Sarah sat in her cubicle, hands shaking. She opened TikTok. Started a new draft. Filmed herself holding up a printed email—the one where the CEO promised “unlimited PTO” but then denied every request for six months.
Sarah had 300 followers. Mostly strangers who liked her videos of sourdough starters and her cat, Gyoza, falling off the couch. But last week, she’d posted a 15-second clip: herself in the breakroom, lipsyncing to a Chappell Roan song, with the text overlay: “When your boss says ‘we’re a family’ but the family doesn’t have a 401k.”
“We’ve become aware of a… third-party service interfering with our monitoring systems. This is a security breach. Anyone using ‘Proxy’ will be terminated immediately.”
She added text: “Exhibit A.”
Jenna from accounting posted a video about wage theft. Proxy mirrored it into a “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work” slideshow for corporate. Marcus in IT posted a rant about mandatory RTO. Proxy turned it into a soothing ASMR video of typing sounds.
She clicked. Scrolled. Her stomach turned to ice.
The notification from HR landed in Sarah’s inbox at 4:58 PM on a Friday. “Urgent: New Social Media Policy. Please review and sign by EOD.”
Before she could second-guess herself, she hit post. Then she DM’d Proxy: “New video. Protect it.”