Are you tired of working your shitty nine-to-five? Do you feel overworked and underappreciated? Forget a “dream job,” quit working for the Man and become a luxury travel influencer instead!

That’s the theme of a popular TikTok meme, which started off life as a viral tweet with a quite different meaning. The saying “I don’t dream of labor” has been everywhere on social media in recent years, most notably in a TikTok audio featuring the voice of user @mrhamilton stating in a mock mid-Atlantic accent, “Darling, I’ve told you several times before, I have no dream job — I do not dream of labor.” The audio has since been used in over 51,400 videos. The quote is often falsely attributed to the likes of James Baldwin; in fact, it seems to have originated with Twitter user @thetrudz, whose tweet “My ‘dream job’ is . . . not working. No work. I don’t dream about labor” went viral in 2019.

Understandably, the statement resonated: a record-breaking 50.5 million US workers quit their jobs in 2022, on the heels of a previous record of 47.8 million quits in 2021, in what has become known as the “Great Resignation.” With the COVID-19 pandemic creating a tighter labor market, especially in lower-wage service occupations, workers not only recognized they deserved more, they started to demand it. But these demands largely took the form of individuals switching jobs or asking for higher wages instead of organizing collectively.