[Bakary]

This reminds me of Houellebecq's concept of sexual/romantic relationships becoming a parallel struggle to that of survival in the economic market. Obviously, they have already been fundamentally about competition, but the nature of the competition is starting to resemble the brutality of applying for jobs on online platforms.

[guskel]

In that similar vein of Houellebecq's described struggle, I'm reminded of the characters in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" who live isolated depressing lives and yearn to keep real, living animals as pets but instead substitute them with robotic pets due to real animals becoming so rare.