment by neoliberalism, one that conforms to the values of individual success and personal responsibility. The basis of this new understanding of empowerment lies in optimising one's employability as a way to take charge of one’s own trajectory within the capitalist mode of production that propagates the myth of meritocracy. You get what you deserve, if you're not satisfied with what you get, you just need to put in even more of your time and effort.
Pursuing employability can be a form of taking control of one’s own life just like being a quiet quitter can be. In a volatile job market in which many people around the world work in at-will employment situations, layoffs are common and every day just as many startups close down as new ones open up, being the most passionate and qualified employee possible can be seen as an attempt to protect oneself from the ever-changing tides of the economy. LinkedIn Lunatics hold on to a belief that those who suffer under current employment and hiring practices only find themselves unfortunate because they did not grind hard enough, which helps the Lunatics avoid the painful realisation that they, too, are subject to random economic changes and business decisions. They’re not safe, because nobody is, but not being in control is scary, especially for those who cannot imagine a way out of the system that does not consist only of doom and destruction. Some even take the way things work as a natural given that cannot possibly be changed – so there would be no choice but to make sure you come out on top.
“Employability represents a romanticised vision of work, in which one can be the master of one’s own alienation. It is a compelling ethos whereby workers can seek to take control of their identity and destiny in an otherwise disempowering labour market. In doing so, they become one and the same, in spirit, as the capitalist they strive simultaneously to please and struggle against.” (x)
The quiet quitter on the other hand strives for self-empowerment and control through defiance. They follow a pseudo-rebellious attitude of being exactly the opposite of what an employer expects them to be. Boss makes a dollar, they make a dime, that’s why they wank on company time. I refer to this as a pseudo-rebellion because it does nothing to change how the system operates - much unlike organising an actual strike or causing any form of meaningful disruption to the company’s daily work would. At the end of the day, it truly does not make a difference to the bottom line if a few employees out of a hundred or thousand decide to put less effort into their tasks.
Upon reading this, one might now ask: “but what about all the complaints that went around the media about how quiet quitters are ruining the economy? Isn’t that a sign that the slacking is really doing something?” to which I would say that I consider screeching employers to be having an ego tantrum above all else. It must feel splendid to have an entire class of people bending over backwards to ensure your profits and lose themselves in the mission to be your self-optimising work drone. A significant chunk of people admitting that they do their work to get paid with no personal investment must be a huge narcissistic injury to those who have become accustomed to a certain kind of validation. While I do think there’s an element of fear involved, capitalists know full well that they aren’t being economically hurt in any noticeable way at this point in time. But they know that they might be, if the defiance to the grind continues and grows into organised activities, so they get on the news to prevent this from happening in the future. So no, slacking as an isolated, individual activity is not damaging to the capitalist class. It is only a means to help the quiet quitter feel more dignified by being among the few who are not allowing themselves to be sucked into the current of the grind.
Finding purpose in an alienated existence
Speaking of the current of the grind now leads us to the topic of self-realisation.
I do not think it is too hot of a take to claim that most people, even most Lunatics, would not centre their life around self-improvement and hyperproductivity for the sole purpose of serving their employer’s interests if they had free choice to realise themselves in whatever way speaks to them. Right now, many people cope with their lack of free time by talking themselves into not only liking, but loving their jobs and their workplace enough to not want to do anything else with their time in a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Their need for fulfilment naturally is directed into their profession since they have arranged themselves within a lifestyle that allows for nothing else. Working to become and remain the perfect worker at the expense of any other potential interests becomes a means of keeping oneself (pre)occupied, while at the same time moving further away from knowing what one’s self really is.
“Here, the call to become more employable is a demand for individuals to ‘pre-occupy the self with the self’ (Dean, 1994, 1998; Rose, 1998; Rimke, 2000), in order to ensure survival and thrive within a business climate characterised by regular job turnover and technological change.”
“Put differently, is one’s identity determined by one’s own values and aspirations or simply a reflection of the cultural ideals of the marketplace and managers? Costas and Fleming (2009) describe this tension as representative of a deeper discursive ‘self-alienation’; whereby, employees realise that their core selves are constructed by organisations rather than their own self-determination. As such, the complete subjectification of the ‘inner self’ is made difficult as people recognize that they have become strangers to themselves (Leidner, 1993; Sennett, 1998)." (x)
If one is always grinding, there is no mental space to question whether or not the values according to which they live are their own, or who they would want to be outside of the pressures of the corporate world. The Lunatics have learned to avoid exploring their interests to the point where even a reduction in working hours becomes a terrifying prospect. These are the people who will unironically say that they do not care for retirement because they have no idea what they would do with their day. They do not just do their job, they are their job, and as soon as a person constructs their identity around something, it becomes difficult to see that there is a whole other world out there, one in which they might be happier than they could currently imagine while investing the same skills in a truly empowered and purposeful way. They let themselves be subsumed into capitalist ideology in order to overcome their own perceived alienation – an ideology that necessitates a belief in which the capitalist does not impose anything onto them, the capitalist only is kind enough to give them the framework to be what they perceive to be their truly actualised selves. It is the perfect coping mechanism - if you can live your best possible life by working 50 hours, why would anything ever need to change?
As for the quitters, their fulfilment is pursued explicitly not through work, so their quest for the self can take all kinds of shapes that have little in common except for being a means to escape from their alienation instead of embracing it. Some people are intentional grill-pillers who, instead of pursuing professional goals, actively choose to invest their time and energy only into things that bring them joy, in an unwavering refusal to let the system crush their spirits. Others have given up on finding fulfilment in this economy entirely and fall into depressive hedonia, lost in a sea of Love Island binges - for which nobody can really blame them. The depressive hedonists are often apolitical enough to not have any concept of what a better world could look like and why things operate the way they do, they only see the systems around them deteriorating bit by bit, with the conventional avenues of political engagement making little to no difference, which is unlikely to not make someone feel at least a little hopeless. A barely significant amount of people tends to get involved in political activities according to their particular views and interests, an even more insignificant, almost unnoticeable portion of those finding their focus in labour politics, with many of them eventually becoming disillusioned and depressive themselves by experiencing a lack of positive change despite all efforts.
In summary, both the quiet quitters and the LinkedIn Lunatics suffer from personal alienation and economic insecurity. We cannot assume that the Lunatics genuinely love dedicating their life to Company Name™ – their behaviour is a coping mechanism, just like disengaging from work is for the quitters.
So where’s the class consciousness in all this?
The problem with both of these responses to the crushing weight of capitalist exploitation is that they are each entirely focused on the individual and their personal choices. Both the quiet quitter and the LinkedIn Lunatic are looking out for themselves only, as the perfect neoliberal subject should.
The Lunatic goes for competition over solidarity - their mindset requires them to be perfectly willing and ready to leave their fellow workers in the dust, underpaid, laid off even, as long as it gets the Lunatic a leg up. Making yourself the most employable necessarily comes with making others appear less so.
The quitter, while preserving some of their mental health and free time by disengaging from their work and their company entirely, detaches themselves from other workers and the very similar issues they face by missing opportunities to connect and organise in favour of memescrolling or browsing the online Lego store. In a sense, they're even dependent on the Lunatics, as the Lunatics pick up some of the slackers’ slack – it is a self-regulating system, a zero-sum game that ensures that the quitter’s mental resignation makes no significant difference, economically speaking.
All of this speaks to a general lack of class consciousness among the segments of the working class that the attitudes of quitting and grinding can be observed in – which is pretty much exclusively desk jobs in modern professions. Show me a construction worker who gets off on his LinkedIn presence, I dare you.
The quitter obviously is more conscious than the Lunatic who is neck deep in employer boot. I’ve seen quiet quitters hyped up to be the next revolutionary subject by terminally online leftists, but despite their awareness of the conflict between themselves and their employer, quitters fail to make the missing step of recognising that the people they work with are in exactly the same situation that they are in, and that keeping themselves isolated instead of getting organised is counterproductive to their interests.
There is strength in numbers - this common-sensical phrase could not be more true when it comes to class struggle. People who work in the “traditional” proletariat of industrial labour are more likely to be aware of this, to act accordingly and go on strikes instead of grinding or slacking their dissatisfaction away. There could be a number of reasons for this, from long-term union support to a variety of additional socio-cultural influences that I should not get into at this moment. I might explore this topic another time.
Although there is no satisfying conclusion to my armchair-psychological collection of observations, the pocket of bloom I personally take from all of this is that the grind and the misplaced solidarity with the capitalist class that it brings is on the decline if we consider the rising popularity of doing the bare minimum with no consideration to the employer’s expectations. The quitters are quite close to getting it, and with many quitters being former Lunatics, I think we can hold onto some optimism that maybe we are not completely doomed. <3
Reading Recommendation:
Fight for your alienation: The fantasy of employability and the ironic struggle for self-exploitation by Peter Bloom