Sounds like a headline from The Onion doesn’t it? Shocking that if you lay off tens of thousands of people in an industry, those left standing might feel…I don’t know…bereft, anxious, paranoid? Fortunately, I just discovered Blind, a site for employees to share all of these feelings and even a little survivor's guilt, anonymously.
I had never heard of the site Blind until reading The NY Times Business section - my “sports” pages - last weekend. The Times describes Blind as “a kind of Reddit meets LinkedIn,” especially noting the gallows humor of the nameless professionals who report there from the front lines.
Given the times, let me clarify that there are no troops or bombs involved. Yet. Unless you see the tens of thousands of crushed, defeated employees as casualties and mass firings as explosions. Which one could. And some do. I particularly enjoyed the reporter's description of the atmosphere in Big Tech right now: “a throbbing economic anxiety infects almost every conversation.”
But back to the gallows humor. .
One of the gifts of Blind is offering a through-the-keyhole view into how human beings respond to disappointment, insecurity, and betrayal. Anonymity helps. Once again, we see that for many people, not just comedians, humor is a survival instinct. It breaks tension. It creates connection.
What’s also interesting is that because users are bonded by the shared experience of layoffs and the looming threat of AI replacing them, the humor isn’t weaponized. People aren’t roasting each other to gain status, the way comics often do. As we all recently witnessed during the now-controversial Kevin Hart roast. Instead, they’re trying to reassure one another that they’re not alone.
I’m clearly not from Big Tech or even Little Tech. Basically, I’m from Big People. But I wanted to highlight this site for two reasons: first, because if you’re struggling with fear about the future of work, it may help to have a place to vent and connect; and second, because it’s a real-time illustration of something I know to be true.
When people find others to laugh with, they feel less isolated. Less trapped inside their own fear. More hopeful.
I know I’m always talking about laughter, but what many people miss is that it’s not really about jokes. The method behind my laughter madness is that laughter is the way in. It’s one of the fastest ways to bring humanity into the room, to feed the deeply human hunger to feel seen, heard, and connected to each other.
The humor found scrolling Blind proves this.
It actually gives me hope that no matter how hard Big Tech stomps around trying to optimize, automate, and eliminate people, human beings will continue to need connection. And we’ll find ways to create it. Maybe that sounds naive, but I still believe insatiable greed will not, in the long run, kill the human spirit.
It may eventually kill all of us literally, but until then, real people will be lurking in the corners laughing together.
