Severance

LOL at calling this, which looks like a generic tract house development, Elon Musk's utopia. pic.twitter.com/5RIyqszcLN

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 10, 2023

Of course, to live here in this perfect planned community you have to consent to the severance procedure.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 10, 2023

Yes, you have to see the show ("Severance") to get the reference; and I don't assume all of you are subscribers to AppleTV+, or whatever they call it now.

In brief: the characters work for a mysterious company which puts the employees through a "severance" procedure (it's sci-fi, don't worry about the details).  As they descend the elevator in the company building to the basement levels where they work, they lose all memory of life outside that building, and know themselves only as their work selves.  It leads to all sort of interesting complications (it's a very good show; trust me), but what they actually do, is a mystery even to their work selves.

They sit at computers and organize data by an almost intuitive process of sorting objects on a computer screen into what is to be kept, and what discarded.  Objects, not words, numbers, ideas, sentences, etc.  Objects. Strange, amorphous objects arrayed on a computer screen and quickly disappearing if you don't act fast enough.  The sorting process is done by "feel," but not by touch:  by "feeling" how it should be done (this is all explained in one episode to the "new girl").  The day's labor is spent staring at a computer screen and "sorting" this objects, until a new batch of objects is presented after the successful sorting of the last batch.  Why are they doing this?  What are they doing?  They're sure it's for a good purpose.

If that sounds hopelessly obtuse and confusing, it's not because I'm doing the best I can with poor memory skills (although there is that factor, believe me!).  It's that it's as mysterious and odd and ridiculous as that, in presentation.  Odder still, the employees used to doing this understand it fully, though emotionally they are more like children sorting colored blocks by...well, color.  Apparently, though we never find out why (I'm going deeper into this than needed for the reference, but it's hard to stop), "severance" seems to make it easier to do this task in a windowless room deep underground, for 8 hours a day (or longer; they arrive at sunrise and leave at sunset, so what season is it, anyway?).

They also leave at night and recover their "ordinary life" memories, living in corporate housing in a planned community owned by the company they work for (and, unbenownst to them, living with their bosses next door in at least one case.  Unknown because they don't remember anyone they work for, or with, or what they do during the day.  Severance, you see.)  The procedure is meant to make them docile little employees because the work, whatever it is, is mind-numbingly dull and requires unthinking obedience and docility.

So it's a good joke, but an oddly apt one.  It would certainly make for happier Twitter (and Boring Co., and SpaceX?) employees.  And it certainly seems like the people left at Twitter don't really know what they're doing.  Or rather, Elmo doesn't.  It also sounds rather like the kind of workplace Elmo would much rather run..So it's almost a perfect analogy, if you think about it.

At least perfect from Elmo's point of view.