Package wars and mouse movers: on the media escalation of remote-work during the COVID-19 global pandemic

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at media escalations between different kinds of workers during and after the COVID-19 global pandemic. Combining post-Autonomist Marxist and media theoretical approaches, I argue that the ‘Glitter Bomb vs Porch Pirates’ video series, and related phenomena, point to the unique role that networked and computational media play in both the material enactment and cultural-symbolic valorisation of different kinds of work in relatively affluent postindustrial capitalist settings. Mark Rober, the creator of the ‘Glitter Bomb vs Porch Pirates’ video series, demonstrates how those who enjoy a relatively privileged positionality under post-Fordism actively participate in the medialogical defining and detecting of different kinds of ‘enemies’ as a form of both work and leisure. Overemployed.com and automatic mouse-movers, meanwhile, exemplify more tactical approaches to this broader set of conditions, wherein workers utilise networked and computational media to appear ‘visible’ as productive workers according to the criteria via which they are regularly detected and evaluated. Noting a common subjective framework undergirding these various examples, I conclude by highlighting the work of various media scholars focused on the question of what a truly alternative instantiation of networked and computational systems might entail.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital media
• labour
• YouTube
• automation

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Malcolm Ogden

Malcolm Ogden is a doctoral candidate in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media programme at North Carolina State University. His research is broadly focused on the relationship between digital media, bodily-sensation, and late capitalism. His work has been published in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, and is forthcoming in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Post45, and The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures.