6 'Dream Jobs' No Sane Person Should Want
When people suggest you dress for the job you want, they probably don't mean a straitjacket. So before you go and do something stupid like following your dreams, search up someone who "made it" in your desired profession and look them in their eyes to see if they've got the thousand-yard stare. You'll end up realizing that your side hustle selling crocheted Baby Yoda tea cozies on Etsy might be healthier and more economically sound than most of these doozies ...
Saturday Night Live Is The Most Traumatizing Gig In Show Business
Launching the careers of Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase, Saturday Night Live is a TV institution. It's evident why young comedians still jump at the chance to join the ranks of Lorne Michaels' creation.
They shouldn't, not unless they're a glutton for emotional abuse, backbiting, and daily degradation. Post-SNL, cast members recount horror stories of sabotage, coked-up performers refusing scripts written by women, actors scheming to steal the spotlight, writers beating the shit out of each other, and other drug-fueled middle-school bullshit such as peeing in jars to psych out newbies.
40-something years of alpha-male fistfights, prima donna hosts refusing skits written by younger members, bubble-headed sociopaths stabbing coworkers in the head, and numerous bitter, long-term feuds, and there's no doubt Studio 8H qualifies as a toxic work environment. Hell, it's the Chernobyl of improv comedy.
Janeane Garofalo referred to her brief stint as "the most miserable experience of my life," escaping at the earliest chance possible. The cutthroat environment of the show brings out the worst in people, everyone relieved to leave SNL after their tour of duty, armed with plenty of juicy material to trash the show and humiliate ex-colleagues. You don't have to be a deranged narcissist to work there. But it helps.
Making Porn Will Devour Your Soul, But Not For The Reasons You Think
Let us say up front, we don't care what your kink is. Have a blast. But there are a few vital things you ought to know if you're entertaining the thought of becoming the next Riley Reid or Mia Khalifa.
For one thing, you probably can't, and you will probably never get rich. You'd make more cash and have better long-term job prospects holding the boom mic. Adult video performers rarely last longer than a year anyway. Big-time porn companies are teetering on the edge of collapse due to free (read: stolen and pirated) porn. The golden age is long over. We're guessing less than five of you remember glory days of peep booths or the "porno curtain" in the local video store:
But the death of the porn cartel might be a good thing. The community can be a shithole that treats its own as cattle, rife with unscrupulous scumbags in front of and behind the camera. Despite male fantasies, female porn stars can be incredibly choosy (as is their right), usually employing a "no list," barring certain men from their shoots. However, while these lists can wisely include banning weirdo assholes, they can also choose to exclude anyone who is Black in order to not offend certain fans.
Seems like cam girls got the right idea to go at it alone and cut out the skeevy, douchebag middlemen.
Pilots Are Pushed To The Brink Of A Mental Breakdown
A career in aviation is a dream for millions, but current circumstances have obliterated those fantasies. Now even the Top Gun studs are getting pink slips. It may seem like the second-worst time to be a pilot, but it sucked before, in all honesty.
Keep in mind, the vast majority of pilots are relegated to the "puddle-jumpers." Yeah, you still get a cool hat but no $300,000 a year salary. New pilots, co-pilots, and those that operate out of remote areas make about as much as a fast-food employee, often less than $17,000 a year. If you have landed the dream job, you're lucky because airline pilot is the new liberal arts major. Qualified personnel are sitting on their asses right now, unions actively discouraging new pilots.
For those who tough it out, their future probably doesn't include landing a state-of-the-art airliner at Heathrow or LAX. They'll be steering rickety charter flights for cut-rate regional airlines, working longer hours for less pay. A study places the depression level in pilots well above the national average in the US, and the consequences are grim. That impoverished guy you see consuming Monster Energy & stimulants and curling up in the fetal position on the terminal floor? That might be your pilot. Enjoy your flight!
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AAA Game Studios Are Cutting-Edge Sweatshops
Are video games actually worth 70 bucks? If so, it's because the studios really need to hire twice as many staff to adequately make them. The world (exec and gamer alike) treats the backbone of the game industry like an old mule that needs a beating.
Innocuously nicknamed "the crunch," the final stages of a game's development are wrought with frantic last-second testing, tweaking, and optimization. Look no further than huge titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us: Part 2, and Anthem, for a sobering glimpse into how the sausage is made. Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games, once bragged that his employees worked 100-hour work weeks, but his galley slaves doing all the work weren't quite so keen on the mandatory overtime without any benefits or extra compensation.
Naughty Dog, the devs of The Last of Us franchise, managed only a paltry a 12-hour-a-day pace. The situation was worse in Edmonton, the site of BioWare's dev team on the notoriously rushed Anthem. Staff reported a crushing weight of stress and sadness that ended in mass crying fits. As one member recalled, "Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware." Not much better for the irate gamers intimately acquainted with the Anthem error screen.
If these poor bastards weren't getting enough abuse from their bosses, they receive it from their own supposed "fans" at the mere mention of necessary delays. All that hate for trying to make sure the game isn't a buggy piece of crap. No wonder we only get one Elder Scrolls and GTA game a decade.
Teachers Are Routinely Abused And Harassed Too
Withstanding pathetic pay, obnoxious kids and their stupid Fortnite dances, teachers have bigger things to worry about than calling in the janitor to dump sawdust on the pile of puke. Their reasons differ. One thing is certain; teachers cannot get the hell out of the profession fast enough.
According to a former Oregon State Teacher of the Year, student-on-teacher abuse is the "profession's nasty secret," educators put in danger on a daily basis. The response of principals and administrators is to tell them to shut up and take it. Schools don't want that attention, so they look the other way. The kids who commit these crimes almost always get away with it. Greensboro, North Carolina schools report 235 separate acts of violence or roughly one physical assault against a teacher or staff member a school day. Which helps explains the abysmally high attrition rate, reaching a turnover rate of 40% over five years in Arkansas.
A look at the general culture of public schools gives other clues as to why high-quality, self-respecting individuals don't want to stick around. They're expected to cover up untold sexual crimes by fellow teachers and coerced to fix the grades of students in the name of sweet federal grant money, the average school more like an episode of The Wire than High School: The Musical.
The Average Olympic Hopeful's Life Is Incredibly Depressing
Think "Olympian," and you're picturing Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, or Simone Biles. Your mind did not wander to the image of a guy in rural Missouri, wrapped up in a Home Depot apron with a GoFundMe page, did it?
Olympic athletes are subject to the whims of national governments, albeit afforded rewards and training facilities (sometimes). If that doesn't sound too bad, tell that to the athletes screwed over by the cartoonishly corrupt Russian Anti-Doping Agency or the hundreds of Cold War female East German athletes forced to take anabolic steroids, risking spinal damage and deformed ovaries, sometimes without their knowledge or consent.
The promise of the medal podium comes only after you've made a sizable down payment in the form of time, health, and meager savings. A large portion of expenses for equipment or use of facilities is donated out of pity, offered out of kindness from local business owners, not Nike. The life of an aspiring Olympian requires determination and a knack for pandering to people's patriotism. That's a polite way of saying begging.
Aside from a tiny handful of sports, there is simply no prospect of making a successful living off of sports. A Canadian study in 2014 found the average athlete thousands of dollars in debt, working as cashiers and construction workers as their parents took out another mortgage, vainly trying to subsidize the next Apolo Ohno. Victory might immortalize you, but that's just if you can overcome your toughest opponent yet: the repo guy repossessing the car that you sleep in.
Top Image: NBC Universal
