The four 'shit' jobs of the future!

Most of the MTB students will soon enter working life. Luckily for us!

Less fortunate are the people that will be looking for a job in 2040. A mockumentary Ghosts with shit jobs shows us the West that has been in a state of financial ruin for decades, and the indigenous North Americans (also called ‘ghosts’ in the Cantonese slang because they are invisible to the Chinese population) are a cheap labor pool for wealthy Asian and Indian markets.
It’s the world upside down. The Western people try to leave their country in order to find a better life in the East. Especially the North Americans suffer the most. As the video shows, the indigenous North Americans live in slums, are deprived of the most basic needs and try to survive in an entirely inhumane situation. They do jobs that no one in China or India would do. Some of the future careers mentioned in the video are: a living spambot, a digital concierge, a robot baby technician and a silk collector or silkgatherer. These are the four ‘shit’ jobs of the future!

In the video we first see Serina. She’s a human spam and makes a living by mentioning brands and products in casual conversation. She’s paid for each brand or product that she has mentioned. This extreme example shows us how word of mouth advertising gets a whole different meaning.

Then we see Oscar. He’s a digital concierge. He has to manually cover up logos for copyright in the future’s answer to Google Street View Maps. In other words he’s the ‘delete function’ of a computer.

Karen and Gary are working as slaves for the children of the wealthy in Asia. They make robot dolls and export them to Asia.

The fourth ‘shit’ job is illustrated by Anton and Toph in the video. They are silkgatherers and are constantly in search of spider webs. They search in buildings, under bridges, in trees and so on. The spider webs are kept in a special bag in order to make silk out of it. Each spider web means money to survive.

In conclusion, this mockumentary made me laugh (at first) and we all know that this is an exaggerated image of how the future working life could be like. I think the film wants us to think critically about the power of Asia, the possible consequences for the West if we aren’t able to overcome the economic crisis, … . What do you think future jobs will look like? Is Asia taking over the Western world ? And will we be doing all the jobs that no Asian wants to do?

Watch the video! I warn you it’s very shocking and once you’ve watched it you’ll never forget it J

Liesbeth Rubben