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leisure

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leisure
Votey panel for leisure
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Explanation

This comic satirizes the recurring prediction that technology will free humanity from work and give us abundant leisure time.

A woman is relaxing under a tree and says that in the future, we'll have more leisure time. Her companion flatly responds "No." The woman then lists all the modern conveniences -- dishwashers, no housekeeping, food prepared for us, entertainment, instant communication -- and notes that despite all this, people are busier than ever. She observes that we use our freed-up time "enriching our kids with stuff neither we nor the kids want to do."

She reasons that if technology hasn't given us leisure despite solving so many problems, "it stands to reason that if technology can't solve everything else easily, we'll just find some other way to completely fill up all of our time."

The punchline comes when her companion starts recording and says "Please like and subscribe" -- revealing this supposedly contemplative moment about leisure is actually content creation, which is itself a form of work disguised as leisure. This perfectly demonstrates the comic's thesis: even a conversation about having too little free time is being commodified and turned into labor.

The humor targets the paradox that each generation promises the next will have more free time, yet we consistently fill every available moment with new forms of productivity, social obligation, or content consumption.

View History (1) Original Comic