The AI Apocalypse Is Here. So Is Your Resume.

Let's be honest with each other.

Artificial intelligence is wreaking havoc. It's scraping artists' work without consent. It's generating mediocre poetry and calling it art. It's making it harder to trust what you see, hear, or read. It's being built by tech bros who have never once wondered whether they should do something, only whether they could. It's accelerating surveillance capitalism, deepening inequality, and giving corporations yet another tool to extract value from human labor while offering nothing in return.

And it's not going anywhere.

I say this as someone who remembers when MySpace was the future. I watched Friendster die. I watched Facebook eat the world. I watched algorithms turn us all into products, then watched us collectively shrug and download TikTok anyway. The cycle is not new. The technology changes; the pattern remains.

So here's the question I keep asking myself, and the one I keep asking my clients: How do we survive this without losing ourselves?

Because here's the thing about surviving colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, structural racism, patriarchy, bigotry, and class divisions—it has never been about purity. It has never been about refusing to touch the tools that are also being used to crush us. It has been about finding the cracks, exploiting the openings, and doing whatever the hell we have to do to keep ourselves and our people alive.

That includes AI.

If the System Is Rigged, Rig It Back

Right now, we are in a job drought that is not really a drought. It's a redistribution. Corporations are using AI as an excuse to lay people off while pretending it's about efficiency. Hiring algorithms are filtering out resumes before human eyes ever see them. The game has changed, and the rules were never fair to begin with.

So what do we do?

We play the game back.

If employers are using AI to screen resumes, then you should be using AI to write them. If companies are using automation to reject candidates, then you should be using automation to apply to five hundred jobs while you sleep. If the system is designed to exhaust you into submission, then you need to find ways to work smarter, not harder—because working harder has never saved anyone in this economy.

I’ve known of people who have used AI to:

• Spam out customized resumes to every relevant job posting in their field, increasing their response rate tenfold.

• Generate cover letters that actually sound like them, after they fed the AI samples of their own writing and trained it to mimic their voice.

• Identify creative side hustles and micro-business opportunities that didn't exist a year ago.

• Research and map out entire career pivots in industries they knew nothing about, complete with step-by-step action plans.

Is it cheating? No. It's leveling the playing field. And if someone wants to call it cheating, ask them whether they think the hiring algorithm is playing fair.

The Exit Strategy You Didn't Know You Needed

Some of you are reading this and thinking: "I don't want to play this game at all. I want to leave."

Good. I support you.

There is a reason so many of us are looking at other countries right now. There is a reason the phrase "safety plan" has started to include passports and visa applications. When you are a QTPoC, when you are visibly marginalized, when you are part of a community that is being actively targeted by legislation, rhetoric, and violence—staying is not always the courageous choice. Sometimes leaving is the courageous choice.

AI can help you do that. Not because AI cares about you—it doesn't. But because AI is good at processing information, synthesizing options, and identifying pathways that you might not have thought of on your own.

You can use AI to:

• Research visa pathways for countries that align with your safety needs.

• Compare cost of living, healthcare access, and LGBTQ+ rights across multiple nations.

• Draft emails to immigration lawyers and consulates.

• Help your same-sex partner navigate the paperwork for common-law sponsorship if they are a citizen of another country.

• Create a realistic budget and timeline for relocation.

This is not the same as getting legal advice. You still need to talk to actual humans who know what they're doing. But AI can help you figure out where to start, what questions to ask, and what your options even are—which is more than a lot of us have when we are overwhelmed and scared.

The Psychological Cost of Pure Ideology

Here is something I say to my clients often, and I will say it to you now: The idea that you must use nothing created by the oppressor is a luxury belief. It is a belief held by people who have never had to choose between their ethics and their survival.

Audre Lorde famously said that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. She was right. She was also writing at a time when the tools were much less ambiguous. Today, the master is using AI to automate discrimination, profile communities, and concentrate wealth. And we are supposed to just... not use it?

I love Audre. She is one of my ancestors. But I also know that sometimes survival means picking up whatever is lying around and using it as a weapon, even if the weapon was forged by the enemy.

Using AI to get a job, to make money, to leave the country, to survive—that is not endorsement. That is not collaboration. That is not giving in. That is looking at a burning house and saying, "I'm not going to stand here and debate the ethics of the fire extinguisher while I suffocate."

The Real Work

Using AI to survive is not the end of the work. It is the beginning.

The real work is still what it has always been: building community, caring for each other, organizing, resisting, healing, creating art that is actually made by human hands, telling stories that matter, and imagining a world that is not this one.

AI can help you pay the rent. It cannot help you find meaning. It can help you get to Canada. It cannot help you build a life there. It can help you write a resume. It cannot help you know who you are.

That part is still on you. That part is still on us. That part is sacred.

So use AI. Use it unapologetically. Use it to survive. Use it to escape. Use it to buy yourself time and space to do the things that AI cannot do—the things that are actually worth doing.

And when you have used it, when you have gotten what you need, put it down. Go outside. Look at the sky. Talk to your people. Touch grass, as the kids say. Remember that you are a person, and AI is a tool, and tools are made to be used, not worshipped or feared.

The apocalypse is here. It has been here for a very long time. Some of us were born into it. Some of us arrived late, but we have all been living in it.

AI is not going to save us. But it might help us stay alive long enough to save ourselves. And that is good enough for today.

Disclosure: This blog article was written with the assistance of AI, after the author wrote a 6-paragraph prompt and then wrangled, wrestled, and edited the shit out of it to remove any remaining traces of patriarchal, bigoted, capitalist, right-wing, whiteness-centering bullshit. That said, the topic, themes, sociopolitical perspectives, tone, and style were derived from the author.

The author uses AI because—despite the wreckage it's causing—this shit isn't going away. The author was a MySpace user in the 90s. She knows how these things go. And as a sole practitioner with a full practice, there is no way in hell she could keep up with writing a relevant, timely, thought-provoking, and inspiring weekly blog that speaks to the regular gaslighting the marginalized face, while also serving clients without the use of AI.

So yes—contrary to the saying, sometimes you do need to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. Sorry, Audre.