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> spectacles like the immense popularity of the "Anti-Work" thread on Reddit — have gone as far as to suggest this record-breaking trend is a movement of young,

> spectacles like the immense popularity of the "Anti-Work" thread on Reddit — have gone as far as to suggest this record-breaking trend is a movement of young, able-bodied Americans rejecting work altogether. I don't think this is the point of "anti work". The point is (to me) that people should be treated equitably at work and that work shouldn't be the center of our lives

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
warent 5y ago
Yes. Admittedly on the one hand what I see a lot is people embracing victimhood, relieving themselves or responsibility and self empowerment. That's the only aspect of anti-work that I don't like. Otherwise I think their message is very fair and very clear: raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job.
- leadingthenet 5y ago
  > raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job. ...so continue working aka the exact opposite of what anti-work seems to imply. Gotcha. Another term got co-opted for political purposes, wonderful. Nonsense that once again originates in the US, which will inevitably land on our shores in no time.
- zanny 5y ago
  It feels like newfound indignity and the realization is that most of us are actually victims - capitalist exploitation of the working class is codified into the societies we live in, it just took people taking a break from the grind, a step back to see what they were subjected to, to realize what the exploitation is and what it feels like. Its not popular on HN but most of the libertarian tenants that belay picking yourself up by your bootstraps are not applicable to a supermajority of labor. There is no change of attitude within the framing of the economic system as it exists that individual actors take on a collective scale to suddenly stop being exploited systemically.
capableweb 5y ago
If you go to r/AntiWork on Reddit and read their sidebar, it's fairly easy to understand what the point is: > A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
- oats 5y ago
  That's what's in the sidebar, but a quick browsing of the posts in there suggests a more socialist bent to me.
  - DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
    I mean the Venn diagram of people who say they want to “end work” and the people whose worldview aligns perfectly with socialism is essentially a circle. That’s not new.
    - orthecreedence 5y ago
      That's somewhat disingenuous. There are socialists who wish for full automation so you can just go fishing all day, and there are those who value work itself but simply want a different relationship both at their place of work and systemically in general.
  - Zircom 5y ago
    Yeah, as it got more popular during the pandemic it was quickly co-opted into more of a pro-workers rights subreddit, and nowadays it's mostly people posting clearly fake screenshots of themselves telling their bosses off over text for to farm karma.
    - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
      That subreddit changed its rules recently; now screenshots of text-message conversations are only allowed on Sundays.
ashtonkem 5y ago
This is roughly the equivalent of a reporter quoting a tweet as “people are saying”. Anti work is angry about work conditions, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that they’re all quitting to lounge about. In fact, there are tons of stories there about people quitting bad jobs to get better jobs.
- tjr225 5y ago
  So would you say that they aren't actually... anti work?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    It’s complicated. They’re clearly frustrated with the pay and working conditions typical with work these days. But I’ve seen no evidence of people going on the dole or retiring there. By and far the most common commentary there is people advising each other of their legal rights around how bosses treat them. Like most of Reddit, the style and rhetorical flourishes are over the top. But the substance being posted does not seem to match what a surface analysis would imply.
  - loa_in_ 5y ago
    Matches what the antiwork subreddit defines itself as in it's sidebar
gfiorav 5y ago
This is honestly my gripe with r/antiwork. It could be (and sometimes is) a hub for a mature conversation towards unionizing and regaining meaningful industry in the US, but it choses to be the place for edgy workers from all ages to declare themselves "marxists". As if they thrived on the ever-diminishing amount of gasps that word incites. Like a bunch of teenagers trying to out-edge everyone else. Hard to read.
- sevenf0ur 5y ago
  I'm convinced that subreddit will eventually get banned. Some members are radicalized and I see calls for violence very frequently.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  It's reddit. The chances of mature conversation are close to zero precisely because it's largely populated by edgy teenagers. edit: There are many smaller communities on reddit that do have mature conversation and content, they're just vastly outnumbered by the edgy teen clickbait content we see on the front page.
- SauciestGNU 5y ago
  It seems uncharitable to assume people are analyzing society through a Marxist lens for "gasps". I personally believe that Marxism is a useful tool for understanding the interplay between the powerful elites in our society and the state. I also have a degree in political science (in addition to my CS grad degree), so I feel confident in saying that I'm not an edgy teen and that I have the academic background to apply Marxist analysis to contemporary issues.
xwdv 5y ago
No, you are wrong. It is exactly what it says, these redditors do not want to work, at all. Not for good pay, not for shitty pay. Just zero work. It becomes obvious once you read through several threads. They believe life shouldn’t be wasted slaving away for a paycheck so you can pay bills until you die. The subreddit is mostly about people languishing the fact they cannot escape this cycle and day dreaming about how to get out, or sharing horrible work experiences with others for sympathy.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Just think of ant colonies and how productive they are for so few working workers...
iamricks 5y ago
Most of the posts on that subreddit seem like fake stories, there's no proof required to post. Most of the top posts every month sound almost the same, titles like "My boss said i couldn't leave" for click-bait with a screenshot of what sometimes just looks like a word doc.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Perhaps true. But just these last few days we have corporations actually getting temporary restraining orders to prevent people from going to work for another company and requiring the other company to "make available" to them those people who had quit their job and serve out their notice. Thankfully that TRO was dissolved, but nonetheless.
- shantnutiwari 5y ago
  Yeah, all the stories there are fake, as they follow the same formula / similar-ish screenshots. And antiwork is always on the front page of reddit, so its attracting more low quality , karma grabbing posters
steelstraw 5y ago
What's up with all the language games lately? "Defund the police". No no, we don't actually mean defund the police... "Anti work". No no, we don't actually mean we're anti work...
- ReaLNero 5y ago
  It's catchy, it attracts attention, and it makes people learn what the movement is about. It's one thing to say "defund the police", and it's another to say "penalize police brutality, take police funds and use them to fund social workers trained to disarm situations without using violence, etc."
  - bufbupa 5y ago
    > makes people learn what the movement is about. I don't know about that. More like it muddies the waters and leads to miscommunication and polarization
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    “Reform the force” It’s not hard to come up with a catchy tagline that doesn’t completely misrepresent the movement. Thing is, the movement is about defunding police. They’re not shy about that: https://defundthepolice.org/ https://defundthepolice.org/
    - brimble 5y ago
      I do not understand why this is regarded as so radical, once I actual sat down and thought it through. They never do anything about property crime, even for middle class white people out in middle class 'burbs. The one time we had a shooting anywhere nearby it was really weird and looked a whole lot like a (small-time—the dude was clearly not a seasoned pro, as he wandered into the wrong house first, telling the occupants they weren't who he was after before leaving) organized crime hit, and AFAIK they never solved it even with several witnesses, it happening in broad daylight, and both victims surviving, plus the guy apparently traveling a good long way on foot to and from the scene, and that was years ago, so they're 0/1 on scary violent crime in my area. I can't imagine they'd do better in a more typical case, unless it's one of those incredibly obvious "the boyfriend did it" situations that any idiot could solve in two minute flat. Traffic enforcement should probably be someone else's job anyway, not the police. Imagine how many fewer police officers we could have if they didn't spend 75% of their time sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun, and how much cheaper people who only did that would be—I think we only maintain the status quo because police benefit from fines & seizures, so they don't want to lose that, and as an excuse to fish for other (mostly victimless) crimes or "crimes" (like having too much money in the passenger seat). I don't really care one way or the other, but if folks in less-nice parts of town want to try getting rid of them, seems OK to me. If it goes very wrong, I expect they'll get experience practically all the downside, so if they think it's a good idea, cool, let's try it. They're mostly dead weight from my perspective anyway—I don't get why actually defunding them, at least to try it out and see what happens, is such a big deal. They're incredibly ineffective and unhelpful, at best. Starting from scratch and seeing what we actually need to pay for doesn't seem like a crazy idea.
friendlydog 5y ago
From the posts I have read in /r/antiwork I would not like to employ any of the posters, I would not want to be a coworker to any of them either. I'm not convinced that the world needs to have everyone working, but if it comes down to a shortage of food, healthcare or consumable goods, the workers should be fed before the slackers.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  >but if it comes down to a shortage of food, healthcare or consumable goods, the workers should be fed before the slackers. Some of the people in /r/antiwork see these shortages as artificial or caused by a society that funnels labor toward profit instead of toward need, but to your other point, there are a lot of people on that reddit who are incredibly naive or just have a chip on their shoulder.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    > shortages as artificial from a objective POV many but not all are mostly artificial, but not because of someone planing it or anything like that, but because of emergent behavior of our economical system and the complexity of supply chains. Sadly all of this is very hard to change. Especially with our world currently heading into a not so grate direction in nearly every sector and most countries...
astura 5y ago
I haven't been there much, but the posts I've personally observed there are mostly LARPing/fantasy stories. They exist to titillate. They are about as real as the stories posted in the erotic subs. Obviously there's a market for that sort of thing, so I guess that says something. I just wouldn't use people's fantasies to deduce something about their actual behavior - I think almost everyone at one point fantasizes about not needing their job.
paxys 5y ago
No, the original point of the sub was always to end the current style of "work" – the idea that people need to be sitting in an office or breaking their bodies for 40+ hours a week doing something meaningless and uninteresting just to earn the privilege of living. Threads used to be about UBI, automation, unions, anti-capitalism, pursuing passions. Then over the last year it has turned into a wall of (mostly fake) "my boss is bad" stories.
lanfeust6 5y ago
According to the faq and the mods, the point is "anti-labor under Capitalism". You have a core user base of basically commies, but a larger chunk of participants just voicing grievances about labor conditions. This is by intention, they're hoping to rub off on people.
orthecreedence 5y ago
> I don't think this is the point of "anti work". You should tell this to them. I've spent a lot of time in the sub (left recently though) and many of the people there seem to think we have the technology and means for a fully automated economy and are simply choosing not to switch over. They truly believe if we had some form of pseudo-anarchist revolution, they would never have to spend another day doing anything but fun, rewarding activities.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

warent 5y ago

Yes. Admittedly on the one hand what I see a lot is people embracing victimhood, relieving themselves or responsibility and self empowerment. That's the only aspect of anti-work that I don't like. Otherwise I think their message is very fair and very clear: raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job.

leadingthenet 5y ago
> raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job. ...so continue working aka the exact opposite of what anti-work seems to imply. Gotcha. Another term got co-opted for political purposes, wonderful. Nonsense that once again originates in the US, which will inevitably land on our shores in no time.
zanny 5y ago
It feels like newfound indignity and the realization is that most of us are actually victims - capitalist exploitation of the working class is codified into the societies we live in, it just took people taking a break from the grind, a step back to see what they were subjected to, to realize what the exploitation is and what it feels like. Its not popular on HN but most of the libertarian tenants that belay picking yourself up by your bootstraps are not applicable to a supermajority of labor. There is no change of attitude within the framing of the economic system as it exists that individual actors take on a collective scale to suddenly stop being exploited systemically.

capableweb 5y ago

If you go to r/AntiWork on Reddit and read their sidebar, it's fairly easy to understand what the point is: > A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.

oats 5y ago
That's what's in the sidebar, but a quick browsing of the posts in there suggests a more socialist bent to me.
- DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
  I mean the Venn diagram of people who say they want to “end work” and the people whose worldview aligns perfectly with socialism is essentially a circle. That’s not new.
  - orthecreedence 5y ago
    That's somewhat disingenuous. There are socialists who wish for full automation so you can just go fishing all day, and there are those who value work itself but simply want a different relationship both at their place of work and systemically in general.
- Zircom 5y ago
  Yeah, as it got more popular during the pandemic it was quickly co-opted into more of a pro-workers rights subreddit, and nowadays it's mostly people posting clearly fake screenshots of themselves telling their bosses off over text for to farm karma.
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    That subreddit changed its rules recently; now screenshots of text-message conversations are only allowed on Sundays.

ashtonkem 5y ago

This is roughly the equivalent of a reporter quoting a tweet as “people are saying”. Anti work is angry about work conditions, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that they’re all quitting to lounge about. In fact, there are tons of stories there about people quitting bad jobs to get better jobs.

tjr225 5y ago
So would you say that they aren't actually... anti work?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  It’s complicated. They’re clearly frustrated with the pay and working conditions typical with work these days. But I’ve seen no evidence of people going on the dole or retiring there. By and far the most common commentary there is people advising each other of their legal rights around how bosses treat them. Like most of Reddit, the style and rhetorical flourishes are over the top. But the substance being posted does not seem to match what a surface analysis would imply.
- loa_in_ 5y ago
  Matches what the antiwork subreddit defines itself as in it's sidebar

gfiorav 5y ago

This is honestly my gripe with r/antiwork. It could be (and sometimes is) a hub for a mature conversation towards unionizing and regaining meaningful industry in the US, but it choses to be the place for edgy workers from all ages to declare themselves "marxists". As if they thrived on the ever-diminishing amount of gasps that word incites. Like a bunch of teenagers trying to out-edge everyone else. Hard to read.

sevenf0ur 5y ago
I'm convinced that subreddit will eventually get banned. Some members are radicalized and I see calls for violence very frequently.
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
It's reddit. The chances of mature conversation are close to zero precisely because it's largely populated by edgy teenagers. edit: There are many smaller communities on reddit that do have mature conversation and content, they're just vastly outnumbered by the edgy teen clickbait content we see on the front page.
SauciestGNU 5y ago
It seems uncharitable to assume people are analyzing society through a Marxist lens for "gasps". I personally believe that Marxism is a useful tool for understanding the interplay between the powerful elites in our society and the state. I also have a degree in political science (in addition to my CS grad degree), so I feel confident in saying that I'm not an edgy teen and that I have the academic background to apply Marxist analysis to contemporary issues.

xwdv 5y ago

No, you are wrong. It is exactly what it says, these redditors do not want to work, at all. Not for good pay, not for shitty pay. Just zero work. It becomes obvious once you read through several threads. They believe life shouldn’t be wasted slaving away for a paycheck so you can pay bills until you die. The subreddit is mostly about people languishing the fact they cannot escape this cycle and day dreaming about how to get out, or sharing horrible work experiences with others for sympathy.

rob_c 5y ago
Just think of ant colonies and how productive they are for so few working workers...

iamricks 5y ago

Most of the posts on that subreddit seem like fake stories, there's no proof required to post. Most of the top posts every month sound almost the same, titles like "My boss said i couldn't leave" for click-bait with a screenshot of what sometimes just looks like a word doc.

FireBeyond 5y ago
Perhaps true. But just these last few days we have corporations actually getting temporary restraining orders to prevent people from going to work for another company and requiring the other company to "make available" to them those people who had quit their job and serve out their notice. Thankfully that TRO was dissolved, but nonetheless.
shantnutiwari 5y ago
Yeah, all the stories there are fake, as they follow the same formula / similar-ish screenshots. And antiwork is always on the front page of reddit, so its attracting more low quality , karma grabbing posters

steelstraw 5y ago

What's up with all the language games lately? "Defund the police". No no, we don't actually mean defund the police... "Anti work". No no, we don't actually mean we're anti work...

ReaLNero 5y ago
It's catchy, it attracts attention, and it makes people learn what the movement is about. It's one thing to say "defund the police", and it's another to say "penalize police brutality, take police funds and use them to fund social workers trained to disarm situations without using violence, etc."
- bufbupa 5y ago
  > makes people learn what the movement is about. I don't know about that. More like it muddies the waters and leads to miscommunication and polarization
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Gareth321 5y ago
  “Reform the force” It’s not hard to come up with a catchy tagline that doesn’t completely misrepresent the movement. Thing is, the movement is about defunding police. They’re not shy about that: https://defundthepolice.org/ https://defundthepolice.org/
  - brimble 5y ago
    I do not understand why this is regarded as so radical, once I actual sat down and thought it through. They never do anything about property crime, even for middle class white people out in middle class 'burbs. The one time we had a shooting anywhere nearby it was really weird and looked a whole lot like a (small-time—the dude was clearly not a seasoned pro, as he wandered into the wrong house first, telling the occupants they weren't who he was after before leaving) organized crime hit, and AFAIK they never solved it even with several witnesses, it happening in broad daylight, and both victims surviving, plus the guy apparently traveling a good long way on foot to and from the scene, and that was years ago, so they're 0/1 on scary violent crime in my area. I can't imagine they'd do better in a more typical case, unless it's one of those incredibly obvious "the boyfriend did it" situations that any idiot could solve in two minute flat. Traffic enforcement should probably be someone else's job anyway, not the police. Imagine how many fewer police officers we could have if they didn't spend 75% of their time sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun, and how much cheaper people who only did that would be—I think we only maintain the status quo because police benefit from fines & seizures, so they don't want to lose that, and as an excuse to fish for other (mostly victimless) crimes or "crimes" (like having too much money in the passenger seat). I don't really care one way or the other, but if folks in less-nice parts of town want to try getting rid of them, seems OK to me. If it goes very wrong, I expect they'll get experience practically all the downside, so if they think it's a good idea, cool, let's try it. They're mostly dead weight from my perspective anyway—I don't get why actually defunding them, at least to try it out and see what happens, is such a big deal. They're incredibly ineffective and unhelpful, at best. Starting from scratch and seeing what we actually need to pay for doesn't seem like a crazy idea.

friendlydog 5y ago

From the posts I have read in /r/antiwork I would not like to employ any of the posters, I would not want to be a coworker to any of them either. I'm not convinced that the world needs to have everyone working, but if it comes down to a shortage of food, healthcare or consumable goods, the workers should be fed before the slackers.

thesuitonym 5y ago
>but if it comes down to a shortage of food, healthcare or consumable goods, the workers should be fed before the slackers. Some of the people in /r/antiwork see these shortages as artificial or caused by a society that funnels labor toward profit instead of toward need, but to your other point, there are a lot of people on that reddit who are incredibly naive or just have a chip on their shoulder.
- dathinab 5y ago
  > shortages as artificial from a objective POV many but not all are mostly artificial, but not because of someone planing it or anything like that, but because of emergent behavior of our economical system and the complexity of supply chains. Sadly all of this is very hard to change. Especially with our world currently heading into a not so grate direction in nearly every sector and most countries...

astura 5y ago

I haven't been there much, but the posts I've personally observed there are mostly LARPing/fantasy stories. They exist to titillate. They are about as real as the stories posted in the erotic subs. Obviously there's a market for that sort of thing, so I guess that says something. I just wouldn't use people's fantasies to deduce something about their actual behavior - I think almost everyone at one point fantasizes about not needing their job.

paxys 5y ago

No, the original point of the sub was always to end the current style of "work" – the idea that people need to be sitting in an office or breaking their bodies for 40+ hours a week doing something meaningless and uninteresting just to earn the privilege of living. Threads used to be about UBI, automation, unions, anti-capitalism, pursuing passions. Then over the last year it has turned into a wall of (mostly fake) "my boss is bad" stories.

lanfeust6 5y ago

According to the faq and the mods, the point is "anti-labor under Capitalism". You have a core user base of basically commies, but a larger chunk of participants just voicing grievances about labor conditions. This is by intention, they're hoping to rub off on people.

orthecreedence 5y ago

> I don't think this is the point of "anti work". You should tell this to them. I've spent a lot of time in the sub (left recently though) and many of the people there seem to think we have the technology and means for a fully automated economy and are simply choosing not to switch over. They truly believe if we had some form of pseudo-anarchist revolution, they would never have to spend another day doing anything but fun, rewarding activities.