The Take

Why Hustle Culture Was Never Meant to Work... | Industry, Severance, Fight Club & More | Compilation

Our modern work dystopia sets us up to fail: it's nearly impossible to "succeed", and even when we do it's never enough. But how did we get here?! We're digging back into some of our deep dives on the problems with modern hustle culture and the work culture to get a better understanding of what's really gone wrong (and how we might start making things better!) First, we're taking a look at how the idea of work/life balance was totally destroyed, from Industry to Severance to Paradise to The Devil Wears Prada and beyond. Then we're analyzing Harper Stern from HBO's Industry and how miserable it can be to try to succeed as an outsider. Then we're unpacking how David Fincher's cult classic Fight Club still has some important lessons for us on surviving society two decades later. -- ALTERNATIVE DESCRIPTION (to lift or adapt) Work feels impossible now. Even when you “succeed,” it never feels like enough. From Severance to Industry to Fight Club, pop culture has been warning us about what modern work does to people. Hustle culture promised fulfillment, security and freedom, but delivered burnout, anxiety and a constant sense of failure. In this compilation, we dig into how work/life balance collapsed, why success feels empty and what these stories reveal about surviving a system that was never designed for us to win. #Industry #Severance #FightClub #WorkLifeBalance #HustleCulture #GrindCulture #Explained #Analysis #Compilation CHAPTERS 00:00 How work/life balance was destroyed 04:47 Why the modern job market is so miserable 09:20 Industry's Harper & the misery of chasing financial success 15:52 Why she's driven to do *anything* for money 19:58 Why Fight Club still feels so relevant 23:59 Disconnected from ourselves & the world 27:30 Escaping consumerism & overconsumption 30:22 What many people get wrong about Fight Club... 03:12 Why there's still hope! Join our Patreon to unlock the members-only series “Total Take," vote on what we cover next, and more: https://www.patreon.com/thetake Read articles on film, TV and culture: https://www.the-take.com Follow our socials: https://linktr.ee/thisisthetake The Take was created by Debra Minoff & Susannah McCullough