Fundamentally, What Is "Quiet Quitting?"

So many damn hot takes on this one (myself included). But if we generally know — and have known for decades now — that companies don’t want to pony up wages except for a few key positions, and you’re not one of those positions, well, you’re probably paid somewhat under-market to begin with. (And if you’re not, you tell everyone at happy hour that you are, naturally.) I read about three years ago that the average number of bullet points in a job description was 17 these days. I only assume that’s gone up since COVID and hiring mayhem. Let’s say an average job description has 22 bullets in it. Looking for that unicorn, Gary? We know. We know. But then you wanna severely underpay 22 bullet points? We get it. We do. But then if a person just did the meandering, piddling work of those 22 bullet points — I’ve worked with a guy who used to post his objectives in the morning on Slack and would just write “email monitoring” and bosses thought he was productive as hell — then are they “quiet quitting?” Or are they just doing what you asked them to do at the pay rate you provided?

Why is this a thing? Can anyone explain it to me?