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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

#141

Post by nradov »

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’…

What about the dads who are away from their families for weeks or months at a time, working offshore or on military deployments? Are they "bad"? I think some people just have a skewed sense of entitlement.

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

#142

Post by s1artibartfast »

the_snooze wrote: post #106
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."

I think the article articulates the counterpoint. Most movements start with radicals. A milder slogan wouldn't have gotten traction with the radicals, who actually do want to abolish the police. If the radicals weren't protesting, the mainstream wouldn't have taken notice and come on board. This leads to a conflict of views within the protesters and ultimately the revision of the slogan definition

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

#143

Post by jackling »

jokoon wrote: post #130

Brilliantly explained. Too few people have the humility to look like a loser, and would rather work a bad job instead. To add on the condescending tone of fox news, the whole hypocrisy of the backlash was quite surprising to me. To me it really felt like it was an attempt to shut down the sub by elaborate astro turfing (the mods did say there was a lot of new accounts brigading). I felt a lot of empathy for Doreen, a…

It's shocking to me how people just made fun of her for everything possible. IMO she explained her position well, and didn't say anything outrageous. The "laziness is a virtue" line specifically seems to be something that people point out as a terrible take, but with full context it's easy to see that she's just promoting more rest and healthier conditions.

It's ironic to me how a subreddit that advocates for less toxic workplaces, can foster such a toxic environment.

I completely agree with your take.

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

#144

Post by AlexCoventry »

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,…

> it never stays that way for long.

I'm seeing this happen now, with r/streamentry.

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

#147

Post by wutbrodo »

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…

This is completely orthogonal to the article's thesis.

The entire piece is about optics, and doesn't take any position. In fact, the only time the piece departs from its neutral tone is to decry the latecomers accused of sanewashing the space and pushing its original community to its periphery. This is sympathetic to the radicals, albeit incidentally.

You've also misunderstood what sanewashing is. Sanewashing is with reference to the mainstream, not some supposed absolute moral truth. It describes the transformation of a radical viewpoint into one that's palatable to the mainstream. It makes no claim about the moral truth of the radical view.

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

#148

Post by beerandt »

foverzar wrote: post #52

What is "sanewashing"? English is not my native language and I am having genuine trouble locating the definitions. The top 1 result in google is this very linked article.

When outsiders understand what a movement is really about, but it sounds bad, so movement claims that outsiders' (accurate) perspective is wrong.

"No sane person would belive %movement_belief%, what we really believe is %moderate-not_insane-image_saving-fake_belief%.

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

#149

Post by shakes_mcjunkie »

the_snooze wrote: post #106
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."

You could say literally the same thing about any political slogan. For example, please explain "government accountability" or "serve the people"? That literally could be anything. Another example, "Medicare for All", pretty straight forward, but what does it look like as a policy?

https://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-for-all-is-not-m...

Or "Make American Great Again" or "Build Back Better". Any slogan can be questioned. IMO, "Defund the Police" is almost the most straightforward political slogan I can think of and if you Google it, near the top result is a website explaining exactly what it means.

https://defundthepolice.org/

The problem with a lot of people who were questioning "Defund the Police" in my experience is that they would go to BLM protests but then be much more moderate and not actually interested in what the protests meant or what defunding the police actually means; the slogan wasn't unclear, it was wanting to look like you cared but not actually doing the work to convince yourself or learn more.

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

#150

Post by dotnet00 »

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’…

On the other hand, the argument can be made that the kids' lack of respect for the dad's career might be what's leading to the dad hiding away at work in the first place?

I feel this would be something relatable to a large portion of the people on this site, given how many of us practically live our tech careers. Even if we aren't putting in overtime at work, many of us spend time not at work on personal projects or learning some new tech. We might think of it as different from work, but for an outsider it'll just seem like more work.

It's also a sort of hypocrisy since if the point of the movement is to allow people to be free to do what they find meaning in, surely it's contradictory to diminish what someone finds meaning in just because you don't think it pays enough.

I know that if I had someone who didn't care for how fulfilling tech work is to me, I'd probably end up avoiding them too. Back when I went through a similar phase with my family, I too just buried myself more in work to not have to deal with them. Now they do understand, so I end up spending more time with them.

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