Having had a bullshit job before, my personal experience is not that I felt bad/stressed because I was being useless and not contributing to society, it was the constant, low-grade fear that somebody would notice I was useless and fire me. I didn't mind that the company couldn't be bothered to do anything with me--ultimately they are buying my time and beyond a certain point it's not my responsibility to decide how they use it. But a constant sense of negative job security is hell.

As far as I know, that was the main sentiment of that 2013 article.

Edit: In my opinion, it's this fear that drives people to occupy their peers with abundant outreach, ultimately increasing the bullshit level for everyone.

Had this sitting in open tabs for months.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber Review

Thanks. I'm a fan of some of this chap's ideas. Good to see him getting a guernsey here.

I went from a job that was quite fulfilling to a semi bullshit job. I'm making enough money to pay off my loans that I couldn't afford. It can be really depressing and I am afraid someone is going to say "wait he spends half his time just sitting there" and that I'll get fired. But when I could pay my bills I was more depressed.

It's weird... i hire people to do bullshit jobs that a machine can do.

The yearly pay i would offer is about the same cost as the machine that would do their job.

I would rather hire the person than the robot though

Kingdomist!

"Just think what kind of culture, music, science, ideas might result if all those people were liberated to do things they actually thought were important. So if the question is one of personal responsibility, I’d say: let’s just give everyone enough to live on, some sort of universal basic income, and say “okay, you’re all free now to decide for yourselves what you have to contribute to the world.”

Then, sure, we could say that people would be responsible for what they came up with. And sure, a lot of it would be nonsense. But it’s hard to imagine a full 40-50% would be doing nonsense, and that’s the situation that we have today. And if we get even one or two new Miles Davises or Einsteins or Freuds or Shakespeares out of the deal, I’d say we’d have more than made back our investment. "

Preach, brother.