[emptybottle]

> Shortly after the publication of this story on 26 Jan 2022, the r/antiwork subbredit went private

This is the weird part. A mod went on fox news, the interview went sideways, and now the sub is locked.

Isn’t the point of going on the air to promote the sub? Why lock it down right when it has so much new attention?

[andrei_says_]

Members are moving to https://old.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/ after the mod of r/anti work mishandling criticism of their interview with Fox News.

The interview was really bad but the mod reacting to criticism by deleting and locking posts and eventually locking the subreddit caused the community to lose trust in the ability of this person as a moderator.

[chapsticc]

We already had a work reform subreddit, it was called ChapoTrapHouse

[yucky]

That's the one that got banned for the incessant calls for violence right?

[jazzyjackson]

well, do you want to reform work or not?

[yucky]

ChapoTrapHouse promulgated marxism, so nope. I've seen enough of that in history. And the fact that it requires violence to implement, was fine with them. Also a no from me.

[drekk]

It also required violence to free slaves in the United States. To say violence is always impermissible sides with whatever violence already takes place. In our times, one example would be that 1 in 5 children that are food insecure on the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet. I want them fed. If it's going to require force to do so I prefer that violence to the slow, boring dystopia of an invisible hand.

There's a long storied tradition of that in the US, such as farmers going armed to foreclosure auctions and preventing sales or acquiring them at pennies to return to the previous owners. Railroad workers and coal miners are two other demographics that had similar labor upheavals in recent history.

[alar44]

Ok, hold up your sign and keep voting harder.

[ekanes]

It's a perfect split. /antiwork could be shaming nasty bosses, and /workreform is a productive name for where this could go.

[mcv]

The irony is that this mod turned into a nasty boss who fired everybody who dared to criticise.

[ekanes]

Yes. That was bonkers.

[ndiddy]

If you watch the interview I think it’s pretty self evident how it embarrassed the subreddit into locking down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc

[throwaway0a5e]

They didn't lock down just to keep the spotlight off. The participants decried "you don't represent us" and proceeded to get uppity and then the mods wend scorched earth which culminated in locking the sub. I'm sure the spotlight didn't help.

[to1y]

Quite horrendous but if you were at any point following the sub, most of the threads were in the same tone.

[marcusverus]

The comments on Reddit are a sad sight. The fun is gone, the humor is stale. There is no discussion whatsoever. All that's left are a lot of sad, angry people, reciting the litany in hopes of earning digital applause from sad, angry strangers.

It's the progressive millennials' equivalent of the Fox News comments section.

[syncbehind]

I couldn't finish watching that. Rough.

[RedBeetDeadpool]

Watch it again. The interviewer wasn't even trying to be mean. The argument just crumbled in on itself in the atmospheric pressure of the real world.

[perryizgr8]

I've seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere too, something to the effect of "echo chamber collapses when exposed to the real world". I wonder how many internet forums that thrive today, only because of this isolation from the real world. Sometimes I feel this is true for HN, to a certain extent.

[RedBeetDeadpool]

HN has foundations in math and engineering so I don't think it would collapse as easily. In real life it would be more akin to a developer convention. There would be purpose and connection to the shared reality. It wouldn't survive in the streets of normal people per se but it would be capable of standing on its own foundation, at least significantly better than lets say a star wars convention. It will look pretty silly if someone claiming to be a jedi master went on camera to be interviewed, but not so much if a machine learning expert did.

[Gigachad]

Fox News set the situation up to begin with. They likely investigated the person before requesting them as they asked for this mod specifically. They could have seen the top mod is an autistic, trans, reddit moderator who fits the boomer caricature of entitled lazy millennial.

Then it’s no shocker when the interview is completely socially inept because that’s what they set up from the start.

The Fox News guy is even mocking the moderator but the mod isn’t socially aware enough to see it.

[afloyd]

Essentially what happened is the mod went into an interview without telling anyone, without preparing, and basically managed to destroy all momentum the sub had, and then started banning anyone who brought up the interview, leading to a max exodus because that goes againt the entire point of the movement.

[haswell]

/r/WorkReform quickly emerged to replace /rAntiWork (360K+ subscribers almost overnight).

The new sub name is arguably better aligned with the goals of the movement, and it’s remarkable to see a replacement sub gain so much traction so quickly.

[zozbot234]

Some would argue that there are at least two parts to the movement, of which one is focused on actual work reform and can be contrasted with a faction of true "lying flat" slackers.

[haswell]

There are two possible ways I’d frame that, personally:

1. There are two separate movements. I’d argue that people who want reform are not remotely related to people who don’t want to work.

2. Every movement will always have extreme factions that don’t necessarily align with the primary goals of the majority.

We saw plenty of #2 with Recent social movements.

[Gigachad]

That’s absolutely what it is. The original antiwork user base was people who literally do not want to work at all even if it was reformed to be fair.

[mcv]

The person of Fox News didn't represent the community, but did control the subreddit. After the interview, they were criticised by the community and closed the subreddit. The community now moved to /r/workreform.