When you're far from primary productivity like resource extraction and agriculture, it's easy to feel you're not doing "real work." It's why the coal miner is s

When you're far from primary productivity like resource extraction and agriculture, it's easy to feel you're not doing "real work." It's why the coal miner is still such a potent symbol of the working class, even though nobody in the first world is employed as one anymore. When you're highly compensated for this abstract labor, the guilt can compound and it all seems like a sick joke. I know for a fact that I'm not worth it. I'm a back-end developer for a market platform that deals in a commodity that had no business being commodified in the first place. All of my employer's paper value rests on advertising, which has little to no social utility, and is complete black magic in terms of how much it actually drives sales. My salary only makes sense through a kaleidoscope of historical accidents: I just happen to know a weird trendy language that not too many others do, I live in an Anglo society that places unique worth on the product being sold, older people with too much money are easily impressed by what we're doing, etc. All in all I'm not too miffed about it. I actually think it rules that I'm getting away with doing something so pointless, because "real work" fucking sucks. Luckily enough there actually isn't much real work to go around. Ideally, society will gradually realize the worthlessness of what I (and most people on this site tbh) do, and refocus our collective manpower towards the problems that still need to be solved. Once the advertising model collapses, we'll all have to dig ditches or something, but there will be so many of us that we'll only need to dig for 4 hours a week. I'll be the first to sign up for that, but I'm riding the absurdity out til then.