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'''r/antiwork''' is a [[subreddit]] associated with the [[anti-work]] movement.<ref name=":6" /> The majority of its participants are against worker exploitation, its members advocate [[class consciousness|class consciousness and struggle]] to achieve [[social change]]. The forum's slogan is: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!".
'''r/antiwork''' is a [[subreddit]] associated with the [[anti-work]] movement.<ref name=":6" /> The majority of its participants are against worker exploitation, its members advocate [[class consciousness|class consciousness and struggle]] to achieve [[social change]]. The forum's slogan is: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!", even though it actively discrimates against Lezman & Unicorn Love


Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work, abuse and illegal actions by employers and [[Organizing model|calls for unionization]]. Other organized actions taken include taking a [[Boycott|consumer boycott]] of [[Black Friday (shopping)|Black Friday]] as well as the coordinated submissions of fake [[Application for employment|job applications]] after [[Kellogg's]] announced plans to replace [[2021 Kellogg's strike|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|Occupy Wall Street movement]] due to the subreddit's intellectual foundations and leaderless structure''.<ref name=":6">{{Cite web|last=Codrea-Rado|first=Anna|date=2021-12-22|title=Inside the Online Movement to End Work|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vwjw/inside-the-online-movement-to-end-work-antiwork-sub-reddit|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-22|website=Vice|language=en}}</ref>''
Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work, abuse and illegal actions by employers and [[Organizing model|calls for unionization]]. Other organized actions taken include taking a [[Boycott|consumer boycott]] of [[Black Friday (shopping)|Black Friday]] as well as the coordinated submissions of fake [[Application for employment|job applications]] after [[Kellogg's]] announced plans to replace [[2021 Kellogg's strike|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|Occupy Wall Street movement]] due to the subreddit's intellectual foundations and leaderless structure''.<ref name=":6">{{Cite web|last=Codrea-Rado|first=Anna|date=2021-12-22|title=Inside the Online Movement to End Work|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vwjw/inside-the-online-movement-to-end-work-antiwork-sub-reddit|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-22|website=Vice|language=en}}</ref>''

Revision as of 22:37, 25 January 2022

r/antiwork
Figure of a person lying down, used in the header of r/antiwork
Figure of a person lying down, used in the header
Type of site
Subreddit
FoundedAugust 14, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-08-14)
URLwww.reddit.com/r/antiwork/
Users>1,700,000 members

r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with the anti-work movement.[1] The majority of its participants are against worker exploitation, its members advocate class consciousness and struggle to achieve social change. The forum's slogan is: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!", even though it actively discrimates against Lezman & Unicorn Love

Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work, abuse and illegal actions by employers and calls for unionization. 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.[1]

Formation

r/antiwork was created in 2013.[1][2] 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.[1][3] In 2014, Ford was writing a blog called AbolishWork.com.[1] Until 2017, Ford worked at a series of retail jobs for a decade, which she described as "miserable".[1][3][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.[1][3][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,[1][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,[1][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

The subreddit is antiwork, not reformwork. We’re not liberals, a capitalist ideology. We’re leftists, anti-capitalists, and we want to abolish all work.

– 2021 post on r/antiwork[3]

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.[1][3]

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.[1][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.[3] 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."[1]

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, 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, 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.[3] According to Reddit, r/antiwork was one of the 15 fastest-growing subreddits as of November 24, 2021.[21]

In 2021, opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vice expressed solidarity with r/antiwork.[3][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.[1][4][12]

See also

  • Striketober

    • References

    1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Codrea-Rado, Anna (December 22, 2021). "Inside the Online Movement to End Work". Vice. Retrieved December 22, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    2. ^ Kiersz, Andy; Kaplan, Juliana (November 25, 2021). "Inside the rise of 'antiwork,' a worker's strike that wants to turn the labor shortage into a new American Dream". Business Insider. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    3. ^ a b c d e f g h Daro, Ishmael (November 18, 2021). "The Real Point of Reddit's Antiwork Sub". Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2021. As r/antiwork has grown, many longstanding members of the subreddit have complained loudly about recent recruits who seem not to appreciate the larger ideological project. "The subreddit is antiwork, not reformwork. We're not liberals, a capitalist ideology. We're leftists, anti-capitalists, and we want to abolish all work," reads a representative post.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    4. ^ a b c d e f Rogers, Taylor Nicole (January 9, 2022). "Reddit 'antiwork' forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs". Financial Times. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
    5. ^ a b c Pirnay, Emma (February 15, 2021). "Inside the Reddit community calling for the abolition of work". Huck Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    6. ^ a b c d Sato, Mia (December 10, 2021). "Redditors are spamming Kellogg's job portal to support striking workers". The Verge. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    7. ^ Breslin, Maureen (December 10, 2021). "Reddit users spam Kellogg job portal amid worker strike". TheHill. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    8. ^ Vinopal, Courtney (December 9, 2021). "Reddit users are taking up the cause of Kellogg's striking workers". Quartz. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    9. ^ Goldberg, Emma (December 4, 2021). "Public Displays of Resignation: Saying 'I Quit' Loud and Proud". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
    10. ^ Aratani, Lauren (November 28, 2021). "Goodbye to the job: how the pandemic changed Americans' attitude to work". the Guardian. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    11. ^ a b c d McMenamin, Lexi (November 9, 2021). "This Antiwork Subreddit is Watching the Great Resignation". Teen Vogue. Retrieved December 14, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    12. ^ a b c d Todd, Sarah (December 20, 2021). "What Reddit's million-strong antiwork community can teach the rest of us". Quartz. Retrieved December 22, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    13. ^ Hunt, Elle (October 27, 2021). "The pandemic made me question my relationship with work – and I'm not alone". the Guardian. Retrieved December 16, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    14. ^ Lanigan, Roisin (November 3, 2021). "This subreddit will make you want to quit your job". i-D. Retrieved December 16, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    15. ^ Flynn, Sheila (November 12, 2021). "The rise of antiwork: Is there really a world without jobs?". The Independent. Retrieved December 16, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    16. ^ rockcellist (October 19, 2021). "Survey Results from 1592 Respondents". r/antiwork. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
    17. ^ Cole, Samantha (December 8, 2021). "Workers Are Using 'Mouse Movers' So They Can Use the Bathroom in Peace". Vice News. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    18. ^ Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (December 2, 2021). "Hackers Are Spamming Businesses' Receipt Printers With 'Antiwork' Manifestos". Vice News. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    19. ^ Jankowicz, Mia (December 10, 2021). "A TikToker said he wrote code to flood Kellogg with bogus job applications after the company announced it would permanently replace striking workers". Business Insider. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    20. ^ Davies, Pascale (November 25, 2021). "Why is this Reddit group calling for a Black Friday boycott?". euronews. Retrieved December 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
    21. ^ Ballentine, Claire (November 24, 2021). "The Anti-Work Brigade Is Coming for Amazon on Black Friday". Bloomberg News. Retrieved December 16, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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