Politics Theory Other Fake work and Y2K w/ Leigh Claire La Berge
Jul 10, 2025
Leigh Claire La Berge, a Professor of English at CUNY and author of Fake Work, shares her insights from her time at a major communications conglomerate during the Y2K crisis. She explores the absurdity of corporate culture and disillusionment with capitalism. Leigh dissects the socio-cultural dynamics of the late 1990s, the impact of the dot-com boom, and the unique challenges faced by women in the workplace. With a humorous take on Marxism, she calls for a deeper understanding of worker experiences and the cycles of economic belief and disillusionment.
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1990s Dot-Com Optimism
- The late 1990s were marked by optimism and a belief in capitalism's democratizing power due to the dot-com boom.
- This era combined economic optimism with global peace, seen as a unique capitalist moment.
Y2K's Dual Nature
- Y2K was originally a real technical problem caused by outdated date coding in software.
- It morphed into a broader cultural discourse of technological apocalypse and societal anxiety at millennium's turn.
Documentation Over Tech Fixes
- The conglomerate prioritized building extensive documentation over technical fixes for Y2K.
- Their strategy was to view Y2K as a documentation, not a technology, problem to avoid litigation.
