Girlie is the best moderator at social media conglomerate Reeden, screening posts for offensive content. Like most moderators working in the Las Vegas office, she’s Filipina-American – white moderators don’t last long, and the rest are from other South-East Asian countries.
Girlie’s speciality area is child sexual abuse and glimpses into her work are as gut-churning as you’d imagine. In response to the traumatic nature of the work, Reeden offers moderators karaoke and meditation instead of the pay rises they want. Girlie needs a raise because she is paying off the million-dollar debt her mother racked up through failed property speculation.
Girlie also subsidises her extended family of “nurses and maids and cleaners” who share a seven-income household in a gated Las Vegas subdivision. This isn’t, though, a heart-warming tale of cosily chaotic multi-generational living. Because of shift work, Girlie rarely sees any of her family, except for younger cousin Maribel who has “the sensitive, worried, pleasing nature of the youngest daughter in a disastered family”. Mirabel exasperates Girlie but she is also the person Girlie loves the most.
Reeden acquires a virtual-reality technology company called Playground, which has recently become involved in creating immersive historical games. William Cheung, current head of content moderation, asks Girlie to join the team, moderating content in real time in the company’s spectacular VR landscapes. It comes with a huge pay rise.
It sounds like an easier gig but it has its own major downsides, with some players trying to assault the female characters in every game. The masks and body suits everyone wears to play the game contain sensors so that an assault feels suffocatingly real. Even the stoical, seen-it-all Girlie has to be rescued by William in one overwhelming attack.
The VR games, described in intricate detail, aim to create “something larger than life … something that feels like discovering a … more heroic dimension of our own lives – our own history”. History, as portrayed in these games, presents a nationalist narrative – a narrative the French boss hopes will serve his far-right political ambitions.
The storylines tracking the sinister side of technology are both fascinating and chilling, but Moderation is also an acerbically funny story about working-class immigrants and familial expectations.
A birthday party for Mirabel promisingly brings the whole family together. “The problems with parties generally, and family parties specifically,” Girlie thinks as the evening starts, “were numerous, numinous, existential … no great luminary had yet disproven the truth: Have family, will fight.”
Mirabel’s parents are at a table with the drunk aunties and with Girlie’s mother, who was wearing the Chanel bag Girlie had bought for her a few birthdays ago, and had driven to the party in the Tesla Girlie was still paying off. Then William from work arrives. Mirabel had, to Girlie’s embarrassment, invited him when she had waitressed at a Playground function. Cue a humorous set piece as Girlie tries to keep William away from nosy family members sensing gossip. “You have a very big family,” William says. “Everyone in my life is there against my will,” Girlie responds.
Romance has been brewing between these two colleagues for a while, taking cantankerous, fiercely independent Girlie out of her comfort zone. The romance plot that ensues is enjoyable, though more of the family would have been welcome, particularly Girlie’s mother, whose appearance is too brief to illuminate the bitter relationship between mother and daughter.
At more than 300 pages Moderation is not a short book, but I would have happily lapped up more – Jonathan Franzen levels of more – so that each storyline was explored in due depth. This is the second novel from Elaine Castillo after 2018’s America Is Not the Heart, and I’ll be looking forward to her next.
