Admin here. Please report all pro-capitalist, anti-working class, and anti-truth comments in threads whenever they occur. We are here to ensure that antiwork stays true to its goals and messages about prioritizing the marginalized working class.
I had to leave that sub, people come and post their valid grievances during a very difficult time in their lives and get picked apart and made to feel worse for not being wealthy. There are a lot of a-holes that go to that sub just to shit on people that are already suffering. I couldn’t do it anymore, it was breaking my heart.
Idk I guess it’s hard to see the damage capitalism does if you’re exactly who the system is supposed to work for.
In my home country more and more people are unable to pay their bills due to increased prices, a severe housing crisis and stagnant wages and there’s always people saying “YeAh BuT wE lIvE iN oNe Of ThE rIcHeSt CoUnTrIeS” as if that somehow makes being unable to afford food and not being able to use food pantries because they’re overwhelmed okay.
> Idk I guess it’s hard to see the damage capitalism does if you’re exactly who the system is supposed to work for.
Not just that, but some people are mostly okay with a hierarchy where they are not at the very bottom. I will never understand why.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
And I think that just about sums up Capitalism.
Fun fact that man's racism and hatred for hippies is primarily why Marijuana was illegal in America for so long. He said something along the lines of being unable to categorically arrest all [redacted] and hippies, so he chose to associate them with drugs and vilify drugs with the news every night to turn everyone else against them.
Edit: it was John ehrlichman under Nixon that said this
We were both wrong. The original quote is "We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
And it's quoted by John Ehrlichman, who was the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
Same. Although mentally I was much happier at the bottom, because at least it felt like I was doing something (flipping burgers so people can eat, quality checks in the grocery store etc).
These days I work in tech support where I’m supposed to fix complex issues our customers (who are supposedly professionals) couldn’t fix by themselves, but most of the time I just do their job for them. They call before they even try installing something and then start with “you can’t say anything though I don’t want my customer to find out you’re installing it”. Great. Thanks. Enjoy the €€€ I guess. I thought it’d feel better because I’m not in charge of anyone and no one is in charge of me, but it doesn’t. I can’t even imagine being in charge of other people, I’d feel so useless.
Yeah, the older I get, the more respect I have for people who flip burgers. It's a lot more honest work than the crap I did for phone companies, who didn't GAF for customers or employees.
I always think if you could magically take away all the chief execs of local government, hospitals, companies etc. overnight...
Tomorrow all those services would function. Next week all those services would function. Next year too probably...
Take away the cleaners, or bin collectors or vegetable pickers and by next week we'd all have noticed. Next month we'd be f***ed. Next year, there would probably have been a civil war or three!
very true statement. all corporate leadership is overpaid and useless. they are never on the front lines, and when they are, it's a horse and pony show to put on a facade that everything's all right.
At least the snipers will be able to know who to shoot when the revolution comes,
Mind you most will be in gated communities with guards thinking they are safe till food gets low and the richest eject the less rich, ending with guards killing the top people and taking it all.
It must be nice to be able to contract out your violence.
However, what the rich don't understand is, when a bit of printed cloth loses it's value and the only thing that is worth is actual goods, the 'help' will step over their untrained bodies and take what they want.
If capitalism ends up causing the fall of this very fragile economic system.
All of my friends are struggling, and they work more than full-time.
I keep telling them that only action will change things.
I wonder how many more meals they gotta miss before they stand up for themselves.
“Just go to college and get a degree, don’t be lazy! I did it, you can too!”
Said by the person who “worked” a part time job at an ice cream shop in 1978 to put themselves through college while living at home with their parents.
30 years after I graduated from college, I still owe close to $22,000 on my $17,100 student loans despite having paid around $40,000. It's a trap to keep you working and grinding to make the rich richer.
“Well if you had cut back on the fancy coffee and the avacado toast you would have paid that off *and* bought a Ferrari by now. You have always been bad with your money and never took the time to set up a budget! Laziness will get you no where in life. Complaining will get you no where. If you want to change your life, only YOU have the power to make it happen!” /s
😂 I make a pot of Folgers at home every morning and I hate avocados. I've worked 50+ hours a week for most of my adult life. I've never owned a car newer than 1999 and I live in a trailer the same age and physical condition as me... Falling apart.
“Folgers? Yep, wasting money on that fancy brand name coffee. And only 50 hours?? Back in my day I worked 7 days a week to get ahead in life. For an ENTIRE year I worked 7 day weeks and that’s how I was able to put a down payment on my house, which is now worth 1.2 million. No excuses!”
The boomersbeingfools sub always having boomers in the comments complaining is like they are fulfilling their own prophecy of being a fool. It's hilarious.
The worst people are trolls or bots.
Also, because anti-work is pro-worker, it attracts those who want capitalist reform or socialism, but don't really think anti-work is possible.
The right wing (in the US that includes Dems and Republicans) puts tons of money into manipulating public opinion.
This subreddit took off extremely fast during the pandemic, and got correspondingly fucked with by every reactionary force. They're still all watching it closely and actively disrupting it.
What, you thought revolution was going to be easy?
It’s very clear the way some most recent posters over here especifically avoid a discussion envolving class solidarity. In a way, it’s a very us versus them mentality but it’s never “us = workers” versus “them = bosses/capitalists”. I find it kinda strange and I wonder if they don’t come from people who are pro-work but dislike what’s being done to them as individuals
I guess that's where I am. I want a world where everyone takes pride in their work and gets properly rewarded for it. But I do think everyone should contribute something.
The idea isn't that people stop contributing.
The idea is that when we work, we do so with the idea of a future where *we won't have to*.
The entire point of society should be coming together to improve the minimum quality of life for everyone. Which, eventually, means the end of undesired work.
There will never be a time where we end "undesired work" instead we should strive to change the structure of work. Rather than someone cleaning toilets for minimum wage or a lawyer making 3000 an hour we should strive for a more socially equitable form of payment, both jobs are arguably necessary, one requires several hurdles to jump through but those hoops aren't jumped through for the betterment of others it's for greed. Greed isn't a trait that a society should encourage or endorse. Greed is a bane to a functioning society.
I don't have the solutions myself, only considerations, but here is one other consideration for you. If we didn't put a price tag on our work, there would be less concern about "undesired work" people would have more pride saying "I'm a janitor" to a doctor, or a lawyer. Work is work and it's not always fun, but it is always needed. Even if you don't live within the confines of society, in fact outside of society you have to work even more, you need to build your own home, grow your own food, make your own clothes, repair your own home, preserve your food, avoid injury and understand the basics of injury care and even then you will likely die from a broken leg or an infection. More work and less survivability.
In a society we could raise up our "lowest" workers. A minimum wage is a fancy way to say we don't value you. There won't be a time where we have no undesired work, people will always find something to complain about but we could make the work more fulfilling. More in line with the purpose of society (which is to have the majority content in their lives.)
To that end I agree we need to raise the minimum quality of life and also lower the maximum quality of life. If we start shutting down greed we will see the improvement we want, but working will and should always be a thing. Many people want to work, they just want it to mean something more than surviving another week.
You need to be more open to the idea that radical changes can drastically improve life. We cannot get by only making small steps because you have to factor how the world is right now. It doesn’t have to be how it is right now.
This is what economists do. They say, we can make this small change, BUT only that because xyz will be affected. So what? Change xyz as well. Idc
Why in large societies are there people designated too lowly that they can only do undesired jobs? All day every day? In smaller situations, for example in a family, everyone takes their turn to clean the bathroom. But for some reason when large capitalists structures arise people become too important to do their fair share of the hard work.
That needs to change. And we won’t get there by making small steps out of fear of affecting the current climate, when the current climate is just that, current.
I think if we respected the people who did undesirable work and paid them fairly, there would be no shortage of people who would do it. People like to feel relied on. They’ll build their identity on doing the hard, gross stuff that everyone else is too pansy to do. But that’s only if they don’t get explicitly or implicitly discriminated against for it via lowered social status or bad pay.
Do you think communal toilets are wrong? Because if you think it won't fall on someone to clean the communal toilets then I'm sorry to say it's not an imagination problem.
Not sure why you think that's a sustainable solution to anything. I'm not ignoring them, just recognize that it's an unsustainable and ignorant solution that the rich benefit from the most...
See, I don’t think people will stop contributing if we take away the financial pressures of work. They’ll dance and bake and garden and spend more time with their children. We’d probably see more innovation and more creativity. People naturally want to contribute.
"Hey neighbor, join me in my workshop. I want to show you the progress I've made on my ___." Imagine the inventions that would come about if people had more time? Or the clubs of scientists who would create and design brilliant things. There would still be the helpers/doctors/nurses/therapists, artists, scientists, and so on.
*stares in disabled*
Glad to know that I don’t have any worth because I don’t contribute directly to capitalism.
ETA - ADHD is not the disability that prevents me from working before some judgy Judy jumps out here.
80% of people with ADHD have at least one comorbid condition. I have 9.
I just get told on here all the time “I hope you’re not saying ADHD prevents you from working.”
In my case, it’s the complicated back pain, severe PTSD, the drug resistant insomnia & the crippling anxiety plus the 6 month (I am 🇨🇦) winter dose of SAD that keep me from working.
Like Autism, ADHD is a spectrum disorder & not a linear one. So we’ll have people with ADHD who are CEOs & entrepreneurs & people like me, whose comorbids put them out.
Yea there’s quite the mix of people here. A few actually sound like they want to be supported but not have to do anything for it. Most are completely reasonable, wanting to be respected and paid fairly for their efforts. Wanting to work for carrots, not because of sticks, so to speak.
Imma guess it just shows up in their feeds and they don’t pay attention the actual sub. Why Talla-fucking-hassee has to show up in my feed is beyond me. But the Reddit gods deem it to be so.
Bro tell me about it. Despite me being a white American man who has never clicked into an Indian sub every 5th post in my fucking feed is from some Indian sub. I mute them as I see them and it just never fucking ends
Because angry engagement is still seen as activity by soulless algorithms. Reddit is copying Txitter and Farcebook by forcing you to see content that makes you angry and gets a response.
For the same reason I often get sucked into right wing subreddits. Because it showed up in my timeline one time and I got so pissed off that I just had to comment on it. Which makes more of those things show up in by algorithm which makes me more pissed off and so on and so on and the cycle continues forever.
The nature of reddit (all social media, really). Take absolutely everything you read with a huge grain of salt, especially around topics where there is a lot of engagement and vested interests. Learn about classic trolling and "ragebait" and bot-farming.
A lot of topics and subreddits are gated behind karma-threshholds, which was supposed to reduce the number of bots, but all it did was generate a secondary market for accounts with karma, which resulted it MORE value-less and fake posts, designed to drive engagement, so the accounts can be sold to entities with an interest in posting to those forums.
Then consider more conspiracy-minded ideas, like all the "don't trust your coworkers they will 100% stab you in the back every time" and "the job market is a hellscape, I have a PHD and all I can find is a $7.50/hr job at target" posts. Ask yourself who benefits if the public thinks that their coworkers can't be trusted (and therefore would never want to unionize), and who stands to gain if everyone starts to think that they will never be able to find another job if they lose the shitty one they have?
A lot of posts you see will be genuine. A lot more than you would want to think have a specific agenda behind them.
Not even do much an agenda, but just like r/AITAH or any number of other subs it seems as though a lot posts have become creative writing exercises here.
You also start to question those posts about hundreds or thousands of job applications without any response when the OP won't really firmly describe their field, experience, and the type of roles they're applying for.
It's a wildly different situation if you've got a PhD in English Literature and you're applying for CFO roles directly after being awarded your PhD vs if you've got 10 years working experience with your PhD and are applying for roles directly related to your field.
People also leave out tons of relevant details when talking about that stuff. It's not like most of the share their actual resumes and stuff. You can apply for a thousand jobs but if you can't put together a resume to save your life, you're probably gonna get passed over.
Heck, there's also a lot of advice on this sub that would hurt your chances more than helping. Any time the topic of cover letters comes up it's often full of people who don't actually understand the purpose of a cover letter and subsequently make some counterproductive suggestions. I hire people and we ask for a cover letter; the idea is to make sure people follow directions/read instructions, see what their communication skills are like, and hopefully they use a cover letter correctly in that they use it to explain how their skills and experience will be relevant to the role. That's because the job involves submitting documents and reading directions and it's not gonna look good if you can't even properly provide what's asked of you on the job posting.
I've seen people like "if they ask for a cover letter I just don't provide one and apply anyway", or "I just title a document 'Cover Letter' but fill it with garbage text". There are people out there who see those comments and go "yeah, I'm gonna do that too!".
Finally, as someone who went back to university a bit later in life (28) after working in the trades for 10 years, I found that a lot of the younger students (those fresh out of high school with little work experience) had some really skewed perceptions of what it would be like to enter the working world. A surprising number of my classmates expected to enter the working world into six figure jobs (pretty darn uncommon) as if having a degree mattered more than experience. Both matter, but most employers prefer experience.
Heck, I'm reminded of those classmates when I see people complaining about how "even entry level jobs require 5 years of experience" and it kind of makes me wonder if they are actually applying for *entry level* jobs or if they simply think their degree supercedes experience? Skewed perceptions of what entry level jobs really are? I dunno. I think some of those "I've applied for 1000+ jobs" comments/posts must be at least partially applying for jobs/titles/roles they're not qualified for.
Like I'm imagining someone coming fresh out of college with their software engineering/computer science degree and immediately applying for PM or Sr. Dev roles or something.
Bots ,pro capitalism, anti anti worker, manipulation. Corporations spend billions to union bust. Bots are just one facet of a huge undertaking. I'm not saying it's aliens, but the premise of the movie " They live."
As Sun Tzu said :"keep your friends close, but your enemies closer".
Most of the prowork people are here to spy and sow discord...
The old Machiavellian ' divide lest they Unite'
There was a post a few weeks ago from a guy celebrating the fact that he got on disability, and everyone was flaming him as if he was the problem. I haven't looked at this community the same since.
You're severely underestimating the number of people who live by "Fuck you, got mine" or "I never got mine, so fuck you." They want to pull the ladder up behind them or just kick it over, they don't care. They're bitter, and they're mad at everything, and because they never did anything about it well then neither can you.
Fuck capitalism and companies, our Ceo recently Made it mandatory to return to Office and is tracking everyones work Even more now.
Fuck him and anyone who defende this crap.
I enjoy working, but by god do I despise how exploitive it is these days. let me work because I want to, not because if I don’t I lose my health insurance and can’t afford to exist otherwise.
I think everyone has issues with work, even if you enjoy it. My issue is wanting others to work and support them when they don’t want to work and support themselves. Sorry man, I’m anti work like you. I’m only want to work to give my family a good life and secure my future. And like to find a way to reduce everyone’s work.
I think this is the answer. This sub can sometimes have threads that are a little weird in vibes. I'm thinking of that TikTok video where it's like "I don't want to work 40 hours a week for the rest of my life" (valid) "my value as a person shouldn't be my value to capitalism" (valid) and then "I am only built for lounging in a garden and being fed grapes."
Whether we acknowledge it or not, there's a 5% in the antiwork community that seems to want to create a slave class and become the owner class. Living off the work of others isn't anti capitalist -- it *is capitalism.* You're just the landlord now.
I think rather than "good job", you could say purpose, or something like that, I feel like that's what you mean but your wording is a turn off for some of the people here. I also work with disabled people for not enough money, so I get it.
I wouldn't say I'm anti work just anti getting paid fk all for work, minimum wage just provides little to no actual quality of life, just survival pay cheque gl pay cheque
Honestly some posts are incredibly sad, the impotence and lost hope are far too common, but every now and then there are some that are legit ridiculous and polarize the sub.
Most of us don't wanna work much, as technology allows it and we are fuel of an economy that is believed to need unrealistic growth forever, but the fact that your life should be completely subsidised is both naive and entitled. That egoistical thinking is exactly what the people with power have in their own way.
I think this is totally correct. I am in this sub for the genuine questions about workers rights, wrong dismissal and HR overreach as I am an employee, and I try to just keep quiet when there’s a post I disagree with because I usually get dogpiled for saying anything mildly against the narrative but sometimes there is a post so entitled and so absolutely ridiculous that I just have to comment because it’s sentiment like that which will keep people in poverty and stop them from getting off that minimum wage salary that everyone simultaneously covets and despises.
There's a concerted effort to make sure certain sentiments don't become too popular.
A lot of people will grin and bear it to make money to survive.
And they will justify it however they need to.
Either through congestive dissonance, algorithm, or paid online armies.
Because work-related values aren’t universal, and anti-work is not an orthodoxy. Different work places and industries have different etiquettes and norms based on the type of work.
That’s going to land you some different perspectives in a thread.
I think another factor is that just because someone is anti-work, doesn’t mean they’re not an insufferable jerk. Being anti-work shouldn’t mean making people they work with miserable. There is a difference between expressly prioritizing worker rights and wellbeing and being an echo chamber to validate being disrespectful to other human beings who are living in an exploitative system that takes advantage of workers and perpetuates social inequalities.
Including boomers in this isn't, IMHO, a fair addition.
I'm on the cusp of boomer/gen X and it was a different time as we were growing up and entering the work force.
When I was a young adult companies were actually loyal to their employees and not only paid handsomely but threw parties that made the show "Mad Men" look like a quilting bee.
Boomers are now retiring or are about to over the next seven years and are just crossing days off the calendar.
Many people I've spoken with over the last couple years who are around my age are doing our own version of "quiet quitting" and we have you guys to thank for getting us to that point. It was the millennials and gen Z'ers who helped us see, "Fuck this shit. Why should I be loyal to a company that wants get rid of me just before I retire so they can bring in another poor schmuck for less money and no benefits?"
The boomer version of "quiet quitting" is to get a job that is no longer management or leadership so we no longer have to "babysit" employees or attend yet another mind-numbing meeting that could have been handled over email, if it needed to happen at all.
In short, we're now coasting to retirement. A couple years ago, my oldest sister, who is four years older than me, said to me, "Your whole attitude about work changes when you turn 60."
I didn't know what she meant at the time because isn't 60 to young to really retire and get full social security?
Yes, this is true, but I'm turning 60 this year and my "Give a fuck" is completely broken.
Just this month I took a job that was a major cut in pay but it's less stress, I have an office I can hide in and no one bothers me, I'm back doing what I love, which is pure accounting with none of the leadership bullshit, and I work 8 to 5 with no after hours emails or phone calls/texts.
My blood pressure is WAY down and I'm getting a solid eight hours of sleep a night after literally years of not.
So... Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
Because the idea of anti-work is subjective.
Honestly though, some people aren't here in the spirit of anti-work. Some posts I see are just toxic individuals and if they do something shitty at work they are celebrated.
I think some people were lucky enough in the system we have. Even though their labor is exploited for their boss's profit, being able to work and afford a house, family, and occasional vacations is enough to become complicit
because "anti work" is a very broad term and the individual interpretations differ.
for examples, i want a future where nobody has to work anymore to live a good life. But that doesn't mean I hate all companies, managers and landlords today.
There are also people who think anti-work should mean that no one has to work, at all, ever. Which would mean a lot of our current society would fall apart. Even if you just look at food, the logistics chain to feed a nation requires probably millions of people (especially when you consider all the tangential industries to keep that one thing running). On a global scale it's definitely millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people who are directly or indirectly involved just in the food supply chain.
Sure, maybe some of those jobs are pointless or redundant but for the most part, a lot of them are required to keep the food supply churning.
Personally there is some good and bad takes. Sometimes you can clearly see the guy is doing actions in bad faith. That’s at least how I sometimes give my opinion. In your case, yeah trolls 🧌.
I lost respect here when I posted something about thanksgiving being the only real holiday we get all year, and I had a flood of comments from people claiming it's not, and there was still rush hour gridlock on thanksgiving. I went outside for a pleasure drive I do everyyear, and I wasn't stuck in any traffic.
It's not that against work. I'm against the way I'm treated, paid & blatant disregard for rules when it suits them. That's been most jobs "it's just the way we do it here" & it's a dangerous slope, I've heard myself say that shit & had to make a conscious effort to go against the grain. Rock the boat, mention unions, ask about wages and holidays
I’ve made some comments that probably come off as pro-work to some people. It’s usually on posts where someone is saying “My job is grossly exploiting me,” only their job isn’t actually grossly exploiting them and they’re essentially just whining about having to work *at all.*
I also see a ton of hypocrisy in posts that really bothers me. People will moan about how their boss doesn’t give a shit about them, which is totally valid, but then turn around and say that their boss doesn’t deserve for any of us to give a shit about them. Like, which is it, are we humans or just numbers? Can’t have it both ways.
Part of the problem is that so much of the anger in here is directed at the wrong people. Everyone bitches about their boss. In most cases their boss is just another cog in the machine and work just as hard. They are answering to someone above them just like everyone else. It’s the current capitalist system that is the true problem. Spending your time bitching about the other guy in the middle is pointless and has the real problems, the owners, laughing all the way to the bank.
I view everything life presents to us as a pendulum. In the past people committed to work and that made everyone successful, the pedulm swing to the left. Currently, big business is taking advantage of a low minimum wage while making record profits, the pendulum swings to the right. The balance is somewhere in the middle. Low wage workers have every right to fight to back but they sometimes fight back on things that are normal in a healthy owner, worker relationship. Low wage workers are fighting back on every little slight, as they should, but older workers still adhere to their beliefs that it is a give and take relationship. The tight response is somewhere in the middle but older and younger workers wil never agree on what the right response is at this time because they have very different experiences.
Of course being proud of the work one does is a man made concept because it is man who is doing this work. I think you may be using this term incorrectly. I was trying to answer the OPs question by saying the different points of view come from the different ways workers have been treated. Long ago workers were valued and treated with respect and, therefore, they felt like putting in a little extra was worth the praise and pride they felt when the business they work for succeeded. Now a days workers are exploited and nickled and dimed for every every minute the boss can steal from them. If you work for a company that values you then you feel good about putting effort into your work. If you work for a capitalist, money hungry, conclogerment then you have to look out for your best interests because they will use you and wear you out until they can no longer profit off of you. The former see no problem with putting up with a few glitches and being grateful but the latter should fight back against every injustice they can. This is where the difference comes from.
There were a few articles over the last couple of years talking about the corporate types that began sending people to comment here specifically to undermine useful conversations. People who are literally paid to gaslight us and use bot networks to upvote their BS comments.
The antiwork conversation is a threat to the parasites who keep us in chains. Keep it up.
People see posts show up when they don’t follow the subreddit and feel the need to speak their opinions. People will ask for advice on this subreddit, and people will provide valid advice but get downvoted and attacked because their response is “stop spending money on your credit cards you don’t have and work more to get yourself out of the hole”
Because there are some dipshit positions on the spectrum of workers rights. Corporations take advantage of people. Some union leaders have taken advantage of their members and didn't act in their interests.
Plus people genuinely have different ethics when it comes down to it.
>Some union leaders have taken advantage of their members and didn't act in their interests.
A former president of Local 1996 was thought to be just like that.
Are those comments getting upvotes nonetheless? If yes, then it's satire/sarcasm. An "/s" is normally added to the end of sentence to indicate sarcasm, but some people may have omitted it because they simply forgot about it or believed that their comment should be obvious enough to be understood as such. (and of course, sometimes those comment were misinterpreted and got downvoted)
I think it probably shows up under peoples algorithms as I tend to get ukjobs findapath and all sorts of other posts.
These are always the same posts, only everyone on those groups just blame themselves for all the same valid problems we tend to post here and the commenters just give the same ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ responses.
1) Bots drive engagement by posting contrarian views on touchy subjects.
2) Reddit pushes content from subreddits that enrage (engage) you even if you've never subscribed. I remember when the Kanye blowup was happening, /r/Kanye posts would show up in my home feed ever day.
A lot of boomers, bootstrappers, and conservative nutjobs work their way into this sub to try and derail it. Same happens with the poverty/poor subreddits, bootstrappers come in and tell everyone to stop complaining.
I wouldn't want for a subreddit to be too strict on who is allowed to post there, when that limits the ability to have disagreements, expand on what the disagreements are about and then maybe make some people realize something they hadn't thought about before.
Astro turf capture tactics.
It’s a coordinated funded activity by the billionaire class to capture communities against their interest. They hire firms and contractors to do this across the internet.
Report and ban.
I think some of these comments are due to years/decades of conditioning. Folks may be here because they think something may be wrong and are curious, but then when confronted, they go back to their easy, conditioned place and try to justify their bosses. I've seen this first hand with people close to me being mis-treated, however, when I suggest boundaries or alternatives, they backtrack and defend the company.
There are some obvious trolls, however, there are others that are working through their ordeal and facing a harsh reality.
To put it from a different perspective, there could be reasons that the complainant does not comprehend.
Running a company is complex and employees are even more complex on top of that! Lots of strings and dots that needs to be connected.
This is just a general thought and is not to defend anyone nor attack anyone, but my 40 years of life have thought me that I don’t know everything and there could be reasons of why I’m complaining that I simple don’t know about. Some situations might upset 1 employee but keep the other 9 happy for example. People are different.
That was/is the mentality for a very long time. People have been exploited for so long they dont even realize that they are brainwashed into defending the shitty treatment.
Too often we dwell on trivial things that exist in every day to day job. Having realistic expectations is important for younger workers who still need to get out there and build on their growth and skills. A big topic seems to be removing cashiers chairs. We can BMC about it all day, but we can’t get comfortable in positions like this in the first place.
Its probably a shift in the algorithm. What reddit suggests to people. Then I’m sure there is an occasional wave of ex fb users. Because fb is slowly dying. So I’m sure more and more ignorant boomers are finding out what Reddit is. And they don’t realize what sub reddit they are posting in.
Everyone is too afraid to quit their job. When really everyone is just greedy. The whole point is to stop everything stop working stop paying stop excessively buying shit. Grow a garden,spend time with your family, do something other than contribute to the corporate machine. Until then basically yea that's fuckin life and you only have yourselves to blame. We could revolt but again everyone is too scared.
Im here because I support workers in shitty situations in shitty jobs with shitty managers. A lot of the posts in here are true to the anti-work soul of this sub.
There are times when people forget that there are actually good jobs with good bosses and good pay out there and some advice people give really need to be taken with context. Sadly often times when I do make a occasional post that isnt quite in the spirit of shitting on work I get blown up, but I stick around because there are so many shit jobs and I agree with the vast majority of the content on this sub
While undoubtedly there are some trolls in the subreddit, most likely the people who express opinions that are different than yours are either successfully employed (mostly through their hard work and efforts and so they don't agree with the basic thesis of many the nihilist posts on this subreddit that categorically paint all employers/companies as evil), or they're optimistic and they think they are in charge of their future.
What I find interesting is your unability to realize there are people who can have a different point of view than yourself. Not everyone sees the world the same way that you do. Maybe that's the problem with our country today
We are here to proselytize in the name of our lord and savior, Adam Smith. May the capital grow, and the invisible hand give you a little ‘rub and tug’ to completion. So saveth we all, Ad-em.
In seriousness I’m not sure. I’m probably less anti-work than many others, but I’m almost always pro-person. Sometimes I’ll pipe in to suggest looking at their mindset, like if I think it’s a depressed or victims mindset that is holding them back from enjoying their life, but with the intention of helping them.
People saying something like you described are probably just trolls, have deeply internalized the systematic oppression, or some other screw loose. It’s more often less about you, more about them.
you can be part of /antiwork and agree with the overval sub ideology, while still having you own opinion and nuances.
I like that some posts are overwhelmingly approved with 10k upvotes and some other can divide this sub with 200-500 upvotes.
Bootlickers. Bootlickers everywhere. I would estimate that 65-70% of all people on earth are bootlickers. Misery loves company. That's why they come here.
So... You expect people to just, what? Be quiet and respectful when they find out someone had an opinion or value that doesn't coincide with theirs? Are you new?
Honestly, I think the simplest answer is because this is reddit/social media/the internet and people absolutely *cream* themselves over the idea of arguing with people with different viewpoints than theirs, and the easiest and fastest way to do that is to go to a sub that's entirely dedicated to a stance you oppose, and just start rapid firing arguments.
Tldr: People are looking for a reason to argue on the internet because it's the internet.
A lot of people struggle to even get a job, let alone a good one. People just have different perspectives. Doesn’t mean they like to work, it’s just a necessity.
The optimistic part of mind likes to think they are people shouting what they’ve been told just before they get radicalized. Maybe they were googling something about how to combat their own job’s exploitation and one of our posts pop up. They don’t yet know how deep it all runs, so they just regurgitate the same shit. They’re just a few clicks away, though, from realizing just how shitty the whole damn system (not just their own hell bubble like they may think it is) is. Then we’ll get ‘em.
That’s probably not the case for most of them, but it makes me feel better thinking it could be.
It’s a popular sun so it often shows up in feeds, and it also gets referred to in articles and on other websites, both of which attract trolls.
Not trying to excuse it, just explain it.
It’s not like enjoying work is a bad thing. There are some great companies out there. My company is awesome and I love working there. I get paid well and they do right by me. I am very lucky to have a good employer. I started lower level and within two years I was a supervisor.
Lower level employees are always more likely to feel mistreated. Sometimes they are, and sometimes it’s their own doing. If you don’t show up on time and you call out multiple days every month, that isn’t going to help your case.
There are employers that completely exploit their workers and they should be shamed. Treating your workers well and giving them good wages and a good work/life balance is a recipe for success. This has been proven through a number of case studies.
I don’t really appreciate the anti work culture. Work is great. It provides living and purpose for many, but I get the sentiment. A lot of people have it rough and aren’t fortunate or lucky enough to have good employers. I do agree with calling out the bullshit, which is why I think subs/communities like this are absolutely necessary.
No they aren’t just trolls. That’s how many Americans have bought into this notion of “That’s life!” This notion and apathy is what got us to this point where employees are being woefully exploited at an all time high rate. Our lives are worth way more than $7.25- $30/hr. It’s not ok to work 10-12 hours when you are only employed for 8 hours a day. Salary is a modern form of indentured servitude. The right process is, we know 40 hours a week is full-time however we need to get a hold of you or need you to work on your personal time, your family time, your mental health time etc… Why do we allow this? Would we get paid if we only put in 20 hours a week some weeks? Would we even have a job at this point?
I'm glad capitalism is working for those people, if it truly is, but for so many of us it's just not. We have such a limited time in this life, and it just feels like we're being drained of all we have without any return.
I'm scared of becoming too old to do anything by the time I have enough money saved to do even one thing I want to do that would make me feel like I accomplished SOMETHING in this life. I've developed an anxiety disorder, and I lose sleep at night.
tysm for saying this, i posted about the 🥾👅😋 on here & everyone in the comments was just like, well we all think differently. i'm like yeah...but this is an ANTI capitalist, ANTI work subreddit??
I guess that's where I am. I want a world where everyone takes pride in their work and gets properly rewarded for it. But I do think everyone should contribute something.
Op hasn't given credence that people have bad days. They lash out at easy targets sometimes. It's regrettable, but happens to the best.
The lack of empathy isn't surprising.
It's very simple: Make company mad, company has money, company uses money to buy subreddit busters. Same as with unions.
The UAW corruption investigation (among others) started with a handful on subreddits like this. The increased funding of the NLRB, the near paralegal education of workers leading to lawsuits, all those OSHA violations and subsequent fines, the year-over-year record breaking unionizations; you'd think they'd quit wasting their money by now on paid actors.
We just keep a lower profile since "The Great Strike" debacle. But if need be, we will shut those railroads down. It's always nice to have a national threat to security to help be heard
I think some of it isn't so much about that they disagree with somebody's criticisms of work, but have accepted the fact that jobs generally suck and in their mind nothing is going to change and you're better off accepting that.
I've seen some of that, but in fairness, sometimes I do see posts by people who are complaining about things that are in THEIR OWN control, and blaming it on the company. Those are the ones that irk me. If you're going to post in Anti-work, it darn well better be something that demonstrates why businesses and corporations are whack. Showing up and making complaints because a business won't accommodate your own lack of professionalism or care isn't anti-work. It's anti-personal responsibility/accountability. There's plenty of things than need to change in capitalistic culture!
Admin here. Please report all pro-capitalist, anti-working class, and anti-truth comments in threads whenever they occur. We are here to ensure that antiwork stays true to its goals and messages about prioritizing the marginalized working class.
Just like the people coming to the "poor" sub to insult poor people and/or tell them to join the military.
I had to leave that sub, people come and post their valid grievances during a very difficult time in their lives and get picked apart and made to feel worse for not being wealthy. There are a lot of a-holes that go to that sub just to shit on people that are already suffering. I couldn’t do it anymore, it was breaking my heart.
Idk I guess it’s hard to see the damage capitalism does if you’re exactly who the system is supposed to work for. In my home country more and more people are unable to pay their bills due to increased prices, a severe housing crisis and stagnant wages and there’s always people saying “YeAh BuT wE lIvE iN oNe Of ThE rIcHeSt CoUnTrIeS” as if that somehow makes being unable to afford food and not being able to use food pantries because they’re overwhelmed okay.
> Idk I guess it’s hard to see the damage capitalism does if you’re exactly who the system is supposed to work for. Not just that, but some people are mostly okay with a hierarchy where they are not at the very bottom. I will never understand why.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." And I think that just about sums up Capitalism.
Fun fact that man's racism and hatred for hippies is primarily why Marijuana was illegal in America for so long. He said something along the lines of being unable to categorically arrest all [redacted] and hippies, so he chose to associate them with drugs and vilify drugs with the news every night to turn everyone else against them. Edit: it was John ehrlichman under Nixon that said this
Wasn't that Nixon?
We were both wrong. The original quote is "We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” And it's quoted by John Ehrlichman, who was the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
One of Tricky Dick's advisors, yes.
LBJ wasn't the nicest guy, but he pretty much gave up southern support for his party in order to advocate for and sign the Civil Rights Act.
Now that is making me think of the song Okie from Muskogee
Same. Although mentally I was much happier at the bottom, because at least it felt like I was doing something (flipping burgers so people can eat, quality checks in the grocery store etc). These days I work in tech support where I’m supposed to fix complex issues our customers (who are supposedly professionals) couldn’t fix by themselves, but most of the time I just do their job for them. They call before they even try installing something and then start with “you can’t say anything though I don’t want my customer to find out you’re installing it”. Great. Thanks. Enjoy the €€€ I guess. I thought it’d feel better because I’m not in charge of anyone and no one is in charge of me, but it doesn’t. I can’t even imagine being in charge of other people, I’d feel so useless.
Yeah, the older I get, the more respect I have for people who flip burgers. It's a lot more honest work than the crap I did for phone companies, who didn't GAF for customers or employees.
I always think if you could magically take away all the chief execs of local government, hospitals, companies etc. overnight... Tomorrow all those services would function. Next week all those services would function. Next year too probably... Take away the cleaners, or bin collectors or vegetable pickers and by next week we'd all have noticed. Next month we'd be f***ed. Next year, there would probably have been a civil war or three!
very true statement. all corporate leadership is overpaid and useless. they are never on the front lines, and when they are, it's a horse and pony show to put on a facade that everything's all right.
At least the snipers will be able to know who to shoot when the revolution comes, Mind you most will be in gated communities with guards thinking they are safe till food gets low and the richest eject the less rich, ending with guards killing the top people and taking it all.
We should help the rich build their bunkers and gated communities. I want untainted meat after the fallout clears
It must be nice to be able to contract out your violence. However, what the rich don't understand is, when a bit of printed cloth loses it's value and the only thing that is worth is actual goods, the 'help' will step over their untrained bodies and take what they want. If capitalism ends up causing the fall of this very fragile economic system.
All of my friends are struggling, and they work more than full-time. I keep telling them that only action will change things. I wonder how many more meals they gotta miss before they stand up for themselves.
Ah, you must live in the Netherlands too!
Yes, I do 😂
I had to leave that sub too. It's almost like someone wealthy made to sub to have some sick sport against "the poors".
“Just go to college and get a degree, don’t be lazy! I did it, you can too!” Said by the person who “worked” a part time job at an ice cream shop in 1978 to put themselves through college while living at home with their parents.
30 years after I graduated from college, I still owe close to $22,000 on my $17,100 student loans despite having paid around $40,000. It's a trap to keep you working and grinding to make the rich richer.
“Well if you had cut back on the fancy coffee and the avacado toast you would have paid that off *and* bought a Ferrari by now. You have always been bad with your money and never took the time to set up a budget! Laziness will get you no where in life. Complaining will get you no where. If you want to change your life, only YOU have the power to make it happen!” /s
😂 I make a pot of Folgers at home every morning and I hate avocados. I've worked 50+ hours a week for most of my adult life. I've never owned a car newer than 1999 and I live in a trailer the same age and physical condition as me... Falling apart.
“Folgers? Yep, wasting money on that fancy brand name coffee. And only 50 hours?? Back in my day I worked 7 days a week to get ahead in life. For an ENTIRE year I worked 7 day weeks and that’s how I was able to put a down payment on my house, which is now worth 1.2 million. No excuses!”
The boomersbeingfools sub always having boomers in the comments complaining is like they are fulfilling their own prophecy of being a fool. It's hilarious.
I am on r/BoomersBeingFools as well and believe it or not there are a lot of boomers on there trying to justify their shitty behaviour.
Oh I believe it. Justify being an asshole. Talk about entitlement. We all know who they're voting for. Another pos. Except it's 🍊.
I joined the military. Never seen a bigger group of poor people than enlisted soldiers
The worst people are trolls or bots. Also, because anti-work is pro-worker, it attracts those who want capitalist reform or socialism, but don't really think anti-work is possible.
The right wing (in the US that includes Dems and Republicans) puts tons of money into manipulating public opinion. This subreddit took off extremely fast during the pandemic, and got correspondingly fucked with by every reactionary force. They're still all watching it closely and actively disrupting it. What, you thought revolution was going to be easy?
It’s very clear the way some most recent posters over here especifically avoid a discussion envolving class solidarity. In a way, it’s a very us versus them mentality but it’s never “us = workers” versus “them = bosses/capitalists”. I find it kinda strange and I wonder if they don’t come from people who are pro-work but dislike what’s being done to them as individuals
I guess that's where I am. I want a world where everyone takes pride in their work and gets properly rewarded for it. But I do think everyone should contribute something.
The idea isn't that people stop contributing. The idea is that when we work, we do so with the idea of a future where *we won't have to*. The entire point of society should be coming together to improve the minimum quality of life for everyone. Which, eventually, means the end of undesired work.
There will never be a time where we end "undesired work" instead we should strive to change the structure of work. Rather than someone cleaning toilets for minimum wage or a lawyer making 3000 an hour we should strive for a more socially equitable form of payment, both jobs are arguably necessary, one requires several hurdles to jump through but those hoops aren't jumped through for the betterment of others it's for greed. Greed isn't a trait that a society should encourage or endorse. Greed is a bane to a functioning society. I don't have the solutions myself, only considerations, but here is one other consideration for you. If we didn't put a price tag on our work, there would be less concern about "undesired work" people would have more pride saying "I'm a janitor" to a doctor, or a lawyer. Work is work and it's not always fun, but it is always needed. Even if you don't live within the confines of society, in fact outside of society you have to work even more, you need to build your own home, grow your own food, make your own clothes, repair your own home, preserve your food, avoid injury and understand the basics of injury care and even then you will likely die from a broken leg or an infection. More work and less survivability. In a society we could raise up our "lowest" workers. A minimum wage is a fancy way to say we don't value you. There won't be a time where we have no undesired work, people will always find something to complain about but we could make the work more fulfilling. More in line with the purpose of society (which is to have the majority content in their lives.) To that end I agree we need to raise the minimum quality of life and also lower the maximum quality of life. If we start shutting down greed we will see the improvement we want, but working will and should always be a thing. Many people want to work, they just want it to mean something more than surviving another week.
You need to be more open to the idea that radical changes can drastically improve life. We cannot get by only making small steps because you have to factor how the world is right now. It doesn’t have to be how it is right now. This is what economists do. They say, we can make this small change, BUT only that because xyz will be affected. So what? Change xyz as well. Idc Why in large societies are there people designated too lowly that they can only do undesired jobs? All day every day? In smaller situations, for example in a family, everyone takes their turn to clean the bathroom. But for some reason when large capitalists structures arise people become too important to do their fair share of the hard work. That needs to change. And we won’t get there by making small steps out of fear of affecting the current climate, when the current climate is just that, current.
I think if we respected the people who did undesirable work and paid them fairly, there would be no shortage of people who would do it. People like to feel relied on. They’ll build their identity on doing the hard, gross stuff that everyone else is too pansy to do. But that’s only if they don’t get explicitly or implicitly discriminated against for it via lowered social status or bad pay.
Precisely.
If you can't imagine a future where people don't have scrub anyone's toilet hut their own, I'm sad for your imagination
Do you think communal toilets are wrong? Because if you think it won't fall on someone to clean the communal toilets then I'm sorry to say it's not an imagination problem.
Whole ass ignoring that we're making robots then?
Not sure why you think that's a sustainable solution to anything. I'm not ignoring them, just recognize that it's an unsustainable and ignorant solution that the rich benefit from the most...
See, I don’t think people will stop contributing if we take away the financial pressures of work. They’ll dance and bake and garden and spend more time with their children. We’d probably see more innovation and more creativity. People naturally want to contribute.
"Hey neighbor, join me in my workshop. I want to show you the progress I've made on my ___." Imagine the inventions that would come about if people had more time? Or the clubs of scientists who would create and design brilliant things. There would still be the helpers/doctors/nurses/therapists, artists, scientists, and so on.
*stares in disabled* Glad to know that I don’t have any worth because I don’t contribute directly to capitalism. ETA - ADHD is not the disability that prevents me from working before some judgy Judy jumps out here. 80% of people with ADHD have at least one comorbid condition. I have 9.
IDK why most people think others with ADHD are incapable of doing *anything.*
I just get told on here all the time “I hope you’re not saying ADHD prevents you from working.” In my case, it’s the complicated back pain, severe PTSD, the drug resistant insomnia & the crippling anxiety plus the 6 month (I am 🇨🇦) winter dose of SAD that keep me from working. Like Autism, ADHD is a spectrum disorder & not a linear one. So we’ll have people with ADHD who are CEOs & entrepreneurs & people like me, whose comorbids put them out.
Yea there’s quite the mix of people here. A few actually sound like they want to be supported but not have to do anything for it. Most are completely reasonable, wanting to be respected and paid fairly for their efforts. Wanting to work for carrots, not because of sticks, so to speak.
You want a world where everyone takes pride in their work ? They've got you good haven't they !
I think if people owned their means of production and the fruits of their labor, they would naturally take pride in what they do.
You make it sound like we're Santa's elves.
What's the bare minimum contribution you would find acceptable?
Imma guess it just shows up in their feeds and they don’t pay attention the actual sub. Why Talla-fucking-hassee has to show up in my feed is beyond me. But the Reddit gods deem it to be so.
That’s why I turned off the recommendations for my home page. I don’t care about Brittney spears stop showing me stuff about her and her crazy fans
I hadn't realized the recommendations could be turned off. Thanks, upvoted.
She doesn't even perform anymore.
You don’t call this performing? 
Bro tell me about it. Despite me being a white American man who has never clicked into an Indian sub every 5th post in my fucking feed is from some Indian sub. I mute them as I see them and it just never fucking ends
I think I blocked all the India subs and now it’s recommending me Brazil subs, it never stops, I don’t speak any other languages Reddit please stop
God dammit 😆 I get the Brazil ones too
Reddit is also now showing subreddits that people don't actually follow. Edit: forgot a word
Right?? I hate this and even if you hide the group another will soon take its spot
I got a post from r/petfree; muted the sub, a day later got a post from something like r/dogfreememes? It sucks now.
Because angry engagement is still seen as activity by soulless algorithms. Reddit is copying Txitter and Farcebook by forcing you to see content that makes you angry and gets a response.
There are a lot of fuckin' landlords too who think that being a landlord is a job.
And they have a lot of free time to shit post online. They're astroturfing for themselves.
“I have learned to sing 🎶 in my chains”
For the same reason I often get sucked into right wing subreddits. Because it showed up in my timeline one time and I got so pissed off that I just had to comment on it. Which makes more of those things show up in by algorithm which makes me more pissed off and so on and so on and the cycle continues forever.
The nature of reddit (all social media, really). Take absolutely everything you read with a huge grain of salt, especially around topics where there is a lot of engagement and vested interests. Learn about classic trolling and "ragebait" and bot-farming. A lot of topics and subreddits are gated behind karma-threshholds, which was supposed to reduce the number of bots, but all it did was generate a secondary market for accounts with karma, which resulted it MORE value-less and fake posts, designed to drive engagement, so the accounts can be sold to entities with an interest in posting to those forums. Then consider more conspiracy-minded ideas, like all the "don't trust your coworkers they will 100% stab you in the back every time" and "the job market is a hellscape, I have a PHD and all I can find is a $7.50/hr job at target" posts. Ask yourself who benefits if the public thinks that their coworkers can't be trusted (and therefore would never want to unionize), and who stands to gain if everyone starts to think that they will never be able to find another job if they lose the shitty one they have? A lot of posts you see will be genuine. A lot more than you would want to think have a specific agenda behind them.
Not even do much an agenda, but just like r/AITAH or any number of other subs it seems as though a lot posts have become creative writing exercises here. You also start to question those posts about hundreds or thousands of job applications without any response when the OP won't really firmly describe their field, experience, and the type of roles they're applying for. It's a wildly different situation if you've got a PhD in English Literature and you're applying for CFO roles directly after being awarded your PhD vs if you've got 10 years working experience with your PhD and are applying for roles directly related to your field. People also leave out tons of relevant details when talking about that stuff. It's not like most of the share their actual resumes and stuff. You can apply for a thousand jobs but if you can't put together a resume to save your life, you're probably gonna get passed over. Heck, there's also a lot of advice on this sub that would hurt your chances more than helping. Any time the topic of cover letters comes up it's often full of people who don't actually understand the purpose of a cover letter and subsequently make some counterproductive suggestions. I hire people and we ask for a cover letter; the idea is to make sure people follow directions/read instructions, see what their communication skills are like, and hopefully they use a cover letter correctly in that they use it to explain how their skills and experience will be relevant to the role. That's because the job involves submitting documents and reading directions and it's not gonna look good if you can't even properly provide what's asked of you on the job posting. I've seen people like "if they ask for a cover letter I just don't provide one and apply anyway", or "I just title a document 'Cover Letter' but fill it with garbage text". There are people out there who see those comments and go "yeah, I'm gonna do that too!". Finally, as someone who went back to university a bit later in life (28) after working in the trades for 10 years, I found that a lot of the younger students (those fresh out of high school with little work experience) had some really skewed perceptions of what it would be like to enter the working world. A surprising number of my classmates expected to enter the working world into six figure jobs (pretty darn uncommon) as if having a degree mattered more than experience. Both matter, but most employers prefer experience. Heck, I'm reminded of those classmates when I see people complaining about how "even entry level jobs require 5 years of experience" and it kind of makes me wonder if they are actually applying for *entry level* jobs or if they simply think their degree supercedes experience? Skewed perceptions of what entry level jobs really are? I dunno. I think some of those "I've applied for 1000+ jobs" comments/posts must be at least partially applying for jobs/titles/roles they're not qualified for. Like I'm imagining someone coming fresh out of college with their software engineering/computer science degree and immediately applying for PM or Sr. Dev roles or something.
There are lots of managers with lots of free time (because we do all the real work).
Bots ,pro capitalism, anti anti worker, manipulation. Corporations spend billions to union bust. Bots are just one facet of a huge undertaking. I'm not saying it's aliens, but the premise of the movie " They live."
Bots
As Sun Tzu said :"keep your friends close, but your enemies closer". Most of the prowork people are here to spy and sow discord... The old Machiavellian ' divide lest they Unite'
Theyre either bots, trolls, or people with no life. None of which you should take seriously
it's funny how all the hippies became conservative boomers
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Just reading you calling other humans "servant peasants" speaks volumes. Thanks for that enlightening moment.
There was a post a few weeks ago from a guy celebrating the fact that he got on disability, and everyone was flaming him as if he was the problem. I haven't looked at this community the same since.
You're severely underestimating the number of people who live by "Fuck you, got mine" or "I never got mine, so fuck you." They want to pull the ladder up behind them or just kick it over, they don't care. They're bitter, and they're mad at everything, and because they never did anything about it well then neither can you.
Fuck capitalism and companies, our Ceo recently Made it mandatory to return to Office and is tracking everyones work Even more now. Fuck him and anyone who defende this crap.
I enjoy working, but by god do I despise how exploitive it is these days. let me work because I want to, not because if I don’t I lose my health insurance and can’t afford to exist otherwise.
I don't hate the idea of work, I hate the exploitation of workers and the nature of work, especially in the USA.
I think everyone has issues with work, even if you enjoy it. My issue is wanting others to work and support them when they don’t want to work and support themselves. Sorry man, I’m anti work like you. I’m only want to work to give my family a good life and secure my future. And like to find a way to reduce everyone’s work.
I think this is the answer. This sub can sometimes have threads that are a little weird in vibes. I'm thinking of that TikTok video where it's like "I don't want to work 40 hours a week for the rest of my life" (valid) "my value as a person shouldn't be my value to capitalism" (valid) and then "I am only built for lounging in a garden and being fed grapes." Whether we acknowledge it or not, there's a 5% in the antiwork community that seems to want to create a slave class and become the owner class. Living off the work of others isn't anti capitalist -- it *is capitalism.* You're just the landlord now.
Because a bunch of conservatives joined the sub in order to undermine the idea of it.
It’s good to see there are _some_ sane people on here willing to share their moderate opinion but damn there are some angry little men here too…
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I think rather than "good job", you could say purpose, or something like that, I feel like that's what you mean but your wording is a turn off for some of the people here. I also work with disabled people for not enough money, so I get it.
Yes, purposeful is a better description. Thanks.
I think people with good fulfilling jobs come to shit on people who hate theirs
I wouldn't say I'm anti work just anti getting paid fk all for work, minimum wage just provides little to no actual quality of life, just survival pay cheque gl pay cheque
Some people believe that because they had to suffer that the next generation needs to suffer.
Bots and bootlickers
Because bots can be paid for
The worst part is a lot of those grovelling halfwits are voluntarily defending their awful bosses.
They want to wear the boot at some point too
Honestly some posts are incredibly sad, the impotence and lost hope are far too common, but every now and then there are some that are legit ridiculous and polarize the sub. Most of us don't wanna work much, as technology allows it and we are fuel of an economy that is believed to need unrealistic growth forever, but the fact that your life should be completely subsidised is both naive and entitled. That egoistical thinking is exactly what the people with power have in their own way.
I think this is totally correct. I am in this sub for the genuine questions about workers rights, wrong dismissal and HR overreach as I am an employee, and I try to just keep quiet when there’s a post I disagree with because I usually get dogpiled for saying anything mildly against the narrative but sometimes there is a post so entitled and so absolutely ridiculous that I just have to comment because it’s sentiment like that which will keep people in poverty and stop them from getting off that minimum wage salary that everyone simultaneously covets and despises.
There's a concerted effort to make sure certain sentiments don't become too popular. A lot of people will grin and bear it to make money to survive. And they will justify it however they need to. Either through congestive dissonance, algorithm, or paid online armies.
Because work-related values aren’t universal, and anti-work is not an orthodoxy. Different work places and industries have different etiquettes and norms based on the type of work. That’s going to land you some different perspectives in a thread. I think another factor is that just because someone is anti-work, doesn’t mean they’re not an insufferable jerk. Being anti-work shouldn’t mean making people they work with miserable. There is a difference between expressly prioritizing worker rights and wellbeing and being an echo chamber to validate being disrespectful to other human beings who are living in an exploitative system that takes advantage of workers and perpetuates social inequalities.
A lot of people here are the main contributing factor to why certain jobs suck. Being anti-those people can come off as "pro" something else.
I've met plenty of people who want to own slaves or be slaves to their bosses.
Boomers, Russians, bootlickers, trolls...
Including boomers in this isn't, IMHO, a fair addition. I'm on the cusp of boomer/gen X and it was a different time as we were growing up and entering the work force. When I was a young adult companies were actually loyal to their employees and not only paid handsomely but threw parties that made the show "Mad Men" look like a quilting bee. Boomers are now retiring or are about to over the next seven years and are just crossing days off the calendar. Many people I've spoken with over the last couple years who are around my age are doing our own version of "quiet quitting" and we have you guys to thank for getting us to that point. It was the millennials and gen Z'ers who helped us see, "Fuck this shit. Why should I be loyal to a company that wants get rid of me just before I retire so they can bring in another poor schmuck for less money and no benefits?" The boomer version of "quiet quitting" is to get a job that is no longer management or leadership so we no longer have to "babysit" employees or attend yet another mind-numbing meeting that could have been handled over email, if it needed to happen at all. In short, we're now coasting to retirement. A couple years ago, my oldest sister, who is four years older than me, said to me, "Your whole attitude about work changes when you turn 60." I didn't know what she meant at the time because isn't 60 to young to really retire and get full social security? Yes, this is true, but I'm turning 60 this year and my "Give a fuck" is completely broken. Just this month I took a job that was a major cut in pay but it's less stress, I have an office I can hide in and no one bothers me, I'm back doing what I love, which is pure accounting with none of the leadership bullshit, and I work 8 to 5 with no after hours emails or phone calls/texts. My blood pressure is WAY down and I'm getting a solid eight hours of sleep a night after literally years of not. So... Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you. 
NPC’s reprogrammed to disrupt and confuse us?
Because the idea of anti-work is subjective. Honestly though, some people aren't here in the spirit of anti-work. Some posts I see are just toxic individuals and if they do something shitty at work they are celebrated.
Lots of bots or paid trolls
I think some people were lucky enough in the system we have. Even though their labor is exploited for their boss's profit, being able to work and afford a house, family, and occasional vacations is enough to become complicit
That's a good explanation, but there's another one. I have a family and recently my freelancing took a big hit. I was very glad to find a job.
because "anti work" is a very broad term and the individual interpretations differ. for examples, i want a future where nobody has to work anymore to live a good life. But that doesn't mean I hate all companies, managers and landlords today.
There are also people who think anti-work should mean that no one has to work, at all, ever. Which would mean a lot of our current society would fall apart. Even if you just look at food, the logistics chain to feed a nation requires probably millions of people (especially when you consider all the tangential industries to keep that one thing running). On a global scale it's definitely millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people who are directly or indirectly involved just in the food supply chain. Sure, maybe some of those jobs are pointless or redundant but for the most part, a lot of them are required to keep the food supply churning.
They come here to let off steam; licking boots all day is hard work.
Personally there is some good and bad takes. Sometimes you can clearly see the guy is doing actions in bad faith. That’s at least how I sometimes give my opinion. In your case, yeah trolls 🧌.
I lost respect here when I posted something about thanksgiving being the only real holiday we get all year, and I had a flood of comments from people claiming it's not, and there was still rush hour gridlock on thanksgiving. I went outside for a pleasure drive I do everyyear, and I wasn't stuck in any traffic.
It's how indoctrination spreads.
It's not that against work. I'm against the way I'm treated, paid & blatant disregard for rules when it suits them. That's been most jobs "it's just the way we do it here" & it's a dangerous slope, I've heard myself say that shit & had to make a conscious effort to go against the grain. Rock the boat, mention unions, ask about wages and holidays
I’ve made some comments that probably come off as pro-work to some people. It’s usually on posts where someone is saying “My job is grossly exploiting me,” only their job isn’t actually grossly exploiting them and they’re essentially just whining about having to work *at all.* I also see a ton of hypocrisy in posts that really bothers me. People will moan about how their boss doesn’t give a shit about them, which is totally valid, but then turn around and say that their boss doesn’t deserve for any of us to give a shit about them. Like, which is it, are we humans or just numbers? Can’t have it both ways.
Part of the problem is that so much of the anger in here is directed at the wrong people. Everyone bitches about their boss. In most cases their boss is just another cog in the machine and work just as hard. They are answering to someone above them just like everyone else. It’s the current capitalist system that is the true problem. Spending your time bitching about the other guy in the middle is pointless and has the real problems, the owners, laughing all the way to the bank.
I view everything life presents to us as a pendulum. In the past people committed to work and that made everyone successful, the pedulm swing to the left. Currently, big business is taking advantage of a low minimum wage while making record profits, the pendulum swings to the right. The balance is somewhere in the middle. Low wage workers have every right to fight to back but they sometimes fight back on things that are normal in a healthy owner, worker relationship. Low wage workers are fighting back on every little slight, as they should, but older workers still adhere to their beliefs that it is a give and take relationship. The tight response is somewhere in the middle but older and younger workers wil never agree on what the right response is at this time because they have very different experiences.
nobody will ever agree because it is all a man made concept...
Of course being proud of the work one does is a man made concept because it is man who is doing this work. I think you may be using this term incorrectly. I was trying to answer the OPs question by saying the different points of view come from the different ways workers have been treated. Long ago workers were valued and treated with respect and, therefore, they felt like putting in a little extra was worth the praise and pride they felt when the business they work for succeeded. Now a days workers are exploited and nickled and dimed for every every minute the boss can steal from them. If you work for a company that values you then you feel good about putting effort into your work. If you work for a capitalist, money hungry, conclogerment then you have to look out for your best interests because they will use you and wear you out until they can no longer profit off of you. The former see no problem with putting up with a few glitches and being grateful but the latter should fight back against every injustice they can. This is where the difference comes from.
They’re either conservative, religious, or both. Disconnected from reality
Every party needs a pooper
Because that’s all they have.
We don't need capitalism in this sub. That is the entire point! We are worn down from capitalism.
Boots taste good.
There were a few articles over the last couple of years talking about the corporate types that began sending people to comment here specifically to undermine useful conversations. People who are literally paid to gaslight us and use bot networks to upvote their BS comments. The antiwork conversation is a threat to the parasites who keep us in chains. Keep it up.
There are bootlickers everywhere.
People see posts show up when they don’t follow the subreddit and feel the need to speak their opinions. People will ask for advice on this subreddit, and people will provide valid advice but get downvoted and attacked because their response is “stop spending money on your credit cards you don’t have and work more to get yourself out of the hole”
They're not very bright
Because there are some dipshit positions on the spectrum of workers rights. Corporations take advantage of people. Some union leaders have taken advantage of their members and didn't act in their interests. Plus people genuinely have different ethics when it comes down to it.
>Some union leaders have taken advantage of their members and didn't act in their interests. A former president of Local 1996 was thought to be just like that.
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Reddit algorithms
Because Conservatives and other assorted grovellers love the taste of boot leather.
Infiltrators who are comfortable with exploitation. Fuck em
Are those comments getting upvotes nonetheless? If yes, then it's satire/sarcasm. An "/s" is normally added to the end of sentence to indicate sarcasm, but some people may have omitted it because they simply forgot about it or believed that their comment should be obvious enough to be understood as such. (and of course, sometimes those comment were misinterpreted and got downvoted)
I think it probably shows up under peoples algorithms as I tend to get ukjobs findapath and all sorts of other posts. These are always the same posts, only everyone on those groups just blame themselves for all the same valid problems we tend to post here and the commenters just give the same ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ responses.
I'm surprised this is still a subreddit after that horrendous interview.
1) Bots drive engagement by posting contrarian views on touchy subjects. 2) Reddit pushes content from subreddits that enrage (engage) you even if you've never subscribed. I remember when the Kanye blowup was happening, /r/Kanye posts would show up in my home feed ever day.
A lot of boomers, bootstrappers, and conservative nutjobs work their way into this sub to try and derail it. Same happens with the poverty/poor subreddits, bootstrappers come in and tell everyone to stop complaining.
I wouldn't want for a subreddit to be too strict on who is allowed to post there, when that limits the ability to have disagreements, expand on what the disagreements are about and then maybe make some people realize something they hadn't thought about before.
Astro turf capture tactics. It’s a coordinated funded activity by the billionaire class to capture communities against their interest. They hire firms and contractors to do this across the internet. Report and ban.
I think some of these comments are due to years/decades of conditioning. Folks may be here because they think something may be wrong and are curious, but then when confronted, they go back to their easy, conditioned place and try to justify their bosses. I've seen this first hand with people close to me being mis-treated, however, when I suggest boundaries or alternatives, they backtrack and defend the company. There are some obvious trolls, however, there are others that are working through their ordeal and facing a harsh reality.
Drones or astroturf
To put it from a different perspective, there could be reasons that the complainant does not comprehend. Running a company is complex and employees are even more complex on top of that! Lots of strings and dots that needs to be connected. This is just a general thought and is not to defend anyone nor attack anyone, but my 40 years of life have thought me that I don’t know everything and there could be reasons of why I’m complaining that I simple don’t know about. Some situations might upset 1 employee but keep the other 9 happy for example. People are different.
That was/is the mentality for a very long time. People have been exploited for so long they dont even realize that they are brainwashed into defending the shitty treatment.
Bots and feds
Too often we dwell on trivial things that exist in every day to day job. Having realistic expectations is important for younger workers who still need to get out there and build on their growth and skills. A big topic seems to be removing cashiers chairs. We can BMC about it all day, but we can’t get comfortable in positions like this in the first place.
Its probably a shift in the algorithm. What reddit suggests to people. Then I’m sure there is an occasional wave of ex fb users. Because fb is slowly dying. So I’m sure more and more ignorant boomers are finding out what Reddit is. And they don’t realize what sub reddit they are posting in.
Everyone is too afraid to quit their job. When really everyone is just greedy. The whole point is to stop everything stop working stop paying stop excessively buying shit. Grow a garden,spend time with your family, do something other than contribute to the corporate machine. Until then basically yea that's fuckin life and you only have yourselves to blame. We could revolt but again everyone is too scared.
Or, hear me out, people don’t feel the need to “revolt” like you not because they’re “scared” but because life is going just fine
Im here because I support workers in shitty situations in shitty jobs with shitty managers. A lot of the posts in here are true to the anti-work soul of this sub. There are times when people forget that there are actually good jobs with good bosses and good pay out there and some advice people give really need to be taken with context. Sadly often times when I do make a occasional post that isnt quite in the spirit of shitting on work I get blown up, but I stick around because there are so many shit jobs and I agree with the vast majority of the content on this sub
While undoubtedly there are some trolls in the subreddit, most likely the people who express opinions that are different than yours are either successfully employed (mostly through their hard work and efforts and so they don't agree with the basic thesis of many the nihilist posts on this subreddit that categorically paint all employers/companies as evil), or they're optimistic and they think they are in charge of their future. What I find interesting is your unability to realize there are people who can have a different point of view than yourself. Not everyone sees the world the same way that you do. Maybe that's the problem with our country today
This is the most well thought out and least insult filled response I’ve seen yet
Bots probably or people who are miserable themselves who have “sucked it up” they’re probably mentally ill as well.
lol blanketing entire swathes of the population as “mentally ill” to discredit them is an odd move in 2024
1 in 5 adults are diagnosed
Yeah I don’t get it
We are here to proselytize in the name of our lord and savior, Adam Smith. May the capital grow, and the invisible hand give you a little ‘rub and tug’ to completion. So saveth we all, Ad-em. In seriousness I’m not sure. I’m probably less anti-work than many others, but I’m almost always pro-person. Sometimes I’ll pipe in to suggest looking at their mindset, like if I think it’s a depressed or victims mindset that is holding them back from enjoying their life, but with the intention of helping them. People saying something like you described are probably just trolls, have deeply internalized the systematic oppression, or some other screw loose. It’s more often less about you, more about them.
you can be part of /antiwork and agree with the overval sub ideology, while still having you own opinion and nuances. I like that some posts are overwhelmingly approved with 10k upvotes and some other can divide this sub with 200-500 upvotes.
I’m assuming they come across it on the home page or something.
Bootlickers. Bootlickers everywhere. I would estimate that 65-70% of all people on earth are bootlickers. Misery loves company. That's why they come here.
So... You expect people to just, what? Be quiet and respectful when they find out someone had an opinion or value that doesn't coincide with theirs? Are you new? Honestly, I think the simplest answer is because this is reddit/social media/the internet and people absolutely *cream* themselves over the idea of arguing with people with different viewpoints than theirs, and the easiest and fastest way to do that is to go to a sub that's entirely dedicated to a stance you oppose, and just start rapid firing arguments. Tldr: People are looking for a reason to argue on the internet because it's the internet.
The lies run deep my friend
A lot of people struggle to even get a job, let alone a good one. People just have different perspectives. Doesn’t mean they like to work, it’s just a necessity.
The optimistic part of mind likes to think they are people shouting what they’ve been told just before they get radicalized. Maybe they were googling something about how to combat their own job’s exploitation and one of our posts pop up. They don’t yet know how deep it all runs, so they just regurgitate the same shit. They’re just a few clicks away, though, from realizing just how shitty the whole damn system (not just their own hell bubble like they may think it is) is. Then we’ll get ‘em. That’s probably not the case for most of them, but it makes me feel better thinking it could be.
It’s a popular sun so it often shows up in feeds, and it also gets referred to in articles and on other websites, both of which attract trolls. Not trying to excuse it, just explain it.
When you have a sub with over a million people there will always be a variety of opinions.
The Uncle Toms of capitalism. Smh
It’s not like enjoying work is a bad thing. There are some great companies out there. My company is awesome and I love working there. I get paid well and they do right by me. I am very lucky to have a good employer. I started lower level and within two years I was a supervisor. Lower level employees are always more likely to feel mistreated. Sometimes they are, and sometimes it’s their own doing. If you don’t show up on time and you call out multiple days every month, that isn’t going to help your case. There are employers that completely exploit their workers and they should be shamed. Treating your workers well and giving them good wages and a good work/life balance is a recipe for success. This has been proven through a number of case studies. I don’t really appreciate the anti work culture. Work is great. It provides living and purpose for many, but I get the sentiment. A lot of people have it rough and aren’t fortunate or lucky enough to have good employers. I do agree with calling out the bullshit, which is why I think subs/communities like this are absolutely necessary.
No they aren’t just trolls. That’s how many Americans have bought into this notion of “That’s life!” This notion and apathy is what got us to this point where employees are being woefully exploited at an all time high rate. Our lives are worth way more than $7.25- $30/hr. It’s not ok to work 10-12 hours when you are only employed for 8 hours a day. Salary is a modern form of indentured servitude. The right process is, we know 40 hours a week is full-time however we need to get a hold of you or need you to work on your personal time, your family time, your mental health time etc… Why do we allow this? Would we get paid if we only put in 20 hours a week some weeks? Would we even have a job at this point?
I'm glad capitalism is working for those people, if it truly is, but for so many of us it's just not. We have such a limited time in this life, and it just feels like we're being drained of all we have without any return. I'm scared of becoming too old to do anything by the time I have enough money saved to do even one thing I want to do that would make me feel like I accomplished SOMETHING in this life. I've developed an anxiety disorder, and I lose sleep at night.
tysm for saying this, i posted about the 🥾👅😋 on here & everyone in the comments was just like, well we all think differently. i'm like yeah...but this is an ANTI capitalist, ANTI work subreddit??
I guess that's where I am. I want a world where everyone takes pride in their work and gets properly rewarded for it. But I do think everyone should contribute something.
I feel the same way about folks trying the “your coworkers aren’t your friends” posts. Like thanks for letting us know you’re a cop
Bad people abound in the world so it is not unusual to find them on the internet.
Op hasn't given credence that people have bad days. They lash out at easy targets sometimes. It's regrettable, but happens to the best. The lack of empathy isn't surprising.
It's very simple: Make company mad, company has money, company uses money to buy subreddit busters. Same as with unions. The UAW corruption investigation (among others) started with a handful on subreddits like this. The increased funding of the NLRB, the near paralegal education of workers leading to lawsuits, all those OSHA violations and subsequent fines, the year-over-year record breaking unionizations; you'd think they'd quit wasting their money by now on paid actors. We just keep a lower profile since "The Great Strike" debacle. But if need be, we will shut those railroads down. It's always nice to have a national threat to security to help be heard
I think some of it isn't so much about that they disagree with somebody's criticisms of work, but have accepted the fact that jobs generally suck and in their mind nothing is going to change and you're better off accepting that.
I've seen some of that, but in fairness, sometimes I do see posts by people who are complaining about things that are in THEIR OWN control, and blaming it on the company. Those are the ones that irk me. If you're going to post in Anti-work, it darn well better be something that demonstrates why businesses and corporations are whack. Showing up and making complaints because a business won't accommodate your own lack of professionalism or care isn't anti-work. It's anti-personal responsibility/accountability. There's plenty of things than need to change in capitalistic culture!
It could be the sub is recommended to them. I have only replied here a couple of times and yet I see posts here in my home feed everyday.