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This is my garbage site. It's supposed to be garbage, which I'm told is liberating. You aren't supposed to like it, or me.

I created this site because I wanted a site where I could talk about personal shit, particularly gender politics, regular politics, and my assorted gender issues. Goal is to write more freely/stream of consciousness instead of trying to edit myself and play it safe. There will be some questionable punctuation and design decisions.

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"If I have peed farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

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Failing to recognize male emotional labor

(dr) molly tov wrote a clever response to a techy tweet thread about things AI agents could do—she came up with some inventive ideas for ways AI could be, you know, actually helpful, like “Does AI job interviews for me as I sleep, so I wake up to multiple competing job offers” but that the big AI companies will never bother with. It’s a good post, you should go read it.

But clicking through to the Bluesky thread, I was disappointed to see everyone how shitting on the OP (some techlord I don’t know named Derek Thompson) was interpreting his original tweet in the least charitable way possible in order to score ingroup points. The original post from Derek is this:

Scenario: Before I go to sleep, I tell ChatGPT “Plan my 5-year-old’s birthday next Saturday, budget $500. When you’ve made the reservation, email these 20 ppl a printable invitation to attend. Also my wife wants to go to England in mid-July. Find 5 plausible flights for the family and make several distinct itineraries. Finally, pls edit this work memo."

When I go to sleep, the AI agent negotiates slots with two bowling alleys, buys a cake, emails printable invites, plans the trip, copy-edits, etc.

But somehow, by the time this got to Molly, the reading had evolved to

Derek Thompson thinks his kid and wife are pointless busywork I guess

Guys … we are better than this. That’s not what Derek said.

Here’s what Derek’s AI use case entails:

  1. The AI agent negotiates slots with two bowling alleys: It calls both bowling alleys, asks for available dates and prices, and chooses the cheapest one that’s compatible with his schedule. “Negotiates” is just shorthand, ffs.
  2. Buys a cake: Oh my god guys, I heard Derek doesn’t love his kid because he would like to be able to tell an AI “Order a custom cake to serve 12, budget X, Finding Nemo decorations”
  3. Emails printable invites: Literally the definition of pointless busy work
  4. Plans the trip: Honestly not sure exactly what this means, but probably the more menial parts of trip planning like comparing flight/hotel costs, arranging cities to minimize travel time, figuring out train schedules, etc? He said “make several distinct itineraries,” it’s just about spitballing ideas.
  5. Copy-edits, etc.: This is coded language for “and then the AI makes love to my wife so I don’t have to.”

You might look at this and think, hey, I think planning a vacation is fun, I like looking at dozens of hotels and picking one out, I like browsing cake pictures, and that’s perfectly fine and dandy. But you do not get to decide, on the basis of your aesthetic experience, that Derek “thinks his kid and wife are pointless busywork” because of the way he does or doesn’t use technology to automate boring tasks that just so happen to occur in the home instead of the workplace.

I think there are a couple of psychological things going on in the mind of someone who takes the uncharitable view of Derek (in addition to a baseline bias against AI apologists, which, fair enough):

  1. The vindictive belief that men, by default, are not doing “enough” domestic/emotional labor, and when they do, they always half-ass it.

    This is ironic, because the core insight of the concept of “emotional labor” is that it draws from our finite supply of energy just like labor-labor, and thus it’s reasonable to need a break from it once in a while or to try to find ways to do it more efficiently. You wouldn’t shit on a 1950s housewife for using a sewing machine instead of doing it by hand, let alone interpret this as meaning she doesn’t love her husband or kid.

    Let’s go out on a limb and suggest that the 30-odd minutes Derek would have spent Googling a cake shops, calling, waiting for the employee not to be busy, spelling out his order, etc. are not the most nurturing and pleasant use of that time, for Derek or his kid.

  2. The variant of toxic positivity that says that parenting is always a joy, 100 percent of the time, and never draining or frustrating, and that anything you do to reduce the burden of parental labor is a form of neglect.

    You see this “parenting OCD” bullshit a lot nowadays, and it’s gotten worse due to the tradwife/homeschooling trend. I’m not sure how to solve this particular cultural problem, but Free Range Kids has lots to read on the related problem of helicopter parenting and paranoia about leaving one’s children alone.

Anyway, everyone who participated in the hatefest above is now banned from ordering pizza online.