r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with the anti-work movement. /r/Antiwork advocates socialist, illiberal politics; advocating for class solidarity and struggle, and is strongly opposed to the principles of capitalism, liberalism, and reformism. The slogan of the forum is: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!".^[1][2]

Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work. According to Vice, members of the subreddit frequently discuss ways "to slack off, cheat, sabotage, and steal from their employers in an act of defiance".^[2] Other organized actions taken include taking a consumer boycott of Black Friday as well as the coordinated submissions of fake job applications after Kellogg's announced plans to replace 1,400 striking workers. The popularity of r/antiwork increased in 2021, with more than 1,600,000 members as January 2022, representing an increase of more than 900,000 members that year. r/antiwork has been compared to the Occupy Wall Street movement due to the subreddit's intellectual foundations and leaderless structure.^[2]

Formation

r/antiwork was created in 2013.^[2][3] Pseudonymously known online as Doreen Cleyre after American anarchist writer and feminist Voltairine de Cleyre, Doreen Ford describes the subreddit (from her position of longest active moderator circa 2014) as a big tent of the anti-work movement.^[2][1] In 2014, Ford was writing a blog called AbolishWork.com.^[2] Until 2017, Ford worked at a series of retail jobs for a decade, which she described as "miserable".^[2][1][4] In 2017, Ford quit working in retail to work with animals, mainly dogs, on the advice of her grandmother. As of 2021, she earns a living through dog walking, pet sitting, and through crowdfunding on her Patreon. Ford resides in Boston and is autistic.^[2][1][4]

Content

r/antiwork uses the slogan "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" Members of the subreddit are known as "idlers" in reference to the Protestant work ethic. Posts commonly criticize hustle culture^[5] and share stories of employees' negative experiences at their jobs,^[6] including unfair treatment and poor working conditions^[7] as well as poor pay.^[8] Other posts express members' happiness after quitting their jobs,^[9][10] a trend which began on the subreddit in 2020 and has been linked to the Great Resignation in 2021.^[11] According to subreddit moderator rockcellist, the most common issues raised by members of the subreddit include "stagnation of wages, overworking, being expected to be on call on and off the clock."^[12] The subreddit's most popular posts are screenshots of resignation letters and text messages, which became so popular that the subreddit's moderators restricted these posts to only Sundays.^[4]

The subreddit includes a digital library of books and texts including David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs,^[2][11] Karl Marx's Wage Labour and Capital, Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness, Paul Lafargue's The Right to be Lazy, Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist, Kathi Weeks' The Problem with Work, David Frayne's The Refusal of Work, and Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener, as well as a collection of anti-work quotes,^[2][13] a soundtrack that includes "9 to 5", and an FAQ page.^[11] Open discussion of worker salaries is encouraged, as is union organization.^[14]

Ideology

Members of r/antiwork hold varying views on work. The majority support a change in what is conceptualized as "work," while some advocate for the abolition of work altogether, and others are opposed to meaningless work or to work in a capitalist system.^[5] As membership in the subreddit has increased, some longtime left-wing members have objected to the perceived liberal, moderate, reformist, and pro-capitalist ideologies of newcomers.^[2][1]

In November 2021, moderator Doreen Ford told The Independent that "The main goal of the anti-work movement is just to abolish work, but what that ends up looking like is very different, depending on who you ask," noting that members of r/antiwork include "people who are anarchists, people who are Communists, people who are social Democrats, people who like Bernie, people who like Andrew Yang" and concluding that "there's lots of different kinds of leftists."^[15]

In December 2021, moderator rockcellist told Quartz that "There’s no particular political ideology that any of us follow" and that the posts on the subreddit reflect "how every individual views their labor, their contributions to society, how they're compensated."^[12]

An internal survey of 1,592 subreddit members found that 33.4% identified as socialists, 33.2% identified as social democrats and progressives, 16.1% identified as anarchists, and 14.4% did not identify as left-wing.^[2][12][16] The survey found that most members were male and live in North America.^[4] The survey also found that 50% of members still work full-time.^[4]

Activity

During the COVID-19 pandemic, members of r/antiwork shared various mouse mover strategies to combat bossware intended to monitor the productivity of employees working from home.^[17]

In 2021, members of r/antiwork called for "Blackout Black Friday." While originally a general strike on Black Friday, it morphed into a consumer boycott.^[1] In December 2021, various members posted images of anti-work manifestos which had printed from receipt printers and referred readers to r/antiwork. Some Reddit users suggested that the printouts were fake, but the founder of cybersecurity firm GreyNoise told Vice that network traffic suggested they were being printed remotely to printers that were "misconfigured to be exposed to the internet".^[18]

In October 2021, r/antiwork went viral after a warehouse worker posted a screenshot of a text they sent to their supervisor announcing that they would quit their job, which resulted in "an avalanche of quitting texts from other users."^[2]

On December 9, 2021, after Kellogg's announced plans to hire new permanent workers to replace 1,400 striking workers, a thread on r/antiwork urged members to submit fake applications for the new positions in order to overwhelm the company's hiring system. As of December 10, 2021^[update], the thread had more than 62,000 upvotes; the director of communications for the union representing the striking workers described it as "phenomenal". Members reported having submitted fake applications and that the application site had crashed repeatedly;^[6] a spokesperson for Kellogg's denied that the website had crashed, telling Business Insider that the hiring process was "fully operational".^[19] The initiative spread to other social media platforms.^[6]

Reception

In January 2020, the r/antiwork subreddit had about 70,000 members.^[20] In February 2021, 235,000 people were members of r/antiwork, more than double the number of members from March 2020. Huck attributed the subreddit's growth in membership to the COVID-19 pandemic and related events including a rise in union busting as well as increased acceptance of mutual aid networks and the four-day workweek.^[5] As of December 2021^[update], the subreddit had more than 1,400,000 members, a 279% increase from 2020^[6] with a gain of more than 900,000 members in 2021.^[1] According to Reddit, r/antiwork was one of the 15 fastest-growing subreddits as of November 24, 2021^[update].^[21]

In 2021, opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vice expressed solidarity with r/antiwork.^[1][11]

In a November 2021 research note, Goldman Sachs cited the subreddit and broader anti-work movement as factors that could lead to a long term decrease in labor force participation.^[2][4][12]

See also

References

External links

• www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/