Incredibly well written, interesting, and witty piece.
/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
31–40 of 566 posts
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#32> How exactly did it happen in /r/antiwork? Casuals found it. You know — the people who use the internet to laugh at funny memes rather than treating every post as a blow in a grand ideological struggle. That's the very force of the reddit hivemind. I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all, so they get a constant influx of people aligned with the reddit mean opinion,…
>"I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all" The /r/popular and /r/all pages are intensively manipulated by a constellation of leftist activists. Have you ever noticed just how often the same "screenshots of tweets" submissions from people like AOC end up being reposted ad nauseum across several subreddits that basically share the same message - and most importantly -…
The site itself leans left, I wouldn't call that manipulation, simply people voting on content they like.
However, you are onto something.
Almost every single post on r/MurderedByAOC is made by u/LrlOurPresident, and those posts hit the front page on a nearly daily basis.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#33The whole subreddit went off the rails the moment they allowed misinformation and fake stories to be kept on the front page.
The stories I was reading must have been written by teenagers, nobody in leadership does or says half the things on that sub.
One post today was saying how their manager was planning to fire them 6 months from now... NO manager does that, *ever*. If someone is not meeting expectations termination is at most 2 months away, in America anyway. Anyone who is surprised by their termination due to performance really is not paying attention. Only a person with no professional experience would make these stories up.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#34I think this setup illustrated ridiculousness of both sides.
You confront authentic (troubled) person doing what she wants with another human so meticulously styled, plucked, tanned and dressed at corporate expense, walking at extremely shot leash with every one of his words tightly controlled, with all the scripted emotions. He looks as if he was a voice box made of plastic.
With this contrast you see how bad the work is, even if antiwork is not perfect either at the moment.
You usually watch news as if it was normal. You look at news anchors as if they were people, not corporate half-robots. Only such contrast gives you a chance to see them for what they are.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all" The /r/popular and /r/all pages are intensively manipulated by a constellation of leftist activists. Have you ever noticed just how often the same "screenshots of tweets" submissions from people like AOC end up being reposted ad nauseum across several subreddits that basically share the same message - and most importantly -…
The site itself leans left, I wouldn't call that manipulation, simply people voting on content they like. However, you are onto something. Almost every single post on r/MurderedByAOC is made by u/LrlOurPresident, and those posts hit the front page on a nearly daily basis.
Funny you mention u/LrlOurPresident, as I was tempted to mention that user specifically but didn't so my post wasn't too wordy. Their previous account IrlOurPresident was banned for manipulation but the admins don't seem to care in this situation.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#36I think this post may be, in its parlance, "sanewashing" workaholism. For example, let's take this post from the subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/lo6wov/my_dads_a_... > "My dads a “working class hero” I wanna punch him in the face, we wanted to visit this weekend, we haven’t seen him in 2 months due to covid, we have three kids and so does he (6, 8 and 9) his wife passed away 2 years ago, and he’…
I see 50 hours a week as work, nothing more. "Haven't seen him in two months" sounds, in that context, like dramatic hyperbole. Dismissing someone's hard work to support a family with an age-related slur doesn't breed sympathy for a position, either.
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Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#37My only question is, prior to the 'my manager sucks' posts and people getting encouraged to stand up for their rights/humanity, what exactly was r/antiwork _doing_? I feel like a majority of users still want to abolish wage slavery without the extreme anarchist association. Demanding better pay and treatment from our employers is an actionable item on the road to that. Besides just not working and living in poverty,…
You can look at it on the internet archive to get an idea. Here's a random day in 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20180903051111/https://www.reddi...
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#38> How exactly did it happen in /r/antiwork? Casuals found it. You know — the people who use the internet to laugh at funny memes rather than treating every post as a blow in a grand ideological struggle. That's the very force of the reddit hivemind. I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all, so they get a constant influx of people aligned with the reddit mean opinion,…
> That's the very force of the reddit hivemind. I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all, so they get a constant influx of people aligned with the reddit mean opinion, which in turn changes the original community. That's what I like about 4chan. In a sea of ungodly acidic garbage lies a golden heart of contrarianism. The posters will argue for a side one day, and 2 ho…
It probably has to do with the post incentives. On Reddit, if you get downvoted into oblivion, your post disappears even if you get thousands of comments. On 4Chan, the more active the post, the more it gets bumped to the top. So being inflammatory on one makes your post disappear, and on the other it sends it to the top of the feed.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#39My only question is, prior to the 'my manager sucks' posts and people getting encouraged to stand up for their rights/humanity, what exactly was r/antiwork _doing_? I feel like a majority of users still want to abolish wage slavery without the extreme anarchist association. Demanding better pay and treatment from our employers is an actionable item on the road to that. Besides just not working and living in poverty,…
It's important to understand that there is a separate movement with some overlap in users called r/WorkReform that is the more "hey, let's fix shitty employment problems" while AntiWork is supposed to be a far anarchist position.
Of course, having a position does not make a plan tenable.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#40This reminds me of "Defund the Police", wherein supporters would try to convince others that the slogan did not literally mean what it says.
Like AntiWork, It seems to have been started by those who genuinely wanted to abolish the police. But as time went on people joined who instead wanted to reform the police by dramatically cutting back what they were meant to respond to. But the slogan stayed, and was very misleading and puzzling to most people.