The Sad Freelancer: The terrible rise of fake depression in the fiverr forum

[damooch916]

Three in the morning is the wrong time to feed into your espresso addiction. The acid burns brighter, the gulps thud harder and the unmitigated heat will send your eyeballs into searing blisters. Doctors in every known corner of the world have spent millions in research funds to stand against such injurious and irresponsible behavior. They’ve observed their subjects with extreme caution, careful to never startle these calamitous, brew headed, inferno gazed crazies. They watch with sick interest at the wild gyrations of a half living espresso junky - veering wildly into the darkness of a first rate caffeine crash. The consensus is clear: 

 

Caffeine kills the meek. Amen.

 

No matter. I couldn’t be bothered with this information. Not in a moment like this. Not in the here and now, with death squeezing in on us like a hotel bed sheet. Now, more than ever, we need the coffee. 

 

It’s important to never face death without a medium roast. Firstly, it’s rude and shows a total lack of self actualization. Secondly, it’s ill prepared. Death, ironic as it may seem, despises the ill prepared. He prefers his victims freshly minted, tall at the ready and completely inclined to partake in delicacy on the way out. It illustrates your understanding of the gravity. Death likes gravity. He also likes “House blend.” 

 

Death is fairly traditional like that. 

 

Now, some of you are fairly lost. Welcome to a Mooch post. Please keep your hands firmly on the guardrails at all times with your feet and arms inside the ride. We’ll be arriving at the point just as soon as we get there. And not a minute faster. 
 

             Sad Songs Say so Much 

There’s a vaguely familiar mood in the air. A thickness. It’s strain is laced with the tears of the broken and it seems to whistle sad refrains in a not - so - far - off distance. It’s a song we’ve heard before. So often have we heard it, in fact, that we could sing the chorus in a hearty unison. Some of us will break into lower fifth harmonies. Tambourines will play - and if we sing long enough - the ghost of Michael Jackson will arrive and make mouth noises over the chorus. 

 

It’s a song of pain and horror. It’s story speaks of anguish and loss. 

 

The song has no known end and no known bridge. It just continues into the forever. 

 

It’s a song that’s never sung alone and yet all who sing it wallow in solitude. 

 

It’s a terrible song. Two, maybe three chords? It yammers on over the same tired points and refuses to peak in its unrivaled uninspiredness. It just limps along …  like the ninth minute of a “Hey Jude,” performance when Paul asks “only the men to sing.” 

 

It’s a worn song. Full of ear zapping cliches and slippery tropes. It hums and patters. It spatters and drabs - never to fully achieve a steady rhythm. It’s a song with no groove or fire. No heart or vulnerability. No strength, no poison and no reason to be nearly as popular as it is. And yet it is popular. Its gross murmur can be heard at any minute, on any day, at anytime on this forum - and seemingly from out of nowhere. 

 

It’s the song of the sad freelancer. 

 

I hate that song. 

 

To hear the melancholy freelancer tell it, we face a crisis of catastrophic proportion. Life, as we know it, is rapidly folding in on itself. That’s right. We’re just the unwanted lettuce in the great life taco. Waiting to be swallowed and consumed until we have only the darkness left to cling to. 

 

Furthermore, the sad freelancer - despite the fact that he faces certain and coming doom - would really like you to stop preparing your death bag, set aside your final arrangements and explain all there is to know about having a sustainable income. And if you could, please do it in a single paragraph. Time is of the essence. 

 

The sad freelancer has but one voice. A mousey, shrill little thing, preconditioned to attract sharks and fairly aggressive hill ants. It says:

“Please … my world is crashing. My sky is falling. My cup runneth dry. Then it slipped out of my hand and now I haveth no cup. My clients don’t come. My bills are due. My faith has eroded and my life is being sucked out. If you don’t help me it will be curtains! Curtains I say! Ugly curtains, as well. With loud drape runners and misshapen rungs. Without fiverr success I will perish. Doomed to walk the underworld in disgrace. So, I stand before you as an insect to the magnifying glass. Waiting. Hoping. For what more can I do other than wait? And hope. And wait.”

 

Like I said, it’s a terrible song. 

 

 

          Okay. It’s just a little Pinprick

A curious person will ask a question. A wise person will seek the answer and a smart person will find a smarter person to learn from.

 

The sad freelancer will do none of those things. They extend their excuse making far beyond the scope of most “spoiled” or “stupid” behaviors. They list common life responsibilities as mammoth hurdles that require fits of emotional outbursts and tantrum throwing. Every bill is the executioner at their door. Every errand is the hangman reaching toward their neck. Every effort is the apocalypse, with its trumpets screaming into every pocket of reality. 

 

The sad freelancer is a unique breed - a vile mixture of carny and pan handler. They talk in overly exaggerated whines like a teenager who has discovered all black clothing for the first time. They formulate sentences purely to use sympathy and emotions against you. They find equity in making despair a game of hyperbolizing. They ignore every convention of strength, honor, respect and dignity. They spit in the face of manhood - weeping openly at hardship and refusing to engage with the human tradition of burden. 

 

The sad freelancer is the creep you barely know who always needs a hug. You’re not even opposed to hugs, it’s just that, this guys a weirdo. And he knows that. And he asks anyways. Because it’s the gray area touching that he’s into. 

 

The sad freelancer is the guy who keeps changing exercises to hang around you at the gym. Ten minutes ago it was arm day, now he suddenly cares about his glutes. But let’s be honest cry baby, it hasn’t really been arm day for quite a while. Plus, you’re using that machine wrong. Also, nice headband. 

 

The sad freelancer is the guy in the grocery store who eyeballs you and suddenly his entire shopping list seems to match yours. Which is odd, considering that you’re in the fresh produce section and his whole shopping cart consists of snacks with individual plastic wrap. 

 

And that’s the reality of this ever growing choir of moaning baby men. They engage in public displays of pity and strangeness and they know it. Posting openly about the lack of customers making their tummy hurt and how burdensome it is to worry about average, everyday situations.

 

And it’s with that spirit in mind that I’m finally going to reveal the secret to them. The elusive information that has seemingly evaded them for so long. I’m going to give them the key piece of evidence that prevents them from catapulting into the fine oxygen of success. And I’m going to do that right here. 

 

            A Letter from The Forum King 

 

Dear Sad Freelancer, 

 

My name is Tommy. Some folks call me Mooch.  But to all who walk these sacred grounds, I am the undisputed, forever reigning, legally recognized King of the fiverr forum. To achieve this honor - I braved treacherous battles, faced mountainous challenges and smeared the remains of any opponent who dared to step into my lane. I also just woke up one day and appointed myself King. I do this for you. 

 

You’re welcome. 

 

I’m sure that you’re busy. Exhausted from the stresses of putting one foot in front of the other and completely emotionally drained with opening the fiverr app repeatedly. But before you engage in another day’s worth of typical activity - I say this onto you: stop it.

 

Stop with the overvalued moaning and the crying. Stop with the magnified despondency and the pleading. Just stop it. Stand firm. Be collected and listening closely. 

 

I know what questions you need answered. 

 

What can you do to be a successful freelancer,  “Mr. openly sacrifices your own dignity to post overly dramatized reasons why your fiverr career influences your mortality?”

 

What can be done, “Mr. If I don’t get customers I will suffocate and my life will leap from my body,” to make you the freelance guru you always knew you would be? 

 

What is it that will make you successful, “Mr. sad freelancer?“

 

It’s simple.

 

Nothing. 

 

Nothing will possibly turn you into a premiere, first class business owner. And I don’t say that lightly. I take no pleasure in assigning you a long life of shuffling someone else’s papers. Or working in the greater hopes that retirement may finally zip you along into your firmly held dreams. But we need to be clear here, for science. You and everyone like you will never be successful on fiverr. Or on another platform. Or in platforms for that matter. It’s not a personal judgement, rather it’s an administering of statistical and biological reality. 

 

Yes. Biological.

 

The truth goes something like this: not everyone is genetically designed to be their own boss. In fact, very few people should be their own boss. Having the predestined disposition to hold yourself always accountable is like being cool … sure, it can be harnessed - even exploited - but some level of it must reside inside you already. If you don’t believe that, well, you’re not cool. And that’s the same with self governance. It’s an internal compass. A voice that lives in your mind that drives you ever forward. You either have that voice or you don’t. You can cultivate it, add to it and allow the guidance of others to strengthen it … but you have to have “it” first. 

 

But you probably don’t. 

 

And that’s okay. People, in general, need direction. That’s the basis of every functional system that we’ve ever produced - people, in a common goal, driving creations that exceed their singular abilities. You’re just not cut out to be behind the wheel. 

 

Not being a capable freelancer isn’t an indication that you’re a lesser than human. And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re going to thump over and perish. Open mouthed denial makes you lesser than. Boo boo faced complaining makes you lesser than. Demanding answers to questions you aren’t cut out to ask makes you lesser than. It’s not the construct of freelance that doesn’t jive with you hoss, it’s you. And at the point that you’ve accepted public humiliation and begging as the foundation of your business plan, it should be obvious that you’re in the wrong business: The you business. 

 

As for you, the you business sucks. Currently its CEO has the psychological prowess of a broken toaster. No one should work for you, least of all you. You wear the freedom of freelancing like spiked anvils - dragging yourself from one useless activity to the next. It’s gruesome and it has to come to a stop. 

 

But that doesn’t suggest anything about the “having you in business” business. You may be the engine that powers someone’s vision. You might be the muse, the muscle or the music to someone’s lyrical identity. You may be a lot of things. 

 

But freelancer isn’t one of them. 

 

And help isn’t coming. Or perhaps it’s more like, “help is available to the resourceful and the deserving.” We’re not your Mother. We don’t intend to wipe your brow and cry “shucks” as you limp about and refuse to help yourself. Not us. We’re the collective. We organize and orchestrate. We discuss ideas and tangle over technique. We bring offerings, musings, hypotheticals and concepts to collision. We see passed your pleas and know what inevitability awaits you and we have no intention to prevent fate from doing its job. 

 

And so there it is. 

 

In the grips of the long night, while waiting for death to overtake you, it’s your choice whether to sit silently or change it all. It’s no matter to the reaper. 

 

The sky will stand or it won’t, chicken-little. So you need to move boldly. Quickly. Upwardly or out. 

 

And above all else, you will need coffee. 

 

Lots and lots of coffee. 

[newsmike]

3 hours ago, damooch916 said:

Three in the morning is the wrong time to feed into your espresso addiction. The acid burns brighter, the gulps thud harder and the unmitigated heat will send your eyeballs into searing blisters. Doctors in every known corner of the world have spent millions in research funds to stand against such injurious and irresponsible behavior. They’ve observed their subjects with extreme caution, careful to never startle these calamitous, brew headed, inferno gazed crazies. They watch with sick interest at the wild gyrations of a half living espresso junky - veering wildly into the darkness of a first rate caffeine crash. The consensus is clear: 

 

Caffeine kills the meek. Amen.

 

No matter. I couldn’t be bothered with this information. Not in a moment like this. Not in the here and now, with death squeezing in on us like a hotel bed sheet. Now, more than ever, we need the coffee. 

 

It’s important to never face death without a medium roast. Firstly, it’s rude and shows a total lack of self actualization. Secondly, it’s ill prepared. Death, ironic as it may seem, despises the ill prepared. He prefers his victims freshly minted, tall at the ready and completely inclined to partake in delicacy on the way out. It illustrates your understanding of the gravity. Death likes gravity. He also likes “House blend.” 

 

Death is fairly traditional like that. 

 

Now, some of you are fairly lost. Welcome to a Mooch post. Please keep your hands firmly on the guardrails at all times with your feet and arms inside the ride. We’ll be arriving at the point just as soon as we get there. And not a minute faster. 
 

             Sad Songs Say so Much 

There’s a vaguely familiar mood in the air. A thickness. It’s strain is laced with the tears of the broken and it seems to whistle sad refrains in a not - so - far - off distance. It’s a song we’ve heard before. So often have we heard it, in fact, that we could sing the chorus in a hearty unison. Some of us will break into lower fifth harmonies. Tambourines will play - and if we sing long enough - the ghost of Michael Jackson will arrive and make mouth noises over the chorus. 

 

It’s a song of pain and horror. It’s story speaks of anguish and loss. 

 

The song has no known end and no known bridge. It just continues into the forever. 

 

It’s a song that’s never sung alone and yet all who sing it wallow in solitude. 

 

It’s a terrible song. Two, maybe three chords? It yammers on over the same tired points and refuses to peak in its unrivaled uninspiredness. It just limps along …  like the ninth minute of a “Hey Jude,” performance when Paul asks “only the men to sing.” 

 

It’s a worn song. Full of ear zapping cliches and slippery tropes. It hums and patters. It spatters and drabs - never to fully achieve a steady rhythm. It’s a song with no groove or fire. No heart or vulnerability. No strength, no poison and no reason to be nearly as popular as it is. And yet it is popular. Its gross murmur can be heard at any minute, on any day, at anytime on this forum - and seemingly from out of nowhere. 

 

It’s the song of the sad freelancer. 

 

I hate that song. 

 

To hear the melancholy freelancer tell it, we face a crisis of catastrophic proportion. Life, as we know it, is rapidly folding in on itself. That’s right. We’re just the unwanted lettuce in the great life taco. Waiting to be swallowed and consumed until we have only the darkness left to cling to. 

 

Furthermore, the sad freelancer - despite the fact that he faces certain and coming doom - would really like you to stop preparing your death bag, set aside your final arrangements and explain all there is to know about having a sustainable income. And if you could, please do it in a single paragraph. Time is of the essence. 

 

The sad freelancer has but one voice. A mousey, shrill little thing, preconditioned to attract sharks and fairly aggressive hill ants. It says:

“Please … my world is crashing. My sky is falling. My cup runneth dry. Then it slipped out of my hand and now I haveth no cup. My clients don’t come. My bills are due. My faith has eroded and my life is being sucked out. If you don’t help me it will be curtains! Curtains I say! Ugly curtains, as well. With loud drape runners and misshapen rungs. Without fiverr success I will perish. Doomed to walk the underworld in disgrace. So, I stand before you as an insect to the magnifying glass. Waiting. Hoping. For what more can I do other than wait? And hope. And wait.”

 

Like I said, it’s a terrible song. 

 

 

          Okay. It’s just a little Pinprick

A curious person will ask a question. A wise person will seek the answer and a smart person will find a smarter person to learn from.

 

The sad freelancer will do none of those things. They extend their excuse making far beyond the scope of most “spoiled” or “stupid” behaviors. They list common life responsibilities as mammoth hurdles that require fits of emotional outbursts and tantrum throwing. Every bill is the executioner at their door. Every errand is the hangman reaching toward their neck. Every effort is the apocalypse, with its trumpets screaming into every pocket of reality. 

 

The sad freelancer is a unique breed - a vile mixture of carny and pan handler. They talk in overly exaggerated whines like a teenager who has discovered all black clothing for the first time. They formulate sentences purely to use sympathy and emotions against you. They find equity in making despair a game of hyperbolizing. They ignore every convention of strength, honor, respect and dignity. They spit in the face of manhood - weeping openly at hardship and refusing to engage with the human tradition of burden. 

 

The sad freelancer is the creep you barely know who always needs a hug. You’re not even opposed to hugs, it’s just that, this guys a weirdo. And he knows that. And he asks anyways. Because it’s the gray area touching that he’s into. 

 

The sad freelancer is the guy who keeps changing exercises to hang around you at the gym. Ten minutes ago it was arm day, now he suddenly cares about his glutes. But let’s be honest cry baby, it hasn’t really been arm day for quite a while. Plus, you’re using that machine wrong. Also, nice headband. 

 

The sad freelancer is the guy in the grocery store who eyeballs you and suddenly his entire shopping list seems to match yours. Which is odd, considering that you’re in the fresh produce section and his whole shopping cart consists of snacks with individual plastic wrap. 

 

And that’s the reality of this ever growing choir of moaning baby men. They engage in public displays of pity and strangeness and they know it. Posting openly about the lack of customers making their tummy hurt and how burdensome it is to worry about average, everyday situations.

 

And it’s with that spirit in mind that I’m finally going to reveal the secret to them. The elusive information that has seemingly evaded them for so long. I’m going to give them the key piece of evidence that prevents them from catapulting into the fine oxygen of success. And I’m going to do that right here. 

 

            A Letter from The Forum King 

 

Dear Sad Freelancer, 

 

My name is Tommy. Some folks call me Mooch.  But to all who walk these sacred grounds, I am the undisputed, forever reigning, legally recognized King of the fiverr forum. To achieve this honor - I braved treacherous battles, faced mountainous challenges and smeared the remains of any opponent who dared to step into my lane. I also just woke up one day and appointed myself King. I do this for you. 

 

You’re welcome. 

 

I’m sure that you’re busy. Exhausted from the stresses of putting one foot in front of the other and completely emotionally drained with opening the fiverr app repeatedly. But before you engage in another day’s worth of typical activity - I say this onto you: stop it.

 

Stop with the overvalued moaning and the crying. Stop with the magnified despondency and the pleading. Just stop it. Stand firm. Be collected and listening closely. 

 

I know what questions you need answered. 

 

What can you do to be a successful freelancer,  “Mr. openly sacrifices your own dignity to post overly dramatized reasons why your fiverr career influences your mortality?”

 

What can be done, “Mr. If I don’t get customers I will suffocate and my life will leap from my body,” to make you the freelance guru you always knew you would be? 

 

What is it that will make you successful, “Mr. sad freelancer?“

 

It’s simple.

 

Nothing. 

 

Nothing will possibly turn you into a premiere, first class business owner. And I don’t say that lightly. I take no pleasure in assigning you a long life of shuffling someone else’s papers. Or working in the greater hopes that retirement may finally zip you along into your firmly held dreams. But we need to be clear here, for science. You and everyone like you will never be successful on fiverr. Or on another platform. Or in platforms for that matter. It’s not a personal judgement, rather it’s an administering of statistical and biological reality. 

 

Yes. Biological.

 

The truth goes something like this: not everyone is genetically designed to be their own boss. In fact, very few people should be their own boss. Having the predestined disposition to hold yourself always accountable is like being cool … sure, it can be harnessed - even exploited - but some level of it must reside inside you already. If you don’t believe that, well, you’re not cool. And that’s the same with self governance. It’s an internal compass. A voice that lives in your mind that drives you ever forward. You either have that voice or you don’t. You can cultivate it, add to it and allow the guidance of others to strengthen it … but you have to have “it” first. 

 

But you probably don’t. 

 

And that’s okay. People, in general, need direction. That’s the basis of every functional system that we’ve ever produced - people, in a common goal, driving creations that exceed their singular abilities. You’re just not cut out to be behind the wheel. 

 

Not being a capable freelancer isn’t an indication that you’re a lesser than human. And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re going to thump over and perish. Open mouthed denial makes you lesser than. Boo boo faced complaining makes you lesser than. Demanding answers to questions you aren’t cut out to ask makes you lesser than. It’s not the construct of freelance that doesn’t jive with you hoss, it’s you. And at the point that you’ve accepted public humiliation and begging as the foundation of your business plan, it should be obvious that you’re in the wrong business: The you business. 

 

As for you, the you business sucks. Currently its CEO has the psychological prowess of a broken toaster. No one should work for you, least of all you. You wear the freedom of freelancing like spiked anvils - dragging yourself from one useless activity to the next. It’s gruesome and it has to come to a stop. 

 

But that doesn’t suggest anything about the “having you in business” business. You may be the engine that powers someone’s vision. You might be the muse, the muscle or the music to someone’s lyrical identity. You may be a lot of things. 

 

But freelancer isn’t one of them. 

 

And help isn’t coming. Or perhaps it’s more like, “help is available to the resourceful and the deserving.” We’re not your Mother. We don’t intend to wipe your brow and cry “shucks” as you limp about and refuse to help yourself. Not us. We’re the collective. We organize and orchestrate. We discuss ideas and tangle over technique. We bring offerings, musings, hypotheticals and concepts to collision. We see passed your pleas and know what inevitability awaits you and we have no intention to prevent fate from doing its job. 

 

And so there it is. 

 

In the grips of the long night, while waiting for death to overtake you, it’s your choice whether to sit silently or change it all. It’s no matter to the reaper. 

 

The sky will stand or it won’t, chicken-little. So you need to move boldly. Quickly. Upwardly or out. 

 

And above all else, you will need coffee. 

 

Lots and lots of coffee. 

Tommy, as the official consigliere of the forum, I advise that the people who need this won't (can't) read past the first sentence. But Bravo.

Espresso for Mooch. Mooch, Espresso for Mooch!

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by newsmike

[miiila]

Yes, give the King what belongs to the King, i.e., espresso, of course.

But now, with this song stuck in my head, thank you very much, I wonder whether

Turn 'em on, turn 'em on
Turn on those sad songs
When all hope is gone
Why don't you tune in and turn them on?

was a prophetical pre-emption of the sad singers turning to ChatGPT to make the song even sadder by robbing them of the only thing they probably have going for them, their authenticity, and will have us soon wade knee-deep in sad songs on the forum, instead of only ankle-deep.

But I'll do the right thing and turn to an espresso macchiato doppio, that will solve my wondering and send me back to work. 

[florenciafarkas]

I like you 😗

[damooch916]

16 hours ago, newsmike said:

Tommy, as the official consigliere of the forum, I advise that the people who need this won't (can't) read past the first sentence. But Bravo.

I have always valued your thoughtful position as council. You have been an excellent war-time consigliere.

 

Together, we have forged through the muck, battled off all brands of the egregious, stupid and the ill willed and we’ve navigated every duplicitous period to finally sit at the head of the forum table. You, me and all those that make up this inner circle (if I just leave it vague like that, I get the benefit of people wondering “am I in the inner circle?”). 

 

We drove out the psychics and carnival barkers of the “charlatan era.” 

 

We spliced open the do-gooders, seeking to have their forum be of only one flavor and install large portions of anti speech in the “Utopianism era.” 

 

And then we went to absolute war with the pigs of modernity in the “snark era” - with their bumper sticker psychology and their faux attitudes. It was those very carcasses we walked over to claim the throne. Every public engagement was a battle of reputation death - battles that made my skin burn and heart flutter - and I don’t apologize for the brutality that I built my name on. We melted their fraudulent academia with brutal truths and bloodied surrealism. Apparently, they weren’t nearly as flippant as they thought - as they perished in a spectacular light show of guts and fog - or ran into the hills to never be seen again. 

 

And so here we sit. In a mostly peaceful time to mostly peaceful results. 

 

It almost makes you miss it. And I won’t hesitate to carve my way through the next crop to make human confetti out of their desires to challenge our position. 

 

Which is why I will ask you to rethink your position of “those that need to read the truth won’t listen.” Maybe so. But it’s their truth, regardless. Just as the law stands despite someone’s awareness. 

[zeus777]

Woah, seriously? Just last night while I was sipping wine, I suddenly kinda felt like listening to Elton John, and I listened to Sad Songs Says so Much, and Sacrifice. 
Now the song is replaying in my head again and it ain't going anywhere for a while. It's OK, I like the song.
It's better than "Let it gooooooooo" looping in your head forever.

Alright, I need to go get my coffee. It's a new month, so I'm sure Starbucks has a new set of cake/scones/munchies ready! 😄 
Happy February to you all, and long live the King and the council members. 
Me? Nah, I'm just the court jester. I make people laugh by juggling my cats.