You fell for the Fox News propaganda. They chose the most nutty mod they could find to misrepresent the subreddit. Yes in its barebones infancy the subreddit was truly “anti-work” but that was for an incredibly short amount of time and when it was sub 50k users. Realistically the majority of the subreddits history is what joad is describing.
It’s a good example of why it does matter how leftists present themselves – “if people take issue with our group as-is they were never going to get on board anyway” is poor reasoning. Choosing to go with “anti-work” had at least three problems:
Gives bad-faith critics like Fox a perpetual layup;
Attracts at least some people who really just don’t want to contribute, which feeds back into 1 and also impedes trying to do anything meaningful; and
Takes a good impulse (alienation from one’s labor) and channels it in a frankly childish direction (“I don’t wanna”) instead of towards class consciousness, education, and action
I agree generally, but I think it’s a bit easier said than done sometimes, especially when dealing with the absurd soundbite level of things in modern high speed internet land. Anti-work in the face of a culture that glorifies burning yourself out for nothing kinda makes some sense; out of context, it just sounds unrealistic and silly, but in context, it can be interpreted as an opposition to the glorifying of labor for no other reason than because it’s labor. There are those who will take it too far, or be a poor representation, but that’s the case for any way you frame it. You can say work reform, but reform is often associated with capitulation in the context of dealing with a dictatorship of capital, so now you might get a less bad faith interpretation from critics, but might also be more apt to attract libs who are advocating nothing more than joining a union and not raising class consciousness meaningfully.
I do think it’s worth experimenting with these kind of things and seeing what has what kind of impact. I’m not saying don’t try because it’s hard. But just that it’s more a matter of tradeoffs than a purely helpful way of doing it with no drawbacks. And at some point, you have to just be ready to explain a coherent and consistent position beyond a couple of words, which is going to be more important and stabilizing in the long-term.
You fell for the Fox News propaganda. They chose the most nutty mod they could find to misrepresent the subreddit. Yes in its barebones infancy the subreddit was truly “anti-work” but that was for an incredibly short amount of time and when it was sub 50k users. Realistically the majority of the subreddits history is what joad is describing.
It’s a good example of why it does matter how leftists present themselves – “if people take issue with our group as-is they were never going to get on board anyway” is poor reasoning. Choosing to go with “anti-work” had at least three problems:
I agree generally, but I think it’s a bit easier said than done sometimes, especially when dealing with the absurd soundbite level of things in modern high speed internet land. Anti-work in the face of a culture that glorifies burning yourself out for nothing kinda makes some sense; out of context, it just sounds unrealistic and silly, but in context, it can be interpreted as an opposition to the glorifying of labor for no other reason than because it’s labor. There are those who will take it too far, or be a poor representation, but that’s the case for any way you frame it. You can say work reform, but reform is often associated with capitulation in the context of dealing with a dictatorship of capital, so now you might get a less bad faith interpretation from critics, but might also be more apt to attract libs who are advocating nothing more than joining a union and not raising class consciousness meaningfully.
I do think it’s worth experimenting with these kind of things and seeing what has what kind of impact. I’m not saying don’t try because it’s hard. But just that it’s more a matter of tradeoffs than a purely helpful way of doing it with no drawbacks. And at some point, you have to just be ready to explain a coherent and consistent position beyond a couple of words, which is going to be more important and stabilizing in the long-term.
I was around for when it was exploding, and that sub-50k user period was what I thought they were alluding to.