Books with the Same Vibe: Several People are Typing and We Had to Remove This Post

It's hardly a secret that book publishing follows trends, or that new releases can be styled and marketed in the same way as recent success stories. I am waging a permanent war (in my own head at least) against women's historical literature with the same filigree flowery design on the cover. But occassionally two books come along that - intentionally or not - have such similar vibes that to think of one is to automatically think of the other.

This piece marks the start of a new (occasional) series in which I read those books to compare and contrast.

It's easy to see why Several People are Typing [Calvin Kalsulke] and We Had to Remove This Post [Hanna Bervoets] might occupy the same space in one's mind. There is surface similarity - the familiar wording of their social-media-speak titles, and (depending on the edition) their very different and yet still noticeably millennial-pink toned covers. They are of similar, short lengths and address modern technology's impact in the workplace, as well as the ability of our jobs to control not just our lives, but our thought processes. Both take a modern look at queer work relationships, and both are BookTok darlings.

Several People are Typing is told via office slack messages. I hate to use the word 'Kafka-esque' because it makes you look like a knob, but in a Kafka-esque opening, Gerald - an underperforming copywriter innocently updating his coat-purchase decision spreadsheet - finds his consciousness trapped in the office slack. His colleagues by turns admire his 'dedication to the bit' and are irritated at his abuse of the WFH policy, until one discovers his alive but unoccupied body. Increasingly strange events happen, from the non-mystical mystery of what happened to the boss's desk, to the colleague who explains that she is plagued with never-ceasing wolf howls that seem to be coming from inside her - with the chirpy embarrassment of someone who has to WFH because the babysitter cancelled.

We Had to Remove This Post is about the notorious 'Facebook' moderation team, who spend their days sifting through the worst of humanity's output on the internet, all the while working to oppressive and ever-shifting targets. The main character reluctantly tells her story to an action-suit lawyer, claiming to be largely unaffected by the work, but is utterly obsessed with the relationship she formed with her colleague. As the story progresses we see how the team are worn down by their jobs, and how it's not the obvious stresses but the constant faceless scoring and monitoring that gnaws at them. They deal with the big expected horrors, and yet the less shocking things damage them too - as constant exposure to flat earth theory and holocaust denial all begin to cause divisions.

The differences between these two books are clear. Several People are Typing is dystopia-lite, and manages to keep its story sweet and hopeful even as people start randomly spitting out their teeth. We Had to Remove This Post is the bleak reality we already live in, where colleagues discuss whether it's ok to leave a post of a man fondling the kittens he's just killed up... so long as the killing happened in a seperate (removed) video and the caption doesn't refer to violence. Where suicide videos are taken down... unless they are being livestreamed since there is still a possibility a viewer can call for help.

That's not to say that Several People are Typing isn't dark. Both books are about your work taking control of your psyche, when your own instincts are drowned out in favour of a paycheck (also used to good effect in Grady Hendrix's excellent Horrorstor). Yet there is something worse about having to keep up a front of exclamation points, dog-pics and banter at the same time your brain is screaming that there is something wrong with reality itself ('lol!'). At least the content moderators could drink and shag themselves numb.

Both books also satisfy a darkness in the reader. There is an undeniable pleasure of poking through other people's messages, with their public facing selves exposed by their backstabbing DMs. The opening of We Had to Remove This Post talks of the sick fascination people around the main character have for her former job - they all want to know the 'worst' thing she saw. Any reader who claims not to have picked up the book for that reason is probably lying.

Of the two Several People are Typing is the better book, there's no escaping it. It's subtler, smarter, and does more with less. We Had to Remove This Post is a morbid, rubbernecking look at someone else's life and makes pretentions to literature it can't justify - the abrupt ending feels jarring and the unreliable narration is underutilised.

But I wouldn't say I disliked it. It was simply outclassed. And as a slice-of-life and commentary on both the nature of capitalism, social media, and the lesbian experience, We Had to Remove This Post might have more staying power. Much like the now-dated E novels by Matt Beaumont I enjoyed as a teenager (a comedy told via an ad agency's emails) Several People are Typing's shelf life may only extend a short way past slack itself. It will only ever be a snapshot of a very specific late-stage-capitalist working culture.