/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
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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
#2[flagged]
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#3...and creative writing, and astroturfing.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#4Interesting. Having read the article I noted some of the talking points I regularly hear on Sirius Patriot channel ( and I assume used in other right wing media ) including Che ridicule. It is pretty effective in that regard.
I personally saw r/antiwork as another incarnation of OWS. Only difference is that it was online ( so perception only ) and antiwork was very effectively destroyed via character assassination. I am sure it will be studied in terms of PR engagement and social manipulation.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#5It 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 wager >80%) are Americans asking for workers rights that are the norm in western Europe. Things like paid maternal/paternal leave, greater work life balance and paid overtime, flexibly working and WFH.
The majority of people in America are almost certainly in favour of that, but you get a dog walker going on TV on a notoriously provocative network talking about "anti-work" it's just mind boggling.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#6Great writeup.
A subreddit getting co-opted by the masses to change its intentions is a story as old as reddit. See my username for how I know that to be true.
Hopefully more subreddits will wake up and realize that being included in high activity feeds (r/all, popular) is not necessarily a good thing. We have.
> Speaking of unflattering stereotypes, let’s be blunt for a moment: Most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people.
I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#7[flagged]
I suggest we try to avoid a liberal-vs.-conservative discussion here. They typically result in acrimony with little to show for it.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#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, which in turn changes the original community.
As long as the popularity of a subreddit is below a certain threshold, it gets to foster specific discussions on whatever fringe ideology you are interested in, but it never stays that way for long.
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#9I 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’s been back to work for a year, he is on salary and gets no overtime, what’s he doing right now on this beautiful winter Saturday morning? Fucking working over time... not for money, but because they “need” him... fuck you, your family needs you and you been working 50 h a week on salary for 20 fucking years. Fucken boomers."
When I read this, I see "haven't seen him in two months," "we have three kids and so does he (6, 8 and 9) his wife passed away," and "your family needs you."
When the author read this, he saw "criticizing his father for hard work."
I think we can all agree that the emotional cost to your family is a major, defining symptom of being a workaholic. This appears to be someone seeking support for that, but the author tries to ignore the emotional reality and paper it over with, well, honestly I don't need to rephrase it, I'm sure it's obvious.
Neglecting to spend time with your family can be just as bad as neglecting to provide for them. 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. ;)
Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification
#10[flagged]
I suggest we try to avoid a liberal-vs.-conservative discussion here. They typically result in acrimony with little to show for it.
You misunderstand OP. They seem to be a leftist, not a conservative. They find it ironic that the word recuperate (which has origins in the left) was recuperated or "sanewashed" by this article. It's actually interesting and kind of amusing.
Sanewashing is a recuperation of recuperation.