MODERATE COPE
Vinay offers a genuinely honest account of tech exploitation and the hollow reality of golden handcuffs, but his solution is pure individual-exit cope: escape to artisanal work, find personal fulfillment, trust that "you can also feel as good as this." He acknowledges AI will replace jobs but frames it as personal invitation to reinvent yourself rather than a structural collapse requiring systemic response. The butcher shop is positioned as liberation when it's actually a lifeboat on a sinking ship — survivorship optimism that ignores the thousands who can't afford the pay cut, can't pivot to cosmetology school, or live in areas with no artisanal economy to absorb displaced tech labor. 'Golden handcuffs' becomes the frame when it should be 'golden cage with no door.'