Featured in

  • Published 20250506
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-07-4
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

AT FIRST, I thought I’d pay someone. What can’t money solve? Mattress coolers, tile paint, cord organisers, vacuums that drive themselves round your lounge sucking up your cat’s fur. 

I spent an afternoon looking through the kinds of things people were asking for on Airtasker. The internet means you can have pretty much anything done for you, quickly and cheaply. Someone to change LED lights. No virtual assistants… IRL please. IRL means In Real Life – much used in Airtasker ads. People can do lots of things remotely now. But it doesn’t work for some kinds of jobs not to be there IRL. Money for taking gilded mirror inherited from ex-mother-in-law. Bad vibes. PUO. Pick Up Only.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Nicola Redhouse

Nicola Redhouse is the author of Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind (UQP). Her writing has been published in The Guardian,...

More from this edition

Nobody panic 

Non-fictionThe desert of the real is now where most teens search for answers to life’s big questions: what is love? Who am I? What is truth? The images of reality we create hold messages about reality. Copies of copies of copies though they may be, they nonetheless have a material effect on our children’s thoughts, behaviours, opinions. Consumerism. Communism. Sexism. Cancelism. Nationalism. Anarchism. Stoicism. Humanism. Ideas about what we should live like, look like and love like, what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be an individual or part of a community, are all displayed on a screen in their pockets. The influence is profound, but not necessarily sinister if they are taught to interrogate what they consume.

The accidental film school

Non-fictionThe DVD format – the Digital Versatile Disc – was invented in 1995 and reached the peak of its popularity in Australia in the 2000s, before the rise of streaming platforms in the 2010s. During those salad days, Australian entertainment companies started producing and selling DVDs at a rapid rate, building a library of local and international films. The Melbourne-based company Madman Entertainment were competitive players... The extras on their DVDs – making-of documentaries, deleted scenes, audio commentaries – allowed producers to have an active role in the historicisation of film; audio commentaries typically featured directors and actors rewatching and reminiscing together. But companies like Madman (and Criterion in the US), which distributed ‘art-house’ cinema, were more likely to invite film theorists and historians to provide an analytical reading of the film as it played.

Bypassing the gatekeepers

Non-fiction IN THE OPENING scene of the Copa 71 documentary, we see US women’s soccer great Brandi Chastain watch archival football footage on an iPad.  (Chastain...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.