Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread? Yes.
Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Hmmm.
I remember being asked this question in primary school and it blowing my mind because I realised, for the first time, that right and wrong are not binaries - there are mitigating circumstances.
Now, more than ever, I think we need to hear from moral philosophers because the mitigating circumstances have exploded and choices are becoming harder to make.
This all came to me whilst creating some reels for my @prohumanposts accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Ideally, I would just like to write. That’s my talent, my passion and, hopefully, my legacy. But when growth on Substack plateaued due to an influx of extremely famous writers, I realised I must market my writing elsewhere, so I turned to social media.
I’m not on Facebook but I did have a dormant Instagram account with around 100 followers and, in February this year, I set up TikTok and YouTube channels from scratch. I figured that “reels” are the same size everywhere so I could make one and distribute it across multiple platforms, which I have been doing with a lot of discipline and a little success since April.
Through this period of experimentation I have discovered that each platform is unique and seems to respond to different stimuli. For instance, Instagram skews a little older than TikTok and YouTube older still. TikTok is more local than Instagram but YouTube viewers are bitchier and uploading 157 posts over the last five months I have learned a thing or two about how to manufacture “engagement”.
One easy way, as a straight white male is to create a rage bait. But there exists an even easier, which would be to create a range of scantily clad AI women to act out various sexually subservient scenarios, so why don’t I? I’d like to think the answer can be found in my strong moral fibre but I suspect it’s closer to my financial privilege - I just don’t need to. I have work, I have some moderate wealth, I can afford to be patient and so, despite the occasional frustration of seeing others post deliberately inflammatory content to increase their followings, I resist the urge and try to remember to be Pro-Human at all times. But it does beg the question:
Is it wrong to create divisive rage bait or toxic AI slop online? Yes.
Is it wrong to create divisive rage bait or toxic AI slop online to feed your starving family? Hmmm.
Facebook thought about this question a lot and came up with a definitive answer, which is to pay people in some of the poorest places on earth to set up “slop shops” creating content that is just weird and offensive enough to keep users from deserting their platforms. 404 Media uncovered Facebook slop shops spread across Vietnam, Philippines, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh so if you want to know who’s the genius behind Shrimp Jesus, look no further.
Facebook’s stated purpose is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”, which is delightful but it’s the kind of purpose reserved for people who don’t need to worry where their next meal is coming from, only whether or not they can sleep at night. Do you think that this purpose extends to those working in Zuckerberg’s slop shops? I doubt it. Their purpose is much simpler and more fundamental - to feed their families and keep a roof over their head.
Desperate people are morally malleable
Desperate people are morally malleable, which is excellent for recruiting employees to morally dubious organisations doing morally dubious things. However, sometimes you need those employees to be closer to home HQ, and even come equipped with a masters degree. But how do you find well-educated city-dwellers desperate enough to compromise their morals for money? Simple. You make them take out a $150,000 dollar loan at 18 to get their degree, charge them $8k a month in rent to live where the jobs are, and make the jobs scarce and almost impossible to get. How else are evil empires like Meta, Flock, Palantir and OpenAI able to recruit so many idealistic bright young things?
Most of us in developed economies may not be starving, but the cost of living a “normal” life has become so high that aspiring to the same standard of living as your parents seems unachievable unless you are willing to hold your nose and repeat the corporate mantras until you almost believe them:
“To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Facebook 😂
“To realize the emancipatory power of technology-driven progress for humanity.” Palantir 🤮
“To build safer, thriving communities, using technology to help law enforcement, businesses and communities enhance safety.” Flock Safety 😡
“To ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” Open AI 🙄
I don’t blame anyone - well, any non-executives - for working at any of these companies; if I had six-figures of student debt and no prospect of owning a home I’d do whatever it takes too, but wouldn’t it be better to have a choice?
What choice do we have?
I live in Singapore, my wife is Singaporean-Chinese and that means she has high expectations for my daughter i.e. multiple degrees and a professional job in law, finance, tech or medicine with a big firm a.k.a my nightmare.
My first proper job was for an elephantine corporation that, ironically, presented itself as a mouse… I went freelance after three years and have only ever worked for SME’s or myself since.
The manufactured stress, artificial codes of behaviour, presenteeism, performance appraisals, wage slavery, and indignity of having someone else tell me when to wake up, eat and go on holiday made me ill. My goal for my daughter is that she is free to do what she loves, not be strapped to a chair under artificial light spending all day staring into a screen that is destroying her eyes and her posture. I can offer her that because I have accrued a modicum of wealth but if I hadn’t what choice would she have?
Sophie Rain made a choice. She and her three siblings were raised on food stamps in a Christian household in Tampa, Florida. Her dad was a cook, her mum was a waitress and at 17 she too took a job waitressing at an Italian restaurant to help her parents make ends meet. It was around this time she started posting dance videos on TikTok and, when her employer objected to her hobby and fired her, she moved on to OnlyFans like some of her friends and made $20,000 in her first month posting bikini shots. In her first year she made a reported $43.4 million.
Now, you don’t get $43.4 million from posting bikini shots alone, she has graduated to nudes and solo masturbation videos plus private commissions that have netted her over $100 million in under three years. She doesn’t appear in her videos with anyone else, has paid $30.7 million in taxes, donated $121,000 to Feeding America and has used the remaining money to purchase a $2.7 million cattle ranch on 20 acres in Tampa for her and her family at the age of 23. As @Blackheartsora, one of her followers on X, commented:
“Working a 9 - 5 means you’re selling your body way more than any OF girls does.”
Rain replied:
“My waitress job was definitely more physically demanding”.
So, is a young woman from a poor family with only a high school education and few prospects wrong to go on OnlyFans and solve all of her family’s financial problems for generations to come? Is it worse than burning the world’s fossil fuels or pirating all the world’s content to become a billionaire? Is it only immoral because she is a woman? Whatever it is, Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback did not approve and proposed a 50% state “sin tax” specifically targeting OnlyFans creators. He explicitly called out Sophie Rain, claiming she would owe $42 million under the policy, which was intended to fund teacher pay and school lunches while deterring adult content work.
He labeled OnlyFans an “online degeneracy platform” and stated the tax was meant to discourage young women from selling content online and encourage “traditional professions” (whatever they are). Sophie Rain fired back on social media and in interviews, calling the proposal absurd and a “clout grab”. She argued that targeting individual workers trying to make a living is unfair when major multi-billion-dollar corporations often avoid paying adequate federal taxes.
The exchange triggered a national debate earlier this year on digital labour, morality and government overreach, which eventually died along with Fishback’s campaign, but Rain didn’t let it go and on Friday pledged to clear school teachers “classroom wishlists” of stuff they need to teach kids properly, which the State refused to supply.
You may not like the way Rain made her money but she has already spent over $100,000 clearing wishlists and has pledge to spend another $1million and that’s on top of the tax she’s already paid so is she really “worse” than an oil baron or a tech bro?
The biggest question
Do I want my daughter to go on OnlyFans? NO!
Do I want her to spend 50 years as a wage slave in a bullshit job at an immoral company to pay off astronomical student debt and home loans? Also NO!!
So what’s the answer? If inequality keeps increasing at its current pace there will be more desperate people with little choice but to compromise their moral compass to keep their heads above water. Already there are websites like Go by crypto platform Pump.fun where you can pay anyone to do anything…literally anything, such as harassing a murder victim’s family or tattooing your meme-coin logo on to their forehead.
All of this is dehumanising when the point of all work should be to provide dignity through real purpose and reward NOT to see how far you can push people for how little. Unfortunately our corporate overlords appear to have forgotten about any kind of social obligation or duty of care and are in fact lauded for “innovating” evermore efficient ways to destroy natural habitats, antique books or simply the spirits of gig-workers by amending the algorithm to squeeze another few cents out of them (read Karen Hao’s ‘Empire of AI’). If that’s what our capitalist system defines as “right” then you tell me what’s wrong anymore.
To Do List
My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do:
A big inspiration for me when writing this post was Rutger Bregman’s book ‘Moral Ambition’, a call to everyone from students to professionals to use their powers for good, which is what I am trying to do more of with Pro-Human: https://rutgerbregman.com/books/moral-ambition
National Theatre Live is back at Esplanade startign 27th August, I’ll be there on 28th to see Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden in ‘The Fifth Step’ but you can see the whole amaxing lineup here: https://www.esplanade.com/whats-on/festivals-and-series/national-theatre-live
On the 29th Singapore’s punk archivist Ginette Chittick and Kim Wong of Teenage Riot will be playing a selection of 90s and noughties indie rock, Britpop and punk at ‘Daydream Nation’ in Rasa Space: https://www.yourtessera.com/e/rasa-presents-daydream-nation-soul-powered
And from 3rd - 6th September Singapore’s largest alternative music festival, Baybeats, will feature 47 bands performing on 5 stages across 4 days - ‘tis the season to mosh! https://www.esplanade.com/whats-on/festivals-and-series/baybeats/2026
Right, that’ll do ya! Cheers, Nx