Famous Pixel Quotes

For many years when I have heard nice people try to be respectful about describing undocumented people, I’ve heard them call us “undocumented workers” as a euphemism, as if there was something uncouth about being just an undocumented person standing with your hands clasped together or at your sides. I almost wish they’d called us something rude like “crazy fuckin’ Mexicans” because that’s acknowledging something about us beyond our usefulness—we’re crazy, we’re Mexican, we’re clearly unwanted!—but to describe all of us, men, women, children, locally Instagram-famous teens, queer puppeteers, all of us, as workers in order to make us palatable, my god. We were brown bodies made to labor, faces pixelated.

Steam Greenlight. With Greenlight, Valve crowdsourced its approval process, allowing fans to vote on the games they’d want to play. Games that hit a certain number of votes (a number that the famously secretive Valve kept quiet) would automatically get a spot in the store.

Much like Sylvia's Plath's famous line in The Bell Jar, as Esther tries to reassure herself of her place in the world - 'I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am' - the fervour with which we create content, capture ourselves, our rooms, our outfits, our possessions, and the ardour with which we turn ourselves inside out in the digital realm feels like a repeated reassurance: I was here, I was here, I was here.

I almost wish they’d called us something rude like “crazy fuckin’ Mexicans” because that’s acknowledging something about us beyond our usefulness—we’re crazy, we’re Mexican, we’re clearly unwanted!—but to describe all of us, men, women, children, locally Instagram-famous teens, queer puppeteers, all of us, as workers in order to make us palatable, my god. We were brown bodies made to labor, faces pixelated.

The men here tonight are workers. For many years when I have heard nice people try to be respectful about describing undocumented people, I’ve heard them call us “undocumented workers” as a euphemism, as if there was something uncouth about being just an undocumented person standing with your hands clasped together or at your sides. I almost wish they’d called us something rude like “crazy fuckin’ Mexicans” because that’s acknowledging something about us beyond our usefulness—we’re crazy, we’re Mexican, we’re clearly unwanted!—but to describe all of us, men, women, children, locally Instagram-famous teens, queer puppeteers, all of us, as workers in order to make us palatable, my god. We were brown bodies made to labor, faces pixelated. And here they are now, the workers. Some are very young, just past their teens, and some are quite old, around seventy. They are all wearing dirty work boots, but carefully kept. You know how jeans come pre-ripped? That’s how their boots look. Dirty from work, pristine from care. The workers are very brown, brown from their moms, browned from the sun. They are short. But they are built. They look like they can walk on burning coal, build a house, and open a bottle of beer with their wedding rings.