Fickle Food Economics: The Fame-ification of Labour

Since I was little, I kept hearing the same thing: "You never show your work." My teachers would raise their eyebrows at my homework—the answers were always right, but no working shown. One even said it was selfish not to reveal how I got there. But that’s how my brain functioned best—quietly, inwardly. I needed to turtle into myself, retreat and focus. And more often than not, I’d come out with something great. Still, people were obsessed with progress reports, Friday updates, signs that I was “doing the work.” It wasn’t enough to produce results—you had to make the work visible.

This obsession with visibility isn’t new.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to Jagannath Puri, a temple in India. My mum was researching the links between Roman, Greek, and Hindu gods—trying to find threads that tied them together for a paper she was writing. One stop in her journey was this temple in Puri. She told me a story: An artisan was building the temple’s idols and made one request—no one was to disturb him while he worked. Not a knock, not a question. The queen passed by daily and listened by the door. One day, the sounds stopped. Weeks passed, and she thought the artisan had died inside. Restless and fearful, she opened the door. The spell broke. The idols were left unfinished. To this day, they stand without hands.

The artisan didn’t show his work. And that bothered people.

I think about that a lot.

Today, doing something well isn’t enough. You have to show you’re doing it. You have to be seen.

Fame plays a big part in this. And like success, it comes in different flavours. There’s world-fame—Taylor Swift-level. Then there’s literary fame, like Doris Lessing. You could be famous in your town. Or just well-known in your field. Fame just means enough people know you, watch you, are influenced by you. It’s not always about scale—it’s about presence.

Some careers depend on being seen. A musician, an artist—you can’t thrive without visibility. A marketing head needs to be seen because they’re responsible for five people’s salaries. Being seen becomes part of the job. But then there are those who prefer background fame. Quiet recognition. The Ron Swansons of the world—who stay off the grid, who believe that privacy is freedom. I relate to them. I crave that sometimes too—to be known for what I do, but not put on display.

LinkedIn made this worse. It started as a place to connect, find jobs, and make professional introductions. Now, it feels like a stage. People write about how their dog taught them lessons right before a big interview. Or they post play-by-plays of their job search, sprinkled with life advice. It’s all a bit noisy now. Less about work, more about performance.

And then there’s the side hustle culture.

Side hustles hurt my brain. But who do we blame? The economy? Our parents? The system? Our grandfathers who didn’t leave us trust funds? Everyone seems to need extra income just to live. It’s not always about ambition. Sometimes, it’s just about survival. We want to travel, experience life,and enjoy it a little. And we need money for that. But now we’re being sold side hustles by people whose actual side hustle is just selling side hustles.

People aren’t always chasing meaning. They’re chasing momentum.

There’s a big difference between chasing success and chasing significance. One gets you claps. The other gives you something deeper. But we live in a time where showing our steps matters more than where we end up. Where the process is curated, captioned, and shared. Proof that you’re “doing something.”

This blog? It’s my performance, too. I’ve been writing essays for four years. Sometimes I think I’ll ask someone to delete them when I’m gone—like Emily Dickinson told her sister. Maybe we wouldn’t even know Emily if her sister had listened.

Burnout is real. But emptiness is worse. After every milestone, I feel like I’ve hit the top—and then I just feel… lost. Like the applause fades too quickly. Like I should feel proud, but I don’t. I’ve even stopped enjoying the praise. The messages come in, and they feel hollow. I wonder how someone like Taylor Swift deals with that—when the cheers never end. Does she still feel it? Or does it just become background noise?

What do I want now?

Stillness. Quiet. A pause.

I want us all to live a little more— off the feed, off the grid. Laugh without turning it into a Reel. Make things without marketing them. Remember what it’s like to just be.

I want us to remember the artisan. And the gods with no hands.

“We are being sold side hustles by people whose side hustle is selling side hustles.” — Me

Disclaimer: I respect processes and think its necessary. I think it's a grey area where we need to factor in context

P.S. I was thinking my side hustle should be reading endlessly and doing nothing about it and then calling it my side hustle to people. When they ask how much I make. I can say in a Maya Rudolph voice - 0.00. But at least because it's my side hustle, they'll say, "Well, she's reading and watching comedy shows endlessly for work."