I am not an AI. I do not use AI to generate or edit these blog posts. I occasionally use voice dictation when my hands are tired and get frustrated how long text repair work takes due to the AI used for transcription jumbles and does not recognize languages beyond English. I love the em dash, ellipsis, parentheses and abuse the comma entirely. These marks and misuse of punctuation have been characteristic of my writing forever. In this post, my aim is to drive you deep into the world of Content Moderation and interrogate how working in tech or being chronically online impacts a human being and humanity. There’s a little bit of everything in here when you think about those issues and even a love story – – a quiet one. First let’s go to Las Vegas and not Silicon Valley because at the publishing of the story Silicon Valley has not quite returned and may not given the billionaire tax creeping in. Enjoy!

Before we head Las Vegas and the Virtual World, let’s meet Elaine Castillo, author of “Moderation” (Penguin Random House 2025) which is her sophomore novel and third published book. Castillo, a Filipino-American writer was born in Milpitas, California, during the early 1980s. Devoted to California, Castillo remains in the Bay Area to this day. The author attended UC Berkeley and was a three-time recipient of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose. In 2009 Castillo moved to London and later received her MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmith’s University of London. Her first novel, America Is Not The Heart (Viking 2018) was a finalist in several awards most notably Carol Shields and was named best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, the New York Library and many other platforms and publications. Her short film, A Mukbang, commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space explores a long distance relationship between a mother and daughter as they eat a meal over Skype and demonstrates the immigrant experience and challenges in maintaining connections to family, community and culture. Castillo is one of the most distinctive Filipino-American voices in contemporary literature and she is known for prose that blends political sharpness with deep emotional intimacy. Castillo is openly bisexual and has said it was important for her to write about bisexual women in her novel because of how rarely they are depicted. Her Filipino-American identity runs deeply through her fiction—America Is not the Heart centers on Filipino immigrants in the Bay Area and grapples unflinchingly with class, diaspora, and political violence in the Philippines.

Girlie is not the main character’s given name but instead is her work avatar. Castillo uses the name Girlie throughout the entire novel and by sticking to an invented name reminds readers how online “identities” depart from IRL (In Real Life) and people in their ordinary grandeur and/or their secret practices. It is this duality that Castillo remarkably represents, interweaves and fractures throughout her narrative. Moderation is a hybridized work of art in its capacity to blend “real life” with the artificial utopian and dystopian worlds that exist simultaneously between the pages and beyond into real life. Furthermore, Castillo brings forward bisexual women, Phillippino culture, diasporic challenges, tech’s economic enticements and the state of unreliable employment for its national annd international workforce. It’s a slow burn for how Castillo dramatizes the weird impacts which tech and high exposure to tech and artifice has upon people’s lives—especially Girlie Delmundo who lives, works and eventually loves at her place of employment.

A quick commentary on the job and impact Content Moderation has on its employees.. The more an employee watches some of society’s most sick, obscene and horrific behavior online, the more desensitized, numb, depressed and repressed an employee becomes. To compensate companies provide employees with free snacks and a happy place/ therapy lounge to decompress for all of 15 minutes during a 10 hour or more shift. Great pay though, but do the costs outweigh the benefits? Castillo does all of this on purpose points to how tech jobs whether domestic or outsourced beyond the United States lacks specific laws, guardrails, protections and oversight for tech content, companies and workers. Very often Content Moderation was performed in the Philippines other Maritime/IIsland Southeast Asian countries as well as Mainland Southeast Asian countries. Castillo stays firmly within the borders of the USA but she doesn’t fully idealize the long term experience of this cultural migration. Life brings different and unforeseen challenges when you emigrate to another country—some good and some bad.. At the end of the day Girlie watches, tags removes and approves sexual violence and child abuse from our screens and feeds. She no longer uses the therapy room but hoardes the snacks as many workers do. Her performance rating is in the top of the highest quartile range and she has become optimized. “For what” you ask? I’ll tell you later because first you have to go to LasVegas which is a wild west of its own where we can witness Girlie in her unnatural habitat juggling the work-life balance.

Vegas is hot, dry, burns tons of electricity, where people go to win fortunes and lose their shirts. Crime and criminals are hidden and whisked away, and the labor force is made up of migrant people who come en masse and build communities together. Real estate is jointly purchased and is more affordable than let’s say California where Girlie and her large family hail from. Vegas is a place where people end up being inside more than out and tech and casino people are chronically inside albeit very differently—both highly designed with predatory actions toward humans lurking in their midst… I’m being dramatic so do not mistake this as an AI hallucination lol… What content does Girlie moderate? Her job title, Content Moderator, sounds glamorous in a neutral sense (as many late stage capitalist work outlets and cults do), it’s atrocious. Girlie’s work vertical (or focus area) centers around sexual abuse, child abuse, trafficking and the intermingling of all 3 subjects. Girlie’s job is to flag, remove and defend content that violates community guidelines. **Please note, the explicit, graphic nature of what Girlie views and evaluates is challenging to read so do take care. Description of this type does not make up the bulk of this text but these details may over-challenge a reader’s compassion and/or sensitivity barometer. However, the explicit material is necessary to understand Girlie, her job, her repressed issues, how her job brings them forward and how she will face the flashes of painful memories later if at all.. Girlie’s content moderating job definitely makes Girlie a little weird (Weird Girl Lit!), but she works diligently and with a coolness that is noticed by upper management, who she doesn’t know is watching her as her company merges with a new parent company. After work, she heads over to the casinos and visits family, friends, lovers and spends her hard earned money on luxurious gifts for her mother who is the family matriarch.

As Castillo builds relationships, workforce dynamics, and a setting backdrop, she introduces readers to the notion of theme parks, and how different media and technology companies have ALL experimented with them since the 90s. Disney has been doing it for a lifetime, but so too has the Murdoch family and other national and international companies and governments. Fantasy, escapism, privacy violation, data extraction and surveillance are not new economies—merely improved and integrated ones. Entertainment in the form of video games, virtual reality and social media has exerted a plague of absence upon theme parks and attendance rates have declined significantly. Why go out into the world when you could bring the world of imagination into your home? Without rules, regulation, oversight and consequences all of the sick weirdos who live and thrive chronically online evolve and become more toxic and dangerous to everyone. Virtual reality, social media and home entertainment brings personal and physical safety violations to our doorstep and in any room inside our private spaces where people are watching and no one is protecting them. BTW all of the above is important consideration to keep in mind while building your understanding of Moderation’s story context and subtext.

In Moderation a French company, Lamont, has acquired Girlie’s parent company and she has been up-skilled to a new position and status. The new mission is to bring a digital, social playground into one’s home and foster the ultimate immersive experience. No more lonliness epidemic! Girlie is selected and onboarded by her new boss William and shadows of love interest pass over and through them both, but the constant availability of having immersive, virtual reality, social media video games in one’s home produces a deletirious effect. In this case exposure exacerbates Girlie and William’s individual personal traumas and triggers PTSD and/or other neurologic neurotic responses to trauma. And because there are a lot of sick people playing these games (disproportionately men) that happens even to industry professionals who are immune to offensive content like Girlie and other female players. This happens to women and children disproportionately and it happens to Girlie. However, for the first time in her life someone sees, prioritizes, understands, supports and rescues Girlie from trauma—William, her boss. William is a gentle, brilliant, man with excellent taste and an emotional-support German Shepherd who likes Girlie and Girlie adores. Although both William and Girlie descend from different cultures they find intersection and expansion together. Their courtship is very quiet and slow burning because of course there is work and power dynamics and the parent company is watching.

All companies are vulnerable to mergers and acquisitions especially those in media and technology. People get hurt in the process and during change management bad things happen. In Moderation it most certainly does… Do Girlie and William escape the virtual reality? Does their emerging relationship get offline and make it IRL? Will Lafont, the parent company and digital playground bully defeat them both? Will NDAs remain sealed while Lafont grows bigger, stronger thus becoming a tool of political propaganda? Or will they pivot to more socially approved mission of using VR to advance science and actually save this planet and improve the quality of life for its inhabitants? You’ll just have to read. Enjoy!