Latest news with #ElaineCastillo
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Moderation' is full of provocative insights about modern life
Elaine Castillo's second novel, 'Moderation,' opens with a blistering portrait of social media's toxic underbelly. At the social media platform Reeden, moderators are charged with removing harmful content, and the graphic descriptions of this grisly material make it obvious why suicide, alcoholism and nervous breakdowns are occupational hazards. 'None of the white people survived,' Castillo notes matter-of-factly; the moderators who last at Reeden's Las Vegas site are almost all Filipina women, and the sharp depictions of linguistic and class distinctions among them will be familiar to readers of Castillo's striking debut, 'America Is Not the Heart.'
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Moderation by Elaine Castillo review: 'a strangely vexatious book'
Elaine Castillo's novel is full of meaty ideas, political sass and scrunchy wit - but then it all goes wrong on page 291, writes Stuart Kelly Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... What a strangely vexatious book this is. If it had stopped on page 291 I would have given it a wholly positive review, with points verging on the superlative. But it continues to page 307, and – to be blunt – blows it. That disappointment does not erase its virtues, but it does tarnish them. The opening prepares the reader for the acerbic and incisive. The protagonist, who calls herself Girlie Delmundo (equal parts cute and snark), works in online content moderation. She is Filipino, and catalogues herself as 'kingdom: asshole / phylum: know-it-all / genus: first-generation eldest daughter', who 'refused to be a tenant of her face'. She has been 'pan, then bi, then queer' and is now 'nominally bi, but it was like a driver's license she'd gotten as a teenager and had let expire: she could probably still drive the car but that didn't mean she'd be safe on the road'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Elaine Castillo | Contributed She caustically notes how few white people do the job she does; indeed, her explanation is tart: 'well, what was there to say that hadn't been said in 1765; in 1899; in 1946; in 1965? The bootstraps way of putting it was that they excelled, frankly, in the manner of people who had been formed to excel in these very specific theaters: because they spoke and read good English, because they respected chains of command, because they kept a positive attitude, because they would take a fifth of an American worker's pay'. The wryness and smartness belie the clever analysis of how service and caring can transform into sifting and scrubbing the digital world. Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here. Castillo is unblinking when it comes to Girlie's speciality. The opening black humour softens the reader for the proper horror: as part of her evaluation, Girlie has to determine whether a particular video actually shows genuine child abuse. Might it be a deepfake? Or a consensual, slight adult in costume? If the detail of the grey pubic hair wasn't queasy enough, Girlie's proof made my gorge rise. All she says to prove her point is 'her socks' – expanding that there is an unintentional camera glimpse where you can make out a character from Disney's 'Frozen' on them. Girlie's expertise, her forte, is verifying paedophiles. The company does take the employees' mental health seriously – although when a superior asks 'how her job could best be improved', Girlie answers 'a raise' and get a karaoke machine for social activities. It is useful to note that the higher rate for detecting sickening forms of violence is $1 more per hour. The Pinay culture is evoked succinctly, and with equal amounts of affection and exasperation. Girlie has been inveigled into organising her cousin's same-sex marriage, everyone's current salary and relationship status is of keen interest to the Aunties, watches are a kind of dark currency, status symbol and investment. More importantly, they are in the long hangover of the 2000s – 'the age of rhinestones, the age of velour, the age of shock and awe, the age of that most rhinestoned, most veloured, most shocking and awesome of things: the adjustable mortgage'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad As a novel this cannot just be a sociological overview, however sassy. Girlie's plot is driven by money. She is acutely aware of the gradations and nuances (one restaurant is described as 'bourgeois aspirational, not flat-out oligarchic'), she knows the indebtedness means more than a credit arrangement. The catalyst for change in the arrival of William, a British-Asian tech entrepreneur whose company, Playground, has just been acquired by the larger French firm, L'Olifant. The reference is made explicit later – L'Olifant was the horn that Roland failed to blow to call for help in the medieval La Chanson du Roland. Whistleblowing and early warnings are flagged early. Girlie will be live moderating their virtual reality space, where, it turns out, a great deal of inventiveness goes into codes for racism and terror and violence. Girlie realises 'you had to keep your eyes open for the constantly renewing online language of assault, all the hundred-blooming-flowers of how to rape someone'. William's design genius is realising 'the most effective virtual reality scenarios were the fantasy ones – fiction, in the end, was the most potent vehicle for immersion'. There are two other hooks. William's business partner, the true genius, died – or committed suicide? The company also has a therapist, Dr Perera, who maintains that all the games and leisure are a byproduct, and the real virtual reality benefit is therapeutic. Both Perera and Edison Lau thought 'alternative realities' might be prescribed the alterative medicines. Moreover, the corporate backers might – as in Season 2 of 'Westworld' – be using the virtual worlds to model and data-mine the humans. As I hope you see, lots and lots of meaty ideas, political sass and scrunchy wit. But, to misquote Ol' Blue Eyes, 'and then you go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like she loves him'. Suddenly Fleabag turns into Bridget Jones. Curiously, the novel is puffed by Kaliane Bradley, whose The Ministry of Time had the same sentimental squelch. I might turn to content moderation myself and put a post it note on page 291 of every copy I see: 'STOP HERE'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
New York Times
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A ‘Pride and Prejudice' for the Chronically Online
MODERATION, by Elaine Castillo There are entire Reddit threads devoted to dissecting the grim mechanics of online content moderation. The job is like 'pumping raw sewage into your brain for minimum wage,' one user says; another warns, 'Do not ever work as a moderator unless you fancy having PTSD.' Veterans of the profession report having been sealed inside a psychological bathysphere, pressurized and isolating, so they could descend into the internet's abyss. Elaine Castillo's new novel, 'Moderation,' plunges us into this unsettling terrain through the perspective of Girlie Delmundo, a quick-witted, 30-something Filipina American contractor for a social media conglomerate called Reeden. After 10 years of screening gore and child sexual abuse in the company's Las Vegas branch, she's developed a surgical skill for compartmentalizing and an accuracy rate of 'around 99.5 percent.' In an industry that expects emotional burnout after a year or two, Girlie is an accidental lifer, a tenured ghost in the machine. She chose Girlie as her corporate pseudonym (Reeden encourages fake names for employee — and company — protection) because 'it seemed like the most obvious confirmed-bachelor Pinay auntie name she could think of.' For her troubles, Girlie earns shockingly little pay, and no benefits; and when she's promoted to work at Playground, Reeden's newly acquired V.R. company, she calls her new salary 'pay off the mortgage in full better.' Castillo teasingly withholds the actual sum, while Girlie's initial take-home salary of $28,000 lodges in the mind like a bad pixel. 'Moderation' is sharply attuned to the costs of employment: financial, emotional, psychic. Girlie supports not just herself but her extended family of 'nurses and maids and cleaners': her mother, who was left 'a million dollars in debt' after the 2008 housing crash, as well as aunts and cousins who sustain a shared mortgage in a gated Vegas subdivision featuring manicured lawns, a golf course and a water park. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Moderation by Elaine Castillo review – a twisted look at the tech workplace
Elaine Castillo's second novel is set within the rotten heart of the US tech industry, where 'Girlie was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best.' What makes her so effective in her underpaid contract role moderating content for social media giant Reeden is that most prized of workplace currencies: a stoical capacity for labour. Though the job's mental toll is clear – suicides are common, white staff never stick around and wellness support remains superficial – Girlie proves exceptionally hardy, near-perfect in her ability to identify and scrape feeds free of child sexual abuse content. Behind her productive impassivity, Castillo tells us with a sombre touch of irony, is a 'glowing' line of ancestors – Filipina nurses and maids who have long cleaned up after others. Things look up for Girlie once William Cheung enters the scene, inviting her to become a moderator at Playground, a virtual reality entertainment platform newly acquired by Reeden. Girlie is a perfect fit. As the American-born daughter of immigrants, she carries a cloying sense of filial indebtedness ('there was an unspoken understanding, an ironclad cultural code: if you made money, you had to pay your family back'). With the family home under mortgage, the generous benefits package is hard to resist. And, because we're partly also in romance territory, so is the man offering it. Castillo's celebrated debut, America is Not the Heart, was centred on the Filipino experience in 90s America. Peopled with nurses, doctors, faith healers, makeup artists, restaurateurs and DJs shifting languages between Ilocano, Tagalog and Pangasinan, the book opened a window on to a shadowed corner of American life, but refused to trade on trauma ('the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic', Castillo calls it in her essay collection, How To Read Now). Instead, it honoured quiet, quotidian expressions of community and survival. But where that first novel could lean into self-seriousness, weighed down by the familiar solemnities of the immigrant story, Moderation has more fun within the genre – even if of a masochistic kind ('Parents worked all the time … Never been on vacation with my family,' Girlie says at one point. 'Never been to Disneyland either'). The book's twinned look at labour and immigration all but guarantees comparisons to Ling Ma's 2018 novel, Severance. But Girlie, unlike the Chinese-born protagonist of the latter work, is not haunted by memories of a distant homeland; her only longing is for her childhood home in Milpitas, lost in the 2008 market crash. The books' true kinship may lie in the fact that they both unfold against a backdrop of collapse: where Ma imagined a fungal pandemic, Castillo envisions a looming digital end time. Playground's journey, Girlie learns, began with a keen interest in the therapeutic space. The need for funding then led it to merge with L'Olifant, a French theme park company showcasing 'French history to the French'. Now, with Reeden as a shared parent, the two are poised to transform the worlds of entertainment and healthcare – at least in theory. Castillo cannily frames VR's healing power – from treating PTSD and phobias to providing pain relief and easing suicidal thoughts – within a darker tale of its co-option for profit, control and surveillance. Castillo is interested in the overlap between rightwing politics, tech culture and historiography. L'Olifant is modelled after historical French theme park company Puy du Fou, created by Philippe de Villiers, who is known for his Catholic, Eurosceptic and national sovereignty politics, and, in 2022, for backing the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. Like Puy du Fou, L'Olifant is on a mission to make history 'fun' and 'exciting', even if it means ideologically rewriting it. As the story unfolds, and therapeutic ideals, revisionist ambitions and corporate greed converge, Castillo has potent themes to work with: censorship, digital feudalism, the exploitation of biometric data for propaganda purposes, and the disturbing trade-off between principle and progress. Disappointingly, she seems more content to skim surfaces than probe depths. Her narratorial tactic of choice is to tell and tell – through flat expositional dialogue, but also the lazy shorthand of news headlines ('PLAYGROUND'S NEW VIRTUAL REALITY INITIATIVE: FAR-OUT FANTASY OR FAR-RIGHT NIGHTMARE?') – never showing, never dramatising. The characters, as a result, can feel like bystanders, idling on the tale's margins rather than actively inhabiting its centre. Girlie and William are interesting in their own right, but together, not exactly a match you'd ship. This is because for pages on end, the supposed romance between the pair lies dormant, only for it to comically whip into life in sudden bursts of passion. The novel tries to straddle too many worlds at once – thriller, dystopia, second-generation immigrant account, love story – but commits wholeheartedly to none. The result is a narrative that feels more scattered than layered. But Moderation is not without merits. Castillo is a writer of razor-sharp acuity who takes seriously the sinister instrumentalisation of storytelling, in a world increasingly veering right. As a novel of ideas, Moderation contains terror enough to keep you reading, and looking for signs of the nightmare its author has taken the time to document. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Moderation by Elaine Castillo is published by Atlantic (£17.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Moderation by Elaine Castillo review – a twisted look at the tech workplace
Elaine Castillo's second novel is set within the rotten heart of the US tech industry, where 'Girlie was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best.' What makes her so effective in her underpaid contract role moderating content for social media giant Reeden is that most prized of workplace currencies: a stoical capacity for labour. Though the job's mental toll is clear – suicides are common, white staff never stick around and wellness support remains superficial – Girlie proves exceptionally hardy, near-perfect in her ability to identify and scrape feeds free of child sexual abuse content. Behind her productive impassivity, Castillo tells us with a sombre touch of irony, is a 'glowing' line of ancestors – Filipina nurses and maids who have long cleaned up after others. Things look up for Girlie once William Cheung enters the scene, inviting her to become a moderator at Playground, a virtual reality entertainment platform newly acquired by Reeden. Girlie is a perfect fit. As the American-born daughter of immigrants, she carries a cloying sense of filial indebtedness ('there was an unspoken understanding, an ironclad cultural code: if you made money, you had to pay your family back'). With the family home under mortgage, the generous benefits package is hard to resist. And, because we're partly also in romance territory, so is the man offering it. Castillo's celebrated debut, America is Not the Heart, was centred on the Filipino experience in 90s America. Peopled with nurses, doctors, faith healers, makeup artists, restaurateurs and DJs shifting languages between Ilocano, Tagalog and Pangasinan, the book opened a window on to a shadowed corner of American life, but refused to trade on trauma ('the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic', Castillo calls it in her essay collection, How To Read Now). Instead, it honoured quiet, quotidian expressions of community and survival. But where that first novel could lean into self-seriousness, weighed down by the familiar solemnities of the immigrant story, Moderation has more fun within the genre – even if of a masochistic kind ('Parents worked all the time … Never been on vacation with my family,' Girlie says at one point. 'Never been to Disneyland either'). The book's twinned look at labour and immigration all but guarantees comparisons to Ling Ma's 2018 novel, Severance. But Girlie, unlike the Chinese-born protagonist of the latter work, is not haunted by memories of a distant homeland; her only longing is for her childhood home in Milpitas, lost in the 2008 market crash. The books' true kinship may lie in the fact that they both unfold against a backdrop of collapse: where Ma imagined a fungal pandemic, Castillo envisions a looming digital end time. Playground's journey, Girlie learns, began with a keen interest in the therapeutic space. The need for funding then led it to merge with L'Olifant, a French theme park company showcasing 'French history to the French'. Now, with Reeden as a shared parent, the two are poised to transform the worlds of entertainment and healthcare – at least in theory. Castillo cannily frames VR's healing power – from treating PTSD and phobias to providing pain relief and easing suicidal thoughts – within a darker tale of its co-option for profit, control and surveillance. Castillo is interested in the overlap between rightwing politics, tech culture and historiography. L'Olifant is modelled after historical French theme park company Puy du Fou, created by Philippe de Villiers, who is known for his Catholic, Eurosceptic and national sovereignty politics, and, in 2022, for backing the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. Like Puy du Fou, L'Olifant is on a mission to make history 'fun' and 'exciting', even if it means ideologically rewriting it. As the story unfolds, and therapeutic ideals, revisionist ambitions and corporate greed converge, Castillo has potent themes to work with: censorship, digital feudalism, the exploitation of biometric data for propaganda purposes, and the disturbing trade-off between principle and progress. Disappointingly, she seems more content to skim surfaces than probe depths. Her narratorial tactic of choice is to tell and tell – through flat expositional dialogue, but also the lazy shorthand of news headlines ('PLAYGROUND'S NEW VIRTUAL REALITY INITIATIVE: FAR-OUT FANTASY OR FAR-RIGHT NIGHTMARE?') – never showing, never dramatising. The characters, as a result, can feel like bystanders, idling on the tale's margins rather than actively inhabiting its centre. Girlie and William are interesting in their own right, but together, not exactly a match you'd ship. This is because for pages on end, the supposed romance between the pair lies dormant, only for it to comically whip into life in sudden bursts of passion. The novel tries to straddle too many worlds at once – thriller, dystopia, second-generation immigrant account, love story – but commits wholeheartedly to none. The result is a narrative that feels more scattered than layered. But Moderation is not without merits. Castillo is a writer of razor-sharp acuity who takes seriously the sinister instrumentalisation of storytelling, in a world increasingly veering right. As a novel of ideas, Moderation contains terror enough to keep you reading, and looking for signs of the nightmare its author has taken the time to document. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Moderation by Elaine Castillo is published by Atlantic (£17.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
