My Son The... Wait, What Do You Do Again?

I just... I spent twenty minutes trying to explain to my brother what Chloe actually does for a living, and I think he thinks she's unemployed.

Oh, join the club, Gary. Join the club.

What did you tell him she does?

I said she makes videos on the internet. And he goes, oh, like a director? And I said, no, she films herself opening boxes of—

Like the unboxing things! My niece watches those.

Right, but she calls herself a... a content creator. Last week, she was paid actual human money to film herself making a coffee. Just pouring milk.

Well, it's advertising, isn't it? It's modern advertising.

I guess? But she gets sent so much free stuff. Fifty boxes of, I don't even know, vegan dirt for houseplants. Our garage is full of it.

Wait, vegan dirt?

Don't ask. But look, she's paying her own rent, so God bless her, but I don't get it.

I would take pouring milk over whatever Jason is doing right now. He told me he's a... oh, what was it... a prompt engineer.

A prompt engineer? That sounds quite technical. Like he works at a train depot?

That's what I thought! I told Mrs. Higgins at church he was in engineering. Turns out, he just types questions into that robot thing. The AI.

Wait, he just Googles things for a living?

No, no, he says it's not Google. He says he has to coax the machine. He literally told me, Mom, I have to whisper sweet nothings to the language model so it doesn't hallucinate. I thought he was on drugs, Gary.

Hallucinate? The computer is hallucinating?

Apparently! But here's the crazy part. My sister's husband looked this up, because we didn't believe it was a real job. Do you know what these prompt engineers make? Some of them are pulling in three hundred thousand dollars a year.

You're joking.

Three hundred—

I am dead serious. Three hundred grand to type, hey robot, write me a poem about a toaster but make it sound like Shakespeare.

I'm in the wrong business. I've been running a hardware store for thirty years and this kid is whispering to a laptop.

I know! But what about Oliver, Susan? He got that new job in the city, right?

Yes, well. He is a Growth Marketer. Which, initially, I was thrilled about. I thought, oh lovely, he's working in agriculture or perhaps urban forestry.

Ha! Growing trees.

Exactly! He kept talking about nurturing leads and funnels. So for his birthday, I actually bought him a very nice set of copper gardening tools.

Oh, Susan, no you didn't.

I did! I did. And he looked at me like I had three heads. He said, Mum, I sit in front of a spreadsheet optimizing click-through rates. I said, what on earth is being grown then?

What did he say?

He said, engagement, Mum. I grow engagement. I still have no idea what that means. I think he just changes the color of buttons on websites to see if people click them more.

He changes button colors.

Apparently. He calls it A/B testing. I call it... well, I don't know what to call it. Fiddling about?

It's all made up! All of it. Back in our day, a job was a place you went to, and you made a thing, or you sold a thing, or you fixed a thing.

And you wore a suit. Or at least hard pants. Oliver works in his pajama bottoms. He wears a dress shirt on the top half for his Zoom calls, and flannel trousers on the bottom.

Oh, Chloe doesn't even wear a dress shirt. She bought a ring light that cost more than my first car, and she talks to her phone all day. Hey guys, get ready with me! Ready for what? You're not going anywhere! You're in your bedroom!

Okay but... they're happy, right? I mean, Jason bought a house. A house! From whispering to the robot.

Yeah, well, Chloe is fully off our payroll. Hasn't asked for a dime in two years. So if the internet wants to pay her to drink coffee on camera, I'm her biggest fan.

Quite right. Oliver has a dental plan, which is more than I can say for his time in the indie rock band. So, if fiddling with website buttons pays for his root canals, I say long live the growth funnels.

Cheers to that. Now, does anyone want to explain to me what a cryptocurrency is? Because Jason brought that up on Sunday and I just smiled and nodded.

Oh no. Don't get me started. We need another bottle of wine for that.

I'll fetch the corkscrew.