Superficially, [“do what you love”] is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who is the audience for this dictum? Who is not?

For Jacobin, Miya Tokomitsu takes a second look at the popular exhortation to find a job you love so much that it doesn’t feel like a job.

She decides it’s less a positive mantra than a way to squeeze underpaid or unpaid labor from people across the job spectrums, from unpaid interns and adjunct professors to cleaners and care workers.