Status Update by Alice E. Marwick

Author:Alice E. Marwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Learning a Neoliberal Ideal

Both Crush It! and The 4-Hour Work Week are instruction manuals for surviving without an economic safety net. Ferriss and Vaynerchuk assume that the changes that the internet has wreaked on industries like journalism and music are prescient of larger shifts in the American economy. They strongly advocate independence from corporate structures by encouraging people to start their own businesses. Both use the motivational language common to both neoliberalism and American self-help culture, extolling readers to imagine and bring about an ideal life. While in Vaynerchuk’s world work is a passion and everyone can be an entrepreneur, Ferriss believes that constant self-improvement should be one’s passion, with work existing only to pay for it. Since both Gary Vaynerchuk and Timothy Ferriss have legions of supporters who follow their instructions to the letter—their blogs contain hundreds of comments and video testimonials from grateful readers who found success using their methods—these techniques clearly work for some people. But both books present a fantasy life as realistic and desirable, and position strategic self-presentation within a commodity-based culture as the way to achieve it.

Moreover, both men present the professional male experience as normal, and anything else as an aberration, to the extent of describing tasks like childcare or dating as wastes of time. Vaynerchuk’s advocacy of nonstop work is simply not realistic for people who want to live full lives. Derek Overby, for example, described how his nonstop use of social media created problems at home:

My wife came out and just said, “What are you doing? You’re losing a connection with me and, more importantly, your kids.” I was like, “Wow.” That was eye-opening, like having to go to rehab or something. [Laughs.] Social media rehab. So I just kind of took a good look at it and said, “Maybe I’m going a little overboard.” I was really trying to establish myself within the circles, so I just toned it down a lot. So now I go home and I’ll maybe stay up until 9:30 or 10:00, then I just shut it off and say, “I’ve got to have a real life, too.”

Unlike many, Overby could rely on his partner to take care of their children so he could work late hours. Even with this support, the lack of separation between work and the rest of life, a common Silicon Valley ideal, alienated Overby from the people most important to him—his family. His compromise, working until 10 P.M., still makes it challenging to equitably participate in childcare or household duties. The unspoken assumption of Crush It! is that to have a family, a subservient partner is needed to do all that work. Ferriss does not even address family or relationships: instead he promotes a male fantasy of travel, ripped abs, and frequent casual sex.

Ferriss and Vaynerchuk may be easy targets, but they are superstars in the Web 2.0 world. If these are the type of men who are held up as icons, what does that say about the culture of the technology industry? I think Vaynerchuk and Ferriss are successful for two reasons.

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