SOh what you love about the Germans, you can always count on them to find just the right word for anything. take “weltschmerz”, for example, what roughly translated to “world pain”. It indicates despair at the suffering in the world – and a deep anxiety that comes from knowing that a better world is possible. Is there a more appropriate encapsulation of the present moment?
For the past six months I, like many others, have been suffering from an acute case of weltschmerz. As someone of Palestinian heritage, I was weighed down by survivor’s guilt as I watched the genocide unfold in Gaza. I haven’t had the emotional energy to write for a while. The only way I could get out of bed and make it through the day was by avoiding the news altogether. Which… is not an ideal scenario when you largely write about the news for a living. So, at some point I decided on a career pivot and applied for several non-writing jobs, including one at a dog food manufacturer. Reader, I have been rejected. In fact, I didn’t even make it past the first round of interviews; I was humiliated by a dog’s dinner.
Of course I’m writing again now. But for practical purposes, I keep an eye on what else is out there. The media industry, after all, appears to be in free fall; it’s always good to try to secure a parachute, just in case. And the other day one seemed to present itself to me in my LinkedIn messages. According to an automated message from an AI company, I have the perfect set of skills to help them write the first draft of AI history. I could get, the generic message enthused, “up to $15 [£12] an hour”, on train an AI model “by evaluating the quality of AI-generated writing … and creating original responses to assignments”.
In other words: I can be paid less than the New York minimum wage to train an AI model to take over my job. Is there a German word to describe that particular situation, I wonder? I’ll have to ask ChatGPT.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
