Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

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What&#x27;s with the hostility towards the subreddit? I am surprised by the HN reaction to it.<p>I think that unless you are working minimum wage you don&#x27;t get to call the sub &quot;nihilistic, apathetic or zoomer adhd&quot; if anything most of the members were essential workers during covid and struggle to afford basic living otherwise they would not be angry.<p>I am very surprised by the comments in the thread to be honest, if you work in tech, your job is pretty much useless the code you write doesn&#x27;t &quot;advance humanity&quot; I mean let&#x27;s not kid ourselves tech jobs are pretty overblown in importance compared to essential workers.<p>Really hope we do some thinking before taking this hostile stance, if anything we should stand by workers who suffer from shitty working conditions.<p>EDIT:I worked minimum wage, no wage no health care.. I worked really different shitty jobs in risky setting and there was always an implicit solidarity in the workers group, when I moved to tech (very later on) I was surprised by the toxicity and grandeur some people show as if building to-do apps is all that&#x27;s left from moving to the next level of civilization, some humility and acceptance would be good along the way especially since we&#x27;re lucky to have the opportunity to work remotely, great salaries and benefits and the ability to spend time doing something we like.

I&#x27;d be interested to hear the ages of people belittling &#x2F;r&#x2F;antiwork<p>It seems to me that many are blind to the fact that there&#x27;s generations of people coming through who are getting dudded on the &quot;work hard and you&#x27;ll at least be comfortable&quot; agreement of previous generations.<p>Instead they&#x27;re learning that they&#x27;ll work hard and that&#x27;s all they&#x27;ll do until they die.<p>Wage stagnation, sky-rocketing cost of living, deteriorating working conditions, ever increasing requirements for jobs, unpaid internships, wage theft, rising inequality, astronomical housing costs in large chunks of the western world. &quot;Once in a lifetime&quot; economic meltdowns happening every 10 years (and nobody getting nailed for it) on a dying planet with clowns at the helm.<p>If they&#x27;re lucky they&#x27;ll get some of the wealth when their parents die.<p>They&#x27;ve been invited to play a game of Monopoly that&#x27;s 98% complete and people wonder why they&#x27;re not overjoyed to be playing all the while listening to older generations to just march on in with your resume and demand to speak to the manager about a job<p>I&#x27;m surprised they haven&#x27;t burned it all to the ground. Maybe one day they will.

It shouldn&#x27;t be completely dismissed, but I think the forum is more about how an unhappy (or angry) minority have found each other, and the people that like to read their stories. I don&#x27;t think that r&#x2F;antiwork should be taken as representative of anything, including a broader movement. It&#x27;s the same with twitter, there is a committed vocal and angry group, but it&#x27;s not real life

The <i>Odd Lots</i> podcast had an interview with the moderator of the AntiWork sub-reddit a little while ago:<p>&gt; <i>Over a million people are members of a subreddit called r&#x2F;AntiWork, whose slogan is &quot;Unemployment for all, not just the rich.&quot; While the page and movement have been around for awhile, discontent with the state of the labor market has been growing since the pandemic. Many workers are refusing to accept the conditions and pay that were the norm prior to the virus. On this episode, we speak with Doreen Ford, who also goes by Doreen Cleyre. She is a moderator of the AntiWork subreddit as well as the founder of AbolishWork.com. Doreen explains the growth of the movement and its philosophical underpinnings.</i><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;player.fm&#x2F;series&#x2F;series-1504378&#x2F;this-is-the-booming-movement-to-abolish-work-as-we-know-it" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;player.fm&#x2F;series&#x2F;series-1504378&#x2F;this-is-the-booming-...</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open.spotify.com&#x2F;episode&#x2F;2YK3j1IsQAxj0JXHIplX6h" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open.spotify.com&#x2F;episode&#x2F;2YK3j1IsQAxj0JXHIplX6h</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podcasts.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;this-is-the-booming-movement-to-abolish-work-as-we-know-it&#x2F;id1056200096?i=1000545148458" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podcasts.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;this-is-the-booming-mo...</a>

Is it really ao hard so believe non skilled jobs have it this hard? Retail sucks, most service jobs suck and exploit workers. They found class consciousness through anger.

That sub has changed so much in the last year. Used to be more light-hearted, rallying around crappy bosses and laughing at the gall of an employer.<p>Now it’s been taken over by more radical takes, going from “screw my boss”, “we should get more vacation time” to straightforward Marxist talking points and desires to abolish work. There’s a place for those discussions and they’re interesting to have, but it’s ruined the sub

I wonder what would happen if private sector wage-based jobs were forbidden. If essentially your only option as an entrepreneur&#x2F;company were to pay in equity&#x2F;profit-sharing. The labor equivalent of, on the capital front, religions that forbid lending with interest but allow equity investing. I wonder if the complexity&#x2F;transaction costs&#x2F;uncertainty&#x2F;governance problems would kill the economy or if it would be possible to somehow eventually get to an economy where everybody eventually thinks like a business owner. Here in Brazil, the labor laws are tricky and payroll taxes are high, so many people now work as contractors setting up small companies. That means they need to do a few things like get an accountant, a separate bank account for the business, pay business income tax (rather than have taxes deducted from their pay), but more often than not end up working full time for 1 client much like employees. I have been struck (anecdotally) how these hybrid employees&#x2F;business owners seem to develop a more entrepreneurial mindset that can ultimately lead to more success. Maybe jobs do need a rethink.

I for one am looking forward to our robot overlords making me pizza and printing my photos.<p>My current success rate with the above two things on this day within a 30 mile radius is 0%

I think that this is a great way to cover up the problem with the wave of people disabled by Long Covid falling out of the work force. Blame it instead on a vocal group of slackers.<p>It&#x27;s going to work, everyone will blame them, and Covid keeps getting ignored.

Some posts in that subreddit are genuine and I support them, but some others and mainly the comments, man, that is basically an edgy teen&#x27;s communist era playground. One of the mods even said, that the subreddit is for socialists and communists and everybody else is just conservative.

Two decades ago we were in a deathly panic about the radicalisation of Muslims. Today, extremist tribal labels seem to define politics and faith.<p>Wtf is going on? Social media seems to be a common vector and facilitator but is this just the start of the human race eating it&#x27;s own tail, or is this being done to us?<p>Given the scenes a year ago, finding out what&#x27;s happening feels important. Combatting it without also limiting social reach also seems impossible.

The meme that this sub is a hive of bot activity is interesting- I wonder who came up with those allegations first, and if they have similar conspiracy theories towards other popular subs such as r&#x2F;WallStreetBets, or other toxic subs like r&#x2F;CSCareerQuestions

Next week:<p>Millions of Americans demand government relief from crushing poverty!

Antiwork started as a positive place to support employees that were ill treated. Now it has become a bit more than that, and has taken political form.

Wasn’t there a similar thing in the 60s? My best guess is: It won’t last.

approximately 10% of Singapore&#x27;s workers are robots. We as smarter, wealthier nations should be able to significantly reduce if not eliminate most menial employment. Of course it should be said that robots don&#x27;t earn a wage and pay taxes so I wont pretend the government has any great incentive to see such technologies implemented.

Or, millions pretend to quit their jobs for karma points.

I&#x27;ve come accross many posts from this subreddit that hit the front page. Let&#x27;s just say I hope reddit is keeping an eye on foreign and domestic troll farms as many of the most popular posts seem suspiciously like fiction to me...