why I want to reread Cory Doctorow's 'For the Win' despite all the other books I need to get to

My Day One journaling app told me this morning that today marks one year since I read Cory Doctorow’s For the Win after picking it (and many other of his books) in a Humble Bundle. That means that it’s finally time to write out some thoughts that I’ve been having over the past several weeks, all centered around wanting to reread the book. I have a lot of other books on my “to read” list right now, so it’s kind of ridiculous to want to get back to this one, but there are two things that have been really pushing this idea.

First, Elon Musk…

…and what sure looks like a pattern of paying other people to level up his characters in video games. This has some connections to Doctorow’s book, and that has had the weird effect of making me want to reread it whenever I think about Elon Musk (or at least the way he approaches video games)

In short, gold farming—a variation on the practice that Musk is alleged to be involved with—is at the center of For the Win, where Doctorow uses it as a metaphor for/example of labor issues. Cheap gold farmers in the Global South work terrible shifts in bad conditions for no pay to make life easier for privileged folks in the Global North. Because gold farming is “cheating,” the companies behind the games want to get rid of it, but the whole system is kind of dependent on it, so wouldn’t it be better to make conditions better for gold farmers? It turns out that these laborers contribute too much to the system that with some collective action, they could bring about real change that makes the system less exploitative. This metaphor makes it so much more interesting that Musk seems to be taking credit for others’ work within these video game contexts, because it’s in keeping with his approach to business, too.

Second, recession…

…the United States’ current flirting with one and the uptick in references to the Great Recession of the mid 2000s. I don’t know how true this actually is, but For the Win strikes me as a response to the Great Recession, and as I noted the last time that I read and reviewed it, I don’t really know a lot about that. I feel like I should.

Wikipedia describes the Great Recession as lasting “from late 2007 to mid-2009,” and I happened to spend that entire time as a Latter-day Saint missionary, living and working in a naïve context where I just didn’t have to pay attention. In fact, I have a distinct memory of a time in early 2009 where I either spoke aloud or wrote down my disappointment that one of the people we were teaching had found a job and was no longer available to meet with us. I’ve recognized how gross this was for a while (I’m pretty sure I wrote/said “he needs to be out of work again so that we can meet more often,” and I wince every time I think of it), but it wasn’t until just now that I realized that he may have been out of work because of the recession. It’s also interesting to note that the mission president who oversaw all of our work had recently retired from a high-ranking executive position at Fannie Mae, which would go on to play a role in sparking the recession. To be clear, I liked him a lot, and for all my complicated feelings about my mission and growing economic cynicism, I’m not interested in reducing anyone to two-dimensional villain status. I do sometimes wonder, though, what I would or should say to him about the upcoming disaster if I ever Quantum Leaped myself back to our first meeting in 2007.

conclusion

I don’t know that I’ll really make it back to this book any time soon. I could more easily reread In Real Life, a graphic novel adaptation of a Doctorow story that touches on many of the same themes (though more on labor than on recession), so I may do that instead. At any rate, I’m grateful for this book and the way that it has put new ideas into my head. If you haven’t ever read it, I think it’s worth a try.

• Cory Doctorow
• Day One
• For the Win
• labor
• Elon Musk
• Humble Bundle
• In Real Life
• Latter-day Saint missionaries