REVIEW: We Had to Remove This Post (novella) by Hanna Bervoets, translated by Emma Rault

We Had to Remove This Post is literary fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Kayleigh, in desperate need of money after getting out of a toxic relationship with one of her coworkers at the call center she used to work for, answers a vague job ad for a position as a "quality assurance worker" at Hexa. She has no idea what to expect, but the pay is better than at the call center. She soon learns that Hexa is a subcontractor for a large and powerful tech company that she and her other new coworkers must agree to never mention by name.

Kayleigh's new job involves being a content moderator for this tech company. It turns out to be a job that she's very good at - it soon becomes second nature for her to apply the constantly changing moderator guidelines to whatever hundreds of pieces of media she's supposed to evaluate each day. Yes, some of what she sees is horrible, but she'd had pretty horrible abuse hurled at her when she was at the call center, and at least none of this stuff is aimed at her personally.

While working at Hexa, Kayleigh makes several friends and even finds herself in a long-term relationship with one of her coworkers, Sigrid. The bulk of this story is focused on Kayleigh and Sigrid's relationship and how things change the longer they're at Hexa.

I can't remember exactly how this ended up on my radar, but I recall it being indicated that this was horror. While it certainly is terrible that Kayleigh (and real-world content moderators) have to wade through hundreds of bits of human awfulness each day with only the bare minimum of breaks, calling this "horror" sets up expectations that this work doesn't fulfill. Really, this is just contemporary literary fiction about a relationship that turns toxic.

Readers get to see how working at Hexa takes a toll on the characters in various ways, affecting their sleep, nudging at their perception of the world. Kayleigh acts like she's able to keep her work and personal life separate, although there's evidence that she's not as successful at this as she thinks she is. If only Bervoets had taken things a little further, or allowed something, I don't know, to actually happen. Instead, this story just stops.