The lolz of gruntworld

Why should I pay a professional to do work I might like when I can get lots of submissions from a contest?

For one thing, you’re deceptively promoting free labor, a disreputable practice in and of itself. You impede the designer from earning a proper salary. Would you work for free with the hope of POSSIBLY being properly compensated?

The quote comes off a very amusing website, no-spec.org, boldly dedicated to promoting the pretense that while no such thing as a sow exists, silk purses are certainly made out of its ears.

Take for instance the notion that "design work" is "labour". This confusion between work and labourⁱ encourages me to consider another point : since the result of copulation among the gruntsⁱⁱ usually is labour, we could swap designers out and whores in, ending up with some equally sensible nonsense.

What would you think of the ACGWPHWⁱⁱⁱ coming out with a bold denouncement of "free sex", on the grounds that "the very notion of free sex is a disreputable practice in and of itself" ? And that doing it for free "impedes a working girl somewhere from earning a proper gold nugget/ice dribblet" ? "Would you fuck without any hope of ever being properly compensated ?" You know, just like most women currently do.

Fact of the matter is, the pretense of "being a designer" is just as satisfying for the pretender, and just as much payment to him as the pretense of "having used" his "work" is useful to the "employer". More so, in fact, and if I ever intended to expand my dealings with the lower classes through the means of such contests I would certainly charge them for the privilege of participating. To quote my own PR, who possibly puts it in sharper terms,

The underlying economic reality of the situation is that the vast majority of the population aged 15 to 35 is otherwise unemployable. They have no practically usable skills or any value, and it is more productive for society as a whole to keep them tied to a monitor in a room somewhere than any alternative. Consider it very cheap prison, which is what it is, keeps them out of the way. (Yes, you may think that at the very least they could dig ditches or pole dance, which while not particularly useful still turn nothing, ie their own time and body, into something, which worthless as it may be still wouldn't be completely worthless. This however is not true. A sandwich dropped on the floor is completely worthless, not just mostly worthless, and just so one of these useless tenderfoot youths is also completely worthless - they'd cost more to organize and employ at ditch digging than the value of the dug ditches many times over).

Consequently since they're locked up online they're all going to be "competing" for some vague "designer/copywriter/seo expert/webdeveloper" useless nonsense. The notion that the prices for this could somehow be propped up by some form of collective action leveraging some entirely imaginary bargain power is risible: they have no bargain power whatsoever, the sums paid as consideration for their "work" are simply private charity, as all the "buyers" are strictly aware, just read clients from hell and you'll see it plain. Organizing the pointless into a shitstorm of lulz may sound like a decent project for poking fun at them, but other than that it's an exercise in wasting time.

This is the long and the short of it, really.

What "designers" ? How did they get to be "designers", did they open iamdesignr.smrt.com in their browser and then nodded approvingly ? When did their inane bullshit become "work" ? Something is not work just on account of it having taken effort. Since when is the very real work of sorting through the idiocy of the masses not to be compensated ? Merely taking these "designers" at their word and acting in a manner consistent with the patently ridiculous pretense they put forth should command a paycheck. After all, the people working in the various insane asylums draw a paycheck for their hard work putting up with half a dozen different Napoleons, all taller than five feet six inches.

If anything that site should be converted into a charity, collecting funds to compensate the few brave souls who persevere in sifting through the human fecal river in search of the theoretically present but practically never found "humans" somehow lost among the poor, the pointless, the Internet dwelling. Be it through "design contests" or any other means, it is them who are the unsung heroes in this current day saga.

The saga of introducing about eight billion living human beings to the sad reality that there's no need, no room and really no cause for much more than a few millions.

What nao ?

1. Very simple to keep them apart : one's skilled, the other's sweaty. A complicated piece of machinery works well, an idiot belabours fruitlessly. [↩]
2. Anyone earning less than an average income in his geographic region out of capital alone, be it rents, interests, dividends or whatever else. [↩]
3. The Association of Call Girls, Whores, Prostitutes and other Hole Workers. [↩]