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/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

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Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#91

Post by mandmandam »

zqfm wrote: post #72
kvuj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I used to love the 4chan-style contrarian attitude until, in high school people I knew were killed in Iraq. Then I started to realize that those kinds of nihilist attitudes have real-world consequences. Since then, that attitude has become mainstream (or perhaps just my awareness of it) and following has been a constant trail of death and misery. I can't not take it seriously anymore when my friends and loved ones ar…

If we're assigning blame for nihilism and Iraq, let's not forget that WaPo, NYT, CNN, ABC, FOX and the rest of the pro-war media bear orders of magnitude more responsibility than fucking 4chan.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#92

Post by iso1210 »

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #32
BitwiseFool wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

The world itself leans left - at least compared with the US Left/Right divide, and younger people (who are more likely to be on reddit) lean left.

Obviously the site itself leans left.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#93

Post by CoastalCoder »

clumpthump wrote: post #86
CoastalCoder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest we try to avoid a liberal-vs.-conservative discussion here. They typically result in acrimony with little to show for it.

I was not starting such a discussion. I'm baffled by your comment and can only assume you're reading my comment through an American lens, which is half foreign to me (only half because I'm exposed to so much of it on the Internet).

I apologize! I can no longer see your original comment, but I may have simply misread it.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#94

Post by cscurmudgeon »

whatshisface wrote: post #9

I 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’…

> If it didn't happen so often maybe we wouldn't have so make kids growing up with a deep-set hatred of jobs. You don't need to be Freud to make that association. ;)

These kids need to travel to find out the reality of the world.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#95

Post by gurleen_s »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #40

This 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 mislea…

That’s because movements that began on the left are regularly appropriated by neoliberals seeking to crush any radical idea. It’s not a coincidence.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#96

Post by derbOac »

brodouevencode wrote: post #60

I might be alone with this notion, but does anyone else just _not care_? Don't get me wrong I've had my share of shitty bosses, employers, coworkers, pay, working conditions, and customer abuse but over time I've managed to fix every one of those. When a new problem crops up I talk to management. If they don't want to fix it, I leave for another place and hope for the best. This includes stints in being self-employed…

I have mixed feelings because on the one hand I generally have felt the same but on the other in the last several years have seen people in situations pretty much outside their control get stuck, or really really hurt because of one bad employer that basically ruins their career. I'm not sure if it's a trend but over the last few years it seems like there's more stories coming up about people who lose a job and then seem to never be hired again, and even with investigative reporting it's not clear why, except for ageism or other prejudice, or lack of connections.

I guess what I'm saying is that employment seems increasingly precarious to me. Not everyone has the luxury of moving between jobs easily, and even those who are stuck in stable but abused positions aren't necessarily clearly better off in some ways.

Add this to the writings about bullshit jobs, and the great resignation, and it feels like something is off about modern human resources, or management, or hiring, or employment, or something. I've never really identified with antiwork — it seems misguided to me — but I do think, like a lot of things, there's probably some kernel of accuracy behind its motivations. I think this is maybe what the article is tapping into, albeit maybe inaccurately itself.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#97

Post by kilroy123 »

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #75
dilippkumar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on wsb.

What do you want to know? I think r/wallstreetbets is still a fantastic place and more or less true to its purpose of finding interesting and novel trades. Much of the discussion has expanded, to discord (600K users, the limit) as well as the daily reddit talks (Think clubhouse but for reddit). The daily thread is still fantastic for a very quick list of interesting topics, which you can jump into and have a conversa…

I preferred it before GME and all that craziness. So before 2020.

Just not the same anymore.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#98

Post by minkzilla »

Miner49er wrote: post #67
stathibus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the "sanewashed" viewpoint. The original message of r/antiwork was that nobody should have to work to live a comfortable life in modern society, and their needs should be provided by others who do.

> should be provided by others who do. No, I don't think this is accurate. They wanted to abolish work for everyone, not for a select few.

What would provide for people? It seems to me we would either all starve and die, AI would do it for us (impossible in its current state), or we rely on effectively slave labor of poorer countries (which would mean work is not abolished for everyone).

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#99

Post by zqfm »

mandmandam wrote: post #91
zqfm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love the 4chan-style contrarian attitude until, in high school people I knew were killed in Iraq. Then I started to realize that those kinds of nihilist attitudes have real-world consequences. Since then, that attitude has become mainstream (or perhaps just my awareness of it) and following has been a constant trail of death and misery. I can't not take it seriously anymore when my friends and loved ones ar…

If we're assigning blame for nihilism and Iraq, let's not forget that WaPo, NYT, CNN, ABC, FOX and the rest of the pro-war media bear orders of magnitude more responsibility than fucking 4chan.

Oh I fully agree, that's what I mean by that attitude becoming more mainstream. Just growing up I saw that expressed more fully on 4chan before I saw it being adopted elsewhere.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#100

Post by evancox100 »

tgb wrote: post #28

I think this article is trying to have its cake and eat it too. If the sub has been sanewashed and overrun by average left-of-center opinions and become wildly popular, then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement? The movement changed, as the article points out, and therefore Doreen was a terrible choice of representative. The fact that she predates the change is exactly the reason she is not re…

Where did the author say Doreen Ford was still representative of the current user base? It was pretty explicit that she represented its original form, not what it had become. The whole takeaway for me anyways was the shifting nature of group ideals and membership. One person or founder may represent the typical ideals of the original group, while later they may be wildly unrepresentative due to an influx of more “moderate” members. Again this was a pretty clear takeaway.

As someone completely detached and not a part of this “antiwork” movement in any way, your post reads to me like someone who joined the community in its later stages and are bristling at what you think is a takedown that is trying to misrepresent your “totally normal, reasonable views of advocating for better working conditions”. And maybe the replacement of anarcho-communists with people advocating better working condition is a good thing! The tragedy is that the current, moderate ideals are mismatched with the original, extremist group name and ideals. Thus the need for “sane-washing” like so—

New member: “Actually anti-work isn’t about not working, it’s really about improving working conditions.”

Original anti-work founder: “No we literally are anti-work and want to abolish work.”

New member: “Nooooo you don’t represent us!!”

Like that is the exact process described. Same dynamic if you s/antiwork/abolish the police/

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