Each edition of Entreprecariat has been an opportunity to experiment with book design, and the Korean one is no exception. Published by The Flexibility Club, this edition will feature a business card on the cover – a nod to the relentless self-promotional drive demanded by entrepreneurialism, with a touch of vintage.
The cover idea was inspired by one of my all-time favorite movie moments: American Psycho’s business card scene, where Patrick Bateman quivers with envy at his colleague Paul Allen’s card. But what do those stiff bankers have to do with the entreprecariat? Arguably, Bateman represents its polar opposite: neither precarious nor entrepreneurial. He enjoys a lucrative position and is, at least on the surface, a staunch conformist. His rivalry with his peers is simply about being exactly like them – only a bit better.
If not, at least at a first glance, a fitting analogy for the entreprecariat, the scene nonetheless captures something essential about graphic design: what this field often manages to produce is difference without alterity. Most of the time, its outputs are merely “same same but different”. Want something truly different instead? Check out “Your business card is CRAP!”, 2.7M views on YouTube: here, the card is so other it doesn’t even fit in a wallet.
In 2018, I argued that “[t]he universality of entrepreneurialism echoes the democratic promise of personal branding, with [Tom] Peters assuring us that ‘everyone has a chance to stand out.’” The problem is that everyone takes this chance in the same way: every rebranding looks the same, every startup recycles the same rhetorical formulas, the same self-help techniques promise uniqueness, social media platforms copy one another until they’re fully enshittified, NFTs proliferate as bootlegs of bootlegs. The wheel is reinvented endlessly but we speak of ‘disruption’ instead.
In this sense, the upscale version of “keeping up with the Joneses” in American Psycho isn’t so different from the make-the-world-a-better-place conformism of the startup era. But while Bateman’s world revolves around prestige and conspicuous consumption, between a Valentino suit and a reservation at Dorsia, the world of the entreprecariat is often about survival: finding a job, covering medical expenses, scraping together rent, and doing so entrepreneurially. Noticing the pattern, the sameness across these activities, is the kind of wisdom earned by those who are forced to play a crooked game. This is their realization: when everyone tries to stand out, very few do; capitalism breeds conformity and calls it innovation.
That said, there is indeed something precarious about Bateman: his mental health. He clearly suffers from depersonalization — he’s not entirely sure he even exists. Bateman vanishes into the hollow shell of his professional role. The entreprecarious mind, by contrast, is inhabited by a multiplicity of personas, each tasked with being nice, likeable, and endlessly reframing failure as opportunity. As Barbara Ehrenreich puts it, “we have become the emotional wallpaper in other people’s lives, less individuals with our own quirks and needs than dependable sources of smiles and optimism.” In my book, I also quote Jody Sherman, a suicidal entrepreneur who once said that “[y]ou kind of alter reality for a while for yourself and then ultimately it becomes reality.” Whereas in Patrick Bateman there’s too little “you”, in the entreprecarious subject there is too much of it. If American Psycho was a cynical response to Reagan’s optimism, the entreprecarious condition offers synthesis: the optimism it requires is nothing but cynicism.
In the meantime, the perception of star entrepreneurs now in power has dramatically shifted: from visionary to lunatic. Elon Musk was called a “pathetic man-child” by his own daughter (who went up her lineage to accuse her “psychopath” grandpa Errol); Donald Trump has been labeled “weird” by Democrats like Tim Walz; and Peter Thiel was deemed a sociopath – by Elon Musk. While Bateman was haunted by hallucinations of explicit, gory violence, today’s seemingly psychopathic politician-entrepreneurs foster visions that obscure bloodshed and mock tragedy. Take Trump Gaza, for example. What once belonged to the fantasies of a fictional character now plays out, on a terrifying scale, in the imagination and conduct of real-world entrepreneurial leaders.
Seeing Patrick Bateman as an icon of the entreprecariat means recognizing that the entreprecariat has grown darker, or rather, that its dark side has come fully into view. This new book cover makes sense, then, but it’s hardly cause for celebration.
— Silvio Lorusso, July 2025