Project Manager Pool Girls TikTok

Submission 2,928

Part of a series on Day In The Life Vlogs / Adult Daycare. [View Related Entries]

About

Project Manager Pool Girls TikTok is a viral video posted by TikToker @durbinmalonster in June 2022 that subsequently went viral on Twitter for being a tertiary example of Day In The Life of a Tech Worker style vlogs. Discussions about the clip initially revolved around people evaluating the actual productivity of the women, and subsequently around the supposed correlation between the video going viral and the start of an impending recession.

Origin

In the summer and fall of 2022, various videos showing the day-to-day activities of tech workers and consultants began going viral on TikTok and Twitter. Various people noted the supposedly lackadaisical nature of their workdays, which often involved recreational activities, comfortable workspaces and seemingly little to no actual work.^[1]^[2]^[3]

On June 2nd, 2022, TikToker^[4] @durbinmalonster posted a video showing her and a friend working from inside a pool. They briefly gave an overview of their job descriptions as "project managers" that oversee a group of developers and designers. The video gathered over 400,000 views and 44,000 likes in 10 months. The video was subsequently reposted to Twitter on June 4th, 2022, by @coldhealing, ^[5] who often posts adult daycare style videos. The post gathered over 12,000 likes, also in 10 months (seen below).

Spread

The reactions to the aforementioned video were varied as it spread in early June 2022, with some criticizing the supposed simplicity of the girls' jobs and others defending them against assumptions made off a short and lighthearted video. The original TikTok creator responded to criticism on June 5th (seen below, left),^[6] and Twitter user @stevo_berntson^[7] posted a reply in defense of her on the 4th (seen below, right).

On June 5th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @junker_jo quote tweeted the aforementioned tweet by @coldhealing with a caption that read, "The fact that apparently like 50% of our national economy is now this (girls with BAs working a pretend email job that pays them 60k a year to swim in the pool and go to sephora) has lowkey got me a little nervous." The tweet gathered over 30,000 likes in 10 months (seen below).

On April 14th, 2023, Twitter user @coldhealing^[9] posted a tweet drawing a correlation between the poolside project managers going viral and S&P 500 stocks going down, indicating a recession.

Various people reacted to the video on April 14th, making connections between the video and the massive tech layoffs that took place in late 2022 and early 2023. Twitter^[10] user @ctjlewis said, "the video that broke the federal reserve" (seen below, left), and Twitter^[11] user @empathyhaver captioned the video, "There's a non-zero chance that elon had this exact video in mind when he decided to slash 80% of twit's workforce," both gathering over 5,000 likes in three days (seen below, right).