Blogging sweatshop exposed on video

They're locked into hotspots, forced to "blog 'til they drop," and paid only in bread and red bull. Meet the victims of Web 2.0 greed, the exploited, invisible underclass who put RSS on your table. Video Link (created by Barely Political, spotted via Valleywag)

• [proto]

  lorem ipsum, Xeni. lorem ipsum . . .

  ;-)

• [RJ]

  @5
  {incredulous look} MORE?! ;O

  You have to watch out for those B.L.F. people. They can infiltrate a good work house in no time.

  The mark of a good blogger is they don’t flinch when the admins show up with the fleam and stick. B.L.F. spies will squirm, you see, because they still have their spirit. The spies also don’t know to type on beat with the dirge drummer/moderator.

  Not that I know anything about blogging. I just read about it somewhere.

• [Mindpowered]

  I think I have it

  “Zombie Strippers and Indentured Blogitude:Tales from the Google cache of the Bloggers Liberation Front”

• [Clumpy]

  C-list bloggers like me aren’t held to the same standard. They should really try being less popular – it’s far more relaxing.

  Is it just me, or does every embedded YouTube video that BoingBoing posts get taken down within twenty-four hours?

• [Takuan]

  interngraphtinweevelpriviledged?

• [Takuan]

  Luxury!

• [arkizzle]

  Tak… exactly!

• [eustace]

  yeah, I used to DREAM of blogging from a sweatshop.

• [Thad E Ginataom]

  Gosh, it’s been a long time since I remembered the smell of that developer!

  I’m feeling quite nostalgic!

  And the fingers we lost, because they wouldn’t let us waste time waiting for the drum to stop before we changed the font strips on it (the old Linotype machine); yes, I guess I miss those too.

  And gadget reviews? I had to typeset childrens’ books and the blurbs for the back for greetings cards!

  Still, I guess I did all right, at least I have my nose left to press the keys.

• [creative intuition]

  lol, that video at the end looked so fake

• [JDspeeder1]

  I WISH I still had my nose!

  I’ve had to use nothing but my schlong and force of will! During 30-second breaks they fed us powdered elephant dung (if we met quota, we didn’t get seconds). And we STILL managed 200-words-per-minute! On XANGA!!!!

• [Peter Swimm]

  man the draft can’t come soon enough.

• [proto]

  Whippersnappers! Why, when I was your age, we blogged on paper tape by punching the holes with our teeth.

• [RJ]

  Is this an offhand cry for help, Xeni? Should we send the Blogger Liberation Front to find you?

• [Xeni Jardin]

  { whispers plaintively for more gruel, please }

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Takuan, Eustace, Proto:

  Oooh, you had paper tape, now! We’d have given an intern to have paper tape! We had to crouch over a wee readout — no WYSIWYG for us — keyboardin’ via mylar strip-fonts directly onto photographick paper, wi’ the set type hangin’ off a clothesline overhead ta dry, hot wax cookin’ for the pasteup, an’ nary an extinguisher in the place. What we had was a bottle o’ NoDoz up on t’ shelf. Never saw a printshop wi’out two things: picture o’ yon shmoo-fellows laughin’emselves sick, sayin’ YOU WANT IT WHEN?, an’ bottle of NoDoz.

  We’d be settin’ type from mimeographed press releases, all the while breathin’ in fumes from they photodeveloper on table next to head, an’ mind you’re not woozy when pass yon great evil cast-iron address-label-makin’ behemoth from dawn of time — snatch your hand off! Did all that for five buck an hour, an’ we felt privileged!

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  RJ: There’s a Blogger Liberation Front? Rue the day, Nick Denton!

• [Antinous]

  I used to wax down copy from the typesetter back in my revolutionary days. Remember what the job title for that was? Stripper.

• [Takuan]

  Aye? An me who lost BOTH arms in the offset press? Who got lead poisonin’ TWICE from the type?! The Chief Editor would make us drink a cup of brimstone at coffee time (well, vending machine brimstone, BUT IT WERE FIERCE!)Arrr! Luxury!

  (Fetch the young space elf to me quarters later would ye, I sense she needs comfortin’)

• [Xeni Jardin]

  The people, they don’t know what disemvowelling really is. Teresa takes these sharp little blades and CARVES THE CHARACTERS OUT OF OUR FLESH. It’s a hard knock life.

• [arkizzle]

  Theres No Help!

  We’re too far into the crypt, to see icy Death’s hunger for the likes of me!

  *cough* *cough*

• [Takuan]

  that’s not a puzzle!