Castillo’s ambitious second novel, set in the worlds of social media and VR, considers labour and storytelling in a world veering right
Elaine Castillo’s second novel is set within the rotten heart of the US tech industry, where “Girlie was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best.” What makes her so effective in her underpaid contract role moderating content for social media giant Reeden is that most prized of workplace currencies: a stoical capacity for labour. Though the job’s mental toll is clear – suicides are common, white staff never stick around and wellness support remains superficial – Girlie proves exceptionally hardy, near-perfect in her ability to identify and scrape feeds free of child sexual abuse content. Behind her productive impassivity, Castillo tells us with a sombre touch of irony, is a “glowing” line of ancestors – Filipina nurses and maids who have long cleaned up after others.
Things look up for Girlie once William Cheung enters the scene, inviting her to become a moderator at Playground, a virtual reality entertainment platform newly acquired by Reeden. Girlie is a perfect fit. As the American-born daughter of immigrants, she carries a cloying sense of filial indebtedness (“there was an unspoken understanding, an ironclad cultural code: if you made money, you had to pay your family back”). With the family home under mortgage, the generous benefits package is hard to resist. And, because we’re partly also in romance territory, so is the man offering it.
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