Microblog Memes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony#Media_and_communications_studies

Adopted from the work of Gramsci and Stuart Hall, in media studies and cultural studies hegemony refers to individuals or concepts that become most dominant in a culture. Building on Gramsci's ideas, Hall stated that the media is a critical institution for furthering or inhibiting hegemony.

Communications studies scholars have argued that in the praxis of hegemony, imperial dominance is established by means of cultural imperialism, whereby the leader state (hegemon) dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government. The imposition of the hegemon's way of life—an imperial lingua franca and bureaucracies (social, economic, educational, governing)—transforms the concrete imperialism of direct military domination into the abstract power of the status quo, indirect imperial domination. ...

Culturally, hegemony also is established by means of language, specifically the imposed lingua franca of the hegemon (leader state), which then is the official source of information for the people of the society of the sub-ordinate state. Writing on language and power, Andrea Mayr says, "As a practice of power, hegemony operates largely through language." In contemporary society, an example of the use of language in this way is in the way Western countries set up educational systems in African countries mediated by Western languages.

this comes to mind, basically the kind of thinking in the OP represents a kind of corporate / capitalist hegemonic perspective - employers want you to sacrifice everything for them, ideally at any cost to your own health, liberty, etc., and there is a notion that if you align with those values you are a good worker - you should want to work all the time, you should feel bad for taking paid leave, etc.

This is in opposition to the kind of economic violence and desperation that faces wage workers - no Walmart store employee is being told they need to want to come in to work and not take paid leave, because those workers are already desperate for their wages and are probably relying on government aid programs to bridge the gap in their wages to pay for food.

Instead, in contexts where workers are not desperate and under immediate threat of losing shelter and food is where you find this kind of hegemonic messaging is so strong - the white collar employees who come into offices are the ones who are being made to feel guilty for taking paid leave, they are the ones who are expected to show up to work happy and self-motivated, and to want to be at work every day, to work in the evenings and over weekends without pay, etc. - that's hegemony, it operates through acceptance of a system of beliefs and values, and through self-regulation (rather than direct threats).