Short videos of skilled and playful workers performing their jobs with acrobatic flair

Kaitlyn Reed created a Twitter thread of videos of (mostly Chinese) workers performing manual tasks with incredible acrobaticism, dexterity and flair; the videos were ganked from Tiktok, the massively popular China-based video platform that is mostly know in the west as a place where tweens make and share elaborately choreographic lipsync videos augmented with a suite of skillfully applied video effects.

As one reply points out, much of this work is brutal piecework performed by badly exploited laborers; nevertheless, the videos are testament to the human capacity to find joy and mastery even under conditions of drudgery.

I’ve embedded the whole thread below, but here are my favorites:

Dancing noodle-tosser:

Robot apocalypse?

Fritter virtuoso:

Bollard-leverer:

(via Kottke)