Why You Won't Have to Work Anymore?
There are promises that seem emancipatory because they speak the language of a liberation awaited for centuries. “People will no longer have to work” is one of them. Formulated by new tech magnates at a time when artificial intelligence is advancing into increasingly broader areas of cognitive work, it sounds like the final fulfillment of an old human aspiration: that machines bear the burden of work and that time is no longer subject to wages. The phrase has power because it touches a real truth. Much of human work has historically been fatigue, subordination, and wear and tear. It would be absurd to defend it as if every form of work were noble in itself. But precisely because the promise contains a part of the truth, it should be read more carefully.
The decisive question is not whether technology can reduce human labor. It can. Nor is it whether a life less subordinated to employment would be desirable. It would be. The decisive question is another: what place does the human being occupy in that supposed liberation. A humanity liberated from work would only be truly free if it could participate in the conditions that organize that new life: deciding on the systems that produce, accessing their benefits, intervening in their orientation, and not being reduced to a mere user of foreign infrastructures. If that does not happen, the statement itself changes its meaning. “You won’t have to work anymore” does not necessarily mean you will be free; it can also mean you will no longer be necessary. It is one thing to depend on work for subsistence; it is quite another to depend on others to provide the very conditions of subsistence. In the first case, there is an obligation, but there is still a form of intervention: one participates, one negotiates, one contributes something that the system needs. In the second, dependency becomes deeper, because life is sustained by structures that others design, manage, or control, and to which one only accesses as a beneficiary, user, or administered surplus.
Nietzsche and Renunciation Turned into Virtue
To understand this difference between depending on work and depending on others to provide the conditions of life, we must turn to a moral figure described by Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887): the reactive inversion of values. Nietzsche observes that, where human force cannot directly deploy itself on the world, it does not simply disappear. It retracts upon itself and symbolically reorganizes its own impotence. What cannot be achieved begins to appear as morally suspect; what is still preserved begins to present itself as a superior virtue. This operation can be called here the self-deprecating myth: the narrative through which a loss of possibilities is not experienced as a loss, but as a retrospective discovery that what was already there was, in reality, the most valuable. No new position is created. No new horizon is conquered. One learns to interpret renunciation as if it were a higher form of virtue.
This figure appears, in different forms, throughout history. It is not always the conqueror who directly imposes the myth that justifies subordination. Often it is the conquered, the defeated, or the excluded who symbolically reorganizes their impotence to make it tolerable. Defeat needs a narrative, because a society cannot live indefinitely under the pure consciousness of having lost. Thus, the poor can convert their poverty into moral purity; the subjected people can interpret their obedience as fidelity to a higher or divine order; the precarious worker can convert sacrifice and austerity into signs of dignity; those who do not access fame or power can degrade prestige and position as corruption and find in their exclusion a form of authenticity. In all these cases, the myth does not function merely as an external lie. It functions as an internal solution to the problem of continuing to exist after a renunciation or a loss. What cannot be conquered becomes suspect; what was already there becomes sacred or virtuous. Subordination then ceases to feel only like imposition and begins to present itself as a deeper form of truth or authenticity.
But to understand what the self-deprecating myth is, it is equally important to specify what it is not. Not all renunciation is self-deprecation. Not all criticism of success, capital, power, or prestige implies resignation. There are renunciations that open up the world, because they allow one to abandon an imposed desire and build a freer position. In many forms of renunciation, and also in many criticisms of the dominant order, there is discovery, renewal, and real displacement of desire. The difference lies in whether that renunciation produces a new horizon or if it merely revalues what was already there.
The self-deprecating myth does not consist, therefore, in preferring family to money, community to personal success, or everyday life to fame. It consists of something more subtle and, at the same time, much more persistent: presenting a search for expansion—recognition, prestige, power, capital, future—as morally contaminated, and resolving that tension not through a new position, but through the retrospective revaluation of what was already possessed. The subject does not conquer another horizon or find a way forward. Rather, they learn that they should not have desired that way out. They do not transform their relationship with the world; they transform the meaning of their lack. They do not advance to a new place; they learn to interpret the abandonment of the search as a form of moral superiority.
That is why previous continuity appears as a higher truth. What could not be achieved becomes suspicious, and what was already possessed becomes a virtue. Power can continue to enjoy its privileges, while the subjugated ceases to experience their position solely as an external imposition and begins to transform it into proof of authenticity, moral purity, or inner truth. There lies the core of the self-deprecating myth: not in defeat, but in the need to turn defeat into a moral truth about oneself.
Children's Animation as Symbolic Education
Animation aimed at children has persistently installed this structure in contemporary culture, and that is why it is so useful as a cultural archive. It is there, in those early narratives, where a society educates itself without seeming to formulate doctrine. These narratives condense forms of sensibility that are later naturalized. They teach what to fear, what to desire, what to abandon, and what should be read as true. Since the nineties, many animated films have repeated a tension: fame, scale, professional success, industry, and symbolic capital appear as contaminated zones; in contrast, family, memory, intimate passion, small community, or ordinary life appear as a reserve of authenticity.
The film Coco (Pixar, 2017) is the canonical case. Miguel desires an expansion of his possibilities. He wants to be a musician, he wants recognition, he wants to enter the history of great names. His desire is not only expressive; it is also a desire for symbolic capital, for change, growth, and fulfillment. He wants to leave the family circle that prohibits music and become part of the public world of artistic recognition. Ernesto de la Cruz then embodies the perfect figure of contamination: fame, monument, spectacle, posterity, popular cult. But this greatness is founded on betrayal. The idol is not only vain; he has stolen a work, erased the true author, and sacrificed the bond to preserve his name.
The central point is not that Coco criticizes a corrupt celebrity. That would be insufficient. The deeper operation is that the film does not imagine a new synthesis between artistic recognition, creation, fame, and affective continuity. It does not construct a form of success that allows for the expansion of possibilities without destroying memory. The resolution shifts the desire towards what was already there: family, memory, belonging. Miguel discovers that the truth was not in the growth, recognition, and search he desired, but in what was already there from the beginning. The film is moving because this recovery has real power. Memory matters. Family matters. The problem is not there. The problem is that the narrative makes the preservation of these values depend on the renunciation of their pursuit, their growth, and their desire to change the world with their work. As if fame and memory, recognition and family, public creation and intimate continuity were condemned to exclude each other.
In opposition to this narrative, and as a counterbalance within the ideological battlefield of children’s animation, there are films that propose something different: expansion, change, and pursuit do not have to be canceled to preserve what matters. In them, departing from the initial position does not necessarily imply losing bonds, responsibility, or authenticity. Growth does not appear as inevitable betrayal, but as the possibility of inhabiting a new form of relationship with the world.
To cite opposing examples, Despicable Me (Illumination, 2010) doesn't work under that logic, because Gru doesn't discover that he already possessed what was valuable from the beginning. Parenthood appears as a real novelty. It's not a retrospective compensation for what came before, but a subjective transformation. Gru doesn't revalue his old world; he enters a position he didn't have. Similarly, The LEGO Movie (Warner Bros, 2014) also doesn't fit into that category, because it's not about accepting a previous lack as sufficient value, but about discovering a new creative power: the ability to intervene, compose, dismantle, and remake the world. And Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli, 2001) is even further from it: Chihiro doesn't simply remember that what was valuable was already in her previous life. The film narrates a step of maturation, responsibility, and autonomy. She leaves passive childhood and enters a more demanding form of presence. There is no simple reappropriation of what has already been given; there is transition, trial, transformation.
These counterpoints are essential because they prevent misreading the thesis. The problem is not that a narrative values shared things, family, or everyday life. The problem arises when that valuation does not open up a new possibility, but rather teaches one to reconcile with a lack of possibilities. The self-deprecating myth does not simply say: “this also has value.” It says something more closed: “what you could not achieve was not necessary, because what you already had was enough from the beginning.” That structure is much more subtle, and therefore more effective.
This does not mean that Coco is a “bad” movie or that its values are false. That would be ridiculous. That's precisely where the complexity lies. The self-deprecating myth works because it relies on partial truths. It is true that fame and power can corrupt. It is true that family, memory, and community have a value that the market cannot measure. But the ideological operation is not in affirming these truths, but in converting them into a necessary incompatibility. It is not necessary to be excluded from capital to preserve the family. It is not necessary to renounce recognition to preserve memory. It is not necessary to remain small to maintain authenticity. When the narrative presents that renunciation as an almost natural condition of virtue, it no longer just criticizes capital, fame, or power: it teaches one to live the lack of access—and, above all, the abandonment of the search for new possibilities—as a form of moral superiority.
Attention Economy Myths
With that structure in mind, the transition to the technological present ceases to be a leap towards a purely economic or technical analysis. Recommendation algorithms, the digital market, and the attention economy then appear not only as technological phenomena, but can be read as a new symbolic organization of life. They require certain renunciations to become acceptable, certain losses to be presented as progress, and certain forms of participation to be experienced as opportunity, expression, or freedom. If children's animation allows us to see how a culture learns to consider the renunciation of certain searches for expansion and expression as natural, the digital economy reproduces the same operation in another field: that of the daily production of attention, content, and presence.
Because the attention economy also needs myths. It doesn't just run on infrastructure, data, and algorithms. It runs on an anthropology. It needs subjects who want to produce, expose themselves, react, watch, create, and do it again. To understand why, one must analyze its structural problem: human attention does not remain fixed. The brain adapts. Every stimulus loses strength with repetition. Surprise runs out, pleasure normalizes, and initial intensity fades. What captivated yesterday is no longer enough today. That's why the algorithm cannot depend on a stable set of content. It needs permanent variation.
Algorithmic recommendation works against habituation. To retain millions of users, it is not enough to offer good content, or even a lot of content. An almost inexhaustible reserve of small differences is needed: styles, faces, voices, durations, gestures, controversies, confessions, tutorials, reactions, opinions, defeats, humiliations, jokes, advice, anger, and promises. Each user demands a different sequence of stimuli; each session needs its own diet; each fatigue of interest compels a new variation. The raw material of the attention economy is not a stable catalog of content, but a constantly renewed flow.
From this arises a brutal demand: to capture the attention of millions of users constantly, infinite content is needed. And that infinite content cannot be produced through classic paid labor. If every video, meme, review, or any other digital content had to be paid for as industrial work, the platform economy would be radically different. Its profitability depends on an immense part of that production being voluntary, aspirational, precarious, or directly free. The platform does not produce the world it distributes; it designs the infrastructure where millions produce for it.
Here appears the first necessary myth: exceptional salvation. The attention economy needs a multitude to work as if they were not working, and for that it offers a promise: anyone can be discovered. Anyone can go viral. Anyone can be an influencer, streamer, or founder of the next successful project. The story of the minimal app that triumphs, the home video that explodes, the channel that takes off, or the creator who turns their room into a global studio fulfills a precise symbolic function. It doesn't matter that the majority doesn't make it. It matters that the exception remains imaginable. The system does not need to distribute success; it needs to distribute expectation.
But that promise of salvation is not enough. Because the majority senses, in one way or another, that they will not be saved. They know that they produce for a flow that overwhelms them, that their content sinks into the mass, that their visibility is minimal, and that, even so, all this effort feeds an infrastructure over which they have no control. Here enters the second, much deeper myth: the self-deprecating myth of post-work.
When Not Working Means Not Being Needed
The technocratic discourse of “you won’t have to work anymore” operates precisely in that area. It names a potential loss as if it were guaranteed emancipation. If artificial intelligence takes on an increasing part of cognitive work, the human seems to be liberated. But liberated from what, and towards where? If what is lost is only the burden of work, there can be emancipation. But if what is lost is the ability to participate in the construction of the common world and to be recognized as someone necessary within it, then what appears is not a superior freedom, but a new form of dispensability.
The anthropological loss is enormous. Work has not only been wages. It has also been a form of inscription in the world. Through work, even under unjust conditions, the subject could say: I participate in something that needs me. My activity sustains a part of common life and the economy that organizes it. This inscription could be exploited, alienated, poorly paid, or humiliating, but it still provided a foothold: the material world depended to some extent on human action. If this need is broken without a new form of participation appearing, subjectivity is left in a much more fragile position. It is no longer just about being exploited. It is about not being necessary.
Being exploited still implies a conflictual relationship: someone needs your strength, your time, or your knowledge. There is an asymmetry, but also a dependence. Being dispensable is something else. In that position, the subject no longer experiences themselves as a dominated part of production, but as a surplus. They can be entertained, assisted, or subsidized, but not recognized as someone necessary. The promise of not working anymore can therefore hide a significant change: from the exploited subject to the surplus subject.
However, the fact that the subject ceases to be necessary in formal employment does not mean they become inactive. That is the decisive point. They may lose importance within stable employment and, at the same time, become more active than ever within systems that generate economic value from their participation. The digital economy does not need everyone to have a job to extract value from their activity. It merely needs connected users: people who respond, watch, upload content, order preferences with their gestures, and feed data, recommendations, and platform interactions. Where work no longer organizes subsistence, the platform organizes something else: continuous availability and interaction.
That is why the loss of labor centrality does not necessarily lead to leisure. It can lead to a more diffuse form of activity, precisely because the platform derives value from actions that were not previously considered work. Uploading a video, writing a review, rating a product, commenting on a news item, replying in a forum, posting an opinion, recording a reaction, tagging an image, or recommending an application are minimal gestures, but they produce content, order preferences, refine systems, sustain the platform's flow, and enable new forms of attention capture. It is not necessary for the subject to recognize themselves as a worker for their activity to be exploited. In fact, the less it is recognized as work, the better the system functions.
That is the central paradox: the attention economy does not eliminate human activity; it de-formalizes it. It turns it into work without wages, without contracts, and without recognition. It does not need us to stop producing. It needs us to produce without demanding to be recognized as producers. For this, every activity must appear under another name: creativity as personal expression, content uploaded to platforms as spontaneous participation, exposure as opportunity, data obtained from each user as an inevitable consequence of being connected, interaction within platforms as social life, and system training as daily use. Thus, the boundary between work and life is blurred, but not to liberate life, but to make it continuously exploitable by algorithms and economically useful for platforms.
In this context, the self-deprecating myth plays a decisive role. It helps to accept the loss of centrality in the form of a moral revelation. Just as in Coco the aspiration to fame is neutralized by the discovery that family was already the true value, in the post-work discourse the loss of being considered productively necessary can be neutralized by the idea that work was never the true value. The structure is the same: what becomes inaccessible or is lost is redefined as secondary; what remains available is presented as if it had always been essential. A new world is not conquered; one learns to interpret the reduction of our possibilities as if it were something more valuable.
That is why “you won’t have to work anymore” is so dangerous when it appears separated from the question of ownership and participation. It can function as a form of symbolic anesthesia. It does not ask who owns the machines, who controls the models, who manages the platforms, who decides the distribution of surplus, who governs the infrastructure, or who defines the goals of automation. Instead, it shifts the discussion towards a gentle anthropology: you will be more creative, have more time, live better, not be tied to employment. But if that liberated time takes place within platforms that capture attention, data, and content, then liberation can become a new form of unrecognized productive dependence.
The attention economy needs exactly this ambiguity. On the one hand, it needs the myth of exceptional salvation so that millions produce content hoping to be chosen by the algorithm. On the other hand, it needs the self-deprecating myth so that those not chosen can interpret their own loss of centrality as part of a better future. The first says: maybe you will make it. The second says: if you don’t make it, maybe it doesn’t matter anyway, because the true future wasn’t about making it, but about being liberated from that old burden of work. Between both narratives, an enormous machinery is sustained: infinite production, infinite expectation, infinite renunciation.
When Dependence Poses as Freedom
Here the logic partially diverges from old industrial capitalism. That model needed to distribute sufficient wages to sustain mass consumption. The platform economy, however, can extract value even from subjects with low consumption capacity, as long as they remain connected, active, and measurable. An impoverished user can still generate data, content, interaction, and small expenses concentrated on very few infrastructures. The classic question—if no one works, who will buy—does not disappear, but it becomes insufficient. A growing part of the value no longer depends solely on buying goods, but on remaining within systems where attention, behavior, and content production become exploitable.
That doesn't mean the material economy ceases to matter. Life still needs food, energy, housing, hospitals, networks, servers, batteries, and devices. None of that disappears because a growing part of the value is extracted from attention or data. What changes is something else: platform capitalism can derive value from people with lower direct consumption capacity, as long as those people remain within its infrastructures. Even if they spend less, they still produce value: content, preferences, data, interaction, visibility, and dwell time. That's why the weakening of wages does not automatically imply the collapse of the platform economy. It can continue to function if it manages to concentrate an ever-larger share of spending and turn connected life into a continuous source of economic value.
Here appears the anthropological core of the problem. A society that too quickly accepts its own dispensability loses more than jobs. It loses the imagination of its own necessity. It stops asking what world it could build and starts asking how to adapt to the world others will build. It stops demanding participation in the structures that organize its life and settles for accessing its services. It stops thinking of technology as a political field and receives it as destiny. That is the contemporary form of symbolic surrender: not obeying a visible master, but accepting that the structure that makes us less necessary actually expresses the natural course of progress.
The self-deprecating myth always appears where a loss needs to become bearable. Its religious form could say: you have no power, but you have salvation. Its moral form could say: you have no wealth, but you have virtue. Its emerging technocratic form could say: you have no work, but you have freedom. In all cases, the danger is not in valuing salvation, virtue, or freedom. The danger is that these values are used to close off the question of what has been lost.
Therefore, criticism does not consist in defending work as if it were a necessary condemnation, nor in presenting success as the only legitimate horizon. Nor does it consist in denying the value of family, community, or everyday life. The problem arises when these values become obligatory compensation for a loss of possibilities. No human value should demand the acceptance of one’s own powerlessness as a price. If technology can free up time, it must also free up power. If automation reduces work, it must open up real forms of participation, decision, and access to its benefits. If the attention economy feeds on our daily creativity, that creativity cannot continue to appear as a gratuitous residue of connected life. And if the future promises that we will no longer have to work, the least we can do is ask if that means we will no longer have to obey, or simply that we will no longer be necessary.
The true emancipation does not consist in reinterpreting what was lost as irrelevant. It consists in preventing loss from organizing the horizon. A free culture does not need to tell the subject that what they could not achieve never mattered. It needs to open up ways in which possibilities can be expanded without destroying bonds, memory, community, or meaning. This is the point that the self-deprecating myth blocks: it presents as wisdom what may be an anticipated renunciation.
The attention economy needs infinite content because it battles against the human brain's permanent adaptation. It needs infinite producers because no centralized industry alone can generate the variability that this capture demands. It needs free labor because compensating all that production would break its structure. And it needs myths because no multitude indefinitely accepts producing for free if they do not receive, at least, a promise of salvation or a dignifying explanation for their own lack of salvation. The new self-deprecating myth fulfills this second function: it teaches us to call the loss of being considered necessary freedom, the renunciation of centrality progress, and a dependence we still cannot fully name the future.
The phrase “you won’t have to work anymore” should therefore be read not as an obvious promise, but as a field of dispute. It can name a real emancipation or an anticipated surrender. Everything depends, as always, on what happens with ownership, infrastructure, surplus, and meaning. If automation frees humans to participate more fully in the world, then it will have opened a new historical position. But if it only teaches us to accept that our activity no longer deserves wages, that our creativity can be captured as content, that our attention can be turned into raw material, and that our dispensability is a higher form of freedom, then we will not be facing the end of work. We will be facing one of its most totalizing forms and, precisely because of that, its most invisible ones.
And perhaps that is the true novelty: not that machines work for us, but that we continue working for them while learning to celebrate that we are no longer needed.