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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

#101

Post by MSFT_Edging »

StriverGuy wrote: post #56
belval wrote: post #8

> 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,…

Off topic, but my tin foil hat theory of r/antiwork is that this a massive psy-op being pushed by some other nation state. Reddits algo easily helps snowball and propagate ideas that are promoted by users within the sub. It is the perfect playbook to destabilize labor markets in a foreign country.

Perhaps, if you consider, there is genuine feeling of resentment among a large portion of the population trying to survive, and that resentment stems from actual material conditions in the labor market. And a community focused on that could garner actual popularity?

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

#102

Post by dgreensp »

vanusa wrote: post #81

I grant that the absolutist antiwork position fails to meet basic reality compliance standards. But does that give the current de-facto state religion -- cradle-to-grave workaholism (wildly out of proportion to the amount of work we actually need to do to sustain ourselves) -- a pass? Why is the promotion one position an instance of 'sanewashing', while the normalization of other (no less insane in my view) position…

Yeah, all the positions people are taking (progressives, anarchists) about work, here, are in the right direction from the status quo. But saying that wouldn’t fit with the author’s “aesthetic.” :)

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

#103

Post by merpnderp »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #89
Edman274 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement Represents the "movement", or represents the sub? They obviously still represented the sub - they were there when it got created, were a moderator, were picked by other moderators to be a representative of the subreddit in media events (which is conflated with the nebulous concept of "the movement") The issue here is that the "movement" may not be re…

You could ask the same about Fox - which is hardly ground zero for sanity itself. Does it represent a movement, or a TV channel? If it's a movement, by what process was it elected? Point being I doubt anyone at Fox was unhappy with how the Doreen interview turned out. Did they ask to interview anyone else from the sub? All this really does is highlight the difference between online opinionation - always easy - and ef…

"The latter is much harder and absolutely needs informed - ideally effective and professional - handling of public presentation and messaging."

That sounds like a ton of work.

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

#104

Post by ghaff »

bearjaws wrote: post #33

The 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 terminati…

>Anyone who is surprised by their termination due to performance really is not paying attention

I have definitely seen cases where someone was obviously really struggling with the quality of their work; i.e. others having to massively go through rounds of reworking their output to the point that they had negative productivity. Yet when they were eventually let go, they were shocked and surprised. Some people have pretty low awareness.

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

#105

Post by JSavageOne »

pmorici wrote: post #48
Besticle wrote: post #5

It takes one bad experience to ruin a reputation. Guy went on Fox news (against the communities) wishes and made millions of people's first impression of r/AntiWork to be negative. In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform. Most of the sub (I'd…

I happened upon the r/AntiWork comments section from time to time before that Fox News segment and it always struck me as full of people who were making every excuse not to take responsibility for their own circumstances and who have a fantasy that low skill jobs should some how pay enough to be life long careers instead of viewing them as stepping stones to bigger and better things.

For me antiwork is just anti forced wage labour. If we had a universal basic income, then that would be accomplished and people would be free to work on whatever they want. If technology is advanced enough to be able to afford this which I'd argue is already the case, I don't see why this shouldn't be the case.

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

#106

Post by the_snooze »

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…

>Defund the Police

That slogan was straight up political malpractice. If you have to explain your position, then you're already losing.

Something like "government accountability" or "serve the people" probably could have gotten wider support than "defund the police."

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

#108

Post by diogenesjunior »

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…

>have its cake and eat it too

whenever i have cake, i tend to eat it also?

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

#109

Post by derbOac »

slothtrop wrote: post #70
lukev wrote: post #50

I liked the factual analysis and the story of /r/antiwork. But regarding the actual topic of work I think it sets up a false dichotomy; that one is either a sane normal person who thinks productivity is good, or an out-of-touch anarcho-communist. There is actually a very large middle ground which represents the most balanced view towards work; that most work is a necessary evil. It's not that work is good or desirabl…

> that would be unequivocally a good thing. Why? Work is a net positive in people's lives.

There's a saying something like "people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses" that can be extrapolated a bit. Work can be very positive and rewarding, or it can be negative and abusive. Everyone's experience is different; sometimes I feel that the fact r/antiwork has attained such saliency is maybe a sign that there's too much of the latter experience and not enough of the former.

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

#110

Post by ck2 »

I think they all went to r/workReform after that

Look the media is not your friend, for any movement, for any media left or right biased, you are clickbait to whatever they can hype you into for their own profit.

But going on Fox believing you will accomplish anything but arm the idiots is just lack of critical thinking skills.

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