Moderation
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, TIME, Slate, and Kirkus Reviews
“A love story for those who love Severance (both Ling Ma’s book and the unaffiliated Apple TV+ series). . . ambitious, challenging, and brilliant.” —Elle
“Castillo’s flinty satire of the tech industry [transforms] into a sultry romance novel.” —The Atlantic
A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—bringing Castillo's trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.
Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction.
Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family's problems with money and mobility. She doesn't have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Castillo's masterful latest (after the essay collection How to Read Now) follows the vagaries of a social media content moderator's work and love lives. The protagonist is known only by her workplace handle Girlie Delmundo—Reeden, her employer, "forcefully suggested" that she and her coworkers use fake names "for the employee's protection—which meant, of course, for the company's protection." Most of them are fellow Filipinas, "people who knew about the job through that reliable job network still unmatched by LinkedIn, otherwise known as family." (Employees of color prove tougher in the face of troubling subject matter.) Girlie specializes in flagging videos of child sexual abuse, and her exemplary work gets her recruited for a position with Reeden's newest acquisition, a virtual reality endeavor called Playground. She develops a rapport with her new boss, William Cheung, and tries to stamp out her burgeoning feelings for him, determined to stay focused on work despite sensing something more than mutual attraction: a "recognition," "alien to alien." As Girlie flags objectionable content in Playground's VR historical theme parks, which include a Gauls vs. Romans battle and the St. Louis World's Fair, she learns more about the original medical applications of Playground's tech, and the fate of its founder, Edison Lau. Castillo shifts seamlessly in scale and tone, from a wide-angled systems novel to a love story, and from barbed satire to staggering emotional depth. It's a triumph.
