Ha, finally: The novel that is everything No One Is Talking About This wanted, but failed to be. Our protagonist is Kayleigh, a former content moderator for Facebook (the customer her direct employer Hexa provides services for is never named, but there is a remark in the text that makes it pretty clear). The text we read is a letter she sends to a certain Mr. Stitic, a guy who files a class action lawsuit on behalf of other former Hexa employees regarding the working conditions and their mental health issues. Stitic has been pushing Kayleigh to join the lawsuit, but she tells him that she will reveal her story to him only in exchange for him to stop contacting her - so the letter is not a report to a lawyer; rather, it reads like a revelation to a therapist, or even a confession to a priest.

Bervoets has done a lot of research on the psychological strain put on social media content moderators, and the short novel will put some images in your head that are hard to endure. The guidelines Kayleigh and her colleagues have to follow are often absurd, and the pressure to perform while constantly facing disturbing and violent content seems unbearable for almost anyone. Mental health issues, drugs and alcohol become normal for Kayleigh and her friends at Hexa, and when it turns out that some agree with anti-scientific or (at least in Germany) anti-constitutional ideas ventilated on FB, the question arises whether these people have always been like that, or whether they are affected by their work.

On social media, we curate a version of ourselves - but who is the content moderator in real life? Coping mechanisms - some rather sad, like indulging in provocative jokes and thus blurring the lines between mocking offensive content and being offensive - start to fail, the concept of reality becomes muddy. Kayleigh enters a relationship with her co-worker Sigrid, and Bervoets cleverly uses it to question the relation between (self)-image and reality, the importance of frame and perspective, the collapse of private life and work for the whole group of moderators.

Now this is a smart book about the digital age. I hope it will garner some serious attention.

This was a very short, dark, and grim novella. It follows workers at a media company's quality control center whose job it is to sort out offensive/hateful/misleading content from the content that can stay. They are constantly exposed to horrible things at work and begin to experience severe symptoms as a side effect. There's not so much of a plot, more just a glimpse into what this type of work does to each person's mental health and stability. Tension rises throughout the book- it's pretty stressful and I finished it in one sitting so I could be done!
I understand the intention behind this novella was to expose problems with companies like this one and workers rights, which is definitely important, but I'm not sure I was the right audience for this one. It was a little too dark and gritty for my usual taste and I probably would have been unable to finish it as a full length novel because it made me feel pretty uncomfortable.
I think readers who enjoy dark and hard-hitting short stories about real world topics may enjoy this, but there are many many triggers so sensitive readers please use caution!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this free copy to review!

Dark dark dark story. It dives into the world of how people handle the crap in this world. It was short and went by quick.