Hey Kids, Here's Why You Shouldn't Do Your Dream Job for a Living

It would appear, readers, that in typical millennial fashion, our young people don't want to be doctors and teachers anymore. The sprogs of today don't want to grow up to split the atom or impart knowledge, no sir, they want computery jobs based around computers and such. This comes from Currys PC World – a suspect group to conduct a study whose conclusion is essentially 'your children desire gadgets and, who knows, maybe those gadgets will make them millionaires' – who commissioned a poll of 12-to-25-year-olds. Exactly 92 percent of them didn't want to follow in their parents' footsteps, which is not surprising because who wants to be an irate half-blind plumber living off milky tea and the promise of a Ram and Bitter.

But these jobs… Children, take it from me, you don't want these jobs. The job you think you want? You really don't. Unless you're going to be in the top one percent of people who do that job, in which case you should definitely go for it because you'll be rich as fuck. Otherwise, I think you should leave it out. I'm now going to explain to you why your occupation of choice is a bad fucking idea. I beg of you, heed these words! They will be in the order of desirability according to this poll. And, inexplicably, at number one is…

This is a little ambiguous as a job title. Do the kids mean they want to be novelists, weaving tapestries of great tales and committing them to paper to be shared and passed down through the ages so those in the future can know what lays in your heart as intimately as your best friend? Or do they mean rewriting news stories and ad copy for a pernicious content farm that bases its entire business model on 'page engagements' and 'clickthroughs'? Or, perhaps, they want to be the intrepid tabloid journalist, breaking into the homes of murdered children to steal photos of them for scoops? Maybe they want to get into being a music writer, officially the world's most pointless job? Or blogging, the equivalent of flicking a Smartie into a swimming pool full of Smarties and asking the general public to pick yours out and call it delicious. It's a low-paid, low-rent, low-satisfaction job where the only currency is a couple of retweets every few weeks to stave off the inevitable move into marketing and advertising, where you will be treated like a genius and get loads more money, and spend the rest of your life wondering why you didn't just start off doing that in the first place.

There are two reasons why all the most famous vloggers are famous right now and here they are: 1. They were in the right place at the right time, and 2. They pump out video after video after video until by the law of averages people will have to start watching them. You have to be massively industrious for this to work, and also have to offer something that all the other pricks haven't done yet. A Primark haul won't cut it in 2016; a makeup vlog or a trip to Thorpe Park is not going to make you famous like it used to. If you want to give it a go, your best bet is to catch one of the new trendy waves, like mental health or gender or something. Or you could routinely hurt yourself by eating chilli peppers and gluing your hand to your dick and that sort of thing. Also, why would you want to be one of those guys? They fucking suck.

Art doesn't mean what it used to any more guys, I hate to break it to you. You might think art is painting, or sculpture, or something more abstract, or, you know, art! But no, I'm afraid art has changed. Now art is a drawing of a character from Rick and Morty with a giant monster cock in their mouth and arse done on a cheap Wacom tablet. Now art is selfies, books full of them. It's a digital 3D Roman pillar on a wavy background with an ASCII Sonic the Hedgehog winking at you. It's impossible to be anything without it being picked apart a thousand times in the minutes after it's produced, by people like me AKA wankers.

Being a photographer can be pretty neat. You spend a lot of time with a subject of your choosing, develop your own style, learn a craft and then compile your work in the form a quirky photobook that only about 17 weirdos will care about. But let's face it, you're probably not creative or #cool enough for that. Your black-and-white photos of kebab shops in your small town aren't going to be as edgy as the black-and-white photos of the off license of your rival's small town. Being a photographer is essentially a battle to see who can take the most edgy black-and-white photo of grimy provincial life as possible. Ten points if you can capture a fat shirtless man drinking a can of Tennents on a curb, 100 points if you get a child looking down the lens smoking a fag.

This is actually the most viable one on the list. The fashion industry is still ridiculous enough for anyone to be anyone, that's why it's pretty cool, apart from all the anorexia and addiction issues imbued in its many silken fabrics. But you, millennial of choice, are best off finding a job for a high street chain where you can routinely trawl the internet for the hot fashions and trends du jour and then blithely rip them off just inside the rules of trading standards. Leave the thinking to everyone else, kid.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

Activists Plastered the Tube with Posters Telling People Their Jobs Are Bullshit

We Asked People With the Most Right-Swiped Jobs on Tinder Why Their Job Makes Them So Fit

Every Job Could Be a Casualty of the Robot Revolution – Even Yours