this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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You're understanding of "gig work" is comically outdated. You sound naive or trollish. "Jobs for teens" like fast food work, grocery clerking, and working at movie theaters have always been taken by people who need "real jobs" and not just teens looking for extra money. So you're wrong that these careers exclusively for kids to get pocket money ever existed, certainly not in living memory.
Secondly, OP isn't talking about working the carwash for the summer. He's talking about Uber and AirBNB. Maybe you heard of them? Over the last decade, they've caused massive disruption of the hotel and taxi industries by allowing thousands of unlicensed and unregulated "micro entrepreneurs" 🤮 to create a new economy of pay-per-task workers who end up owning all the physical assets (which rapidly deprecate in value) but none of the infrastructure or investments (which do not, or do so on much different schedules).
Houses being bought up for short term rentals has contributed to the housing crisis. Its caused economic harm to inner cities. It's a looking part of the polycrisis destroying the practical economy and the planet's livability. But yeah man, the real problem is lazy people just don't want real adult jobs, give me a fucking break.
I agree with most all of that, but shit jobs for teens were all teens in the day. We started in those shit jobs, and our coworkers were all peers. That's why so many middle-aged people don't get the modern paradigm. The modern world no longer reflects our youth, at all.
I worked at Lowe's for 5-months. But you're right. Most of the gig workers coming through were older than me. I'm 54. Imagine that.
Signed, GenX.