What’s going on with r/AntiWork and the Fox News interview?

What’s going on with r/AntiWork and the Fox News interview?(old.reddit.com)

3 points by volkanvardar 4 years ago | 5 comments

smt88 4 years ago |

This type of subreddit/culture-war drama seems off-topic for HN.

Festro 4 years ago | |

On the surface I agree with you. I don't want to see HN be taken over by culture war stuff or by reddit drama posts.

However, the 'hacker' angle of HN, with regards to the subject of working towards success, or 'hacking success', makes the discussion of the antiwork movement very important.

HN is a mix of mindsets, but within it there are a lot people trying to redefine what success is to them, or get out of the 9-5 grind. We talk about 4-day work week trials, passive income, and so on. A lot of those discussions are compatible with the ideals of the antiwork, or work reform, movements.

smt88 4 years ago | | |

> However, the 'hacker' angle of HN, with regards to the subject of working towards success, or 'hacking success', makes the discussion of the antiwork movement very important.

I agree that the "antiwork movement" (whatever that means) is relevant to hackers. The spectacle of an idiot falsely claiming to represent that movement and making a fool of herself on Fox News is not relevant to hackers.

Even less relevant is the drama in the subreddit that led this mod to go against the wishes of the community and speak on their behalf in a hostile venue with (seemingly) no preparation.

volkanvardar 4 years ago | |

Yes, I was expecting to see it in frontpage before I shared. Apparently majority of hackers see this off-topic like you mentioned.

Festro 4 years ago |

tl;dr - Fox News targeted a very poor representation of the anti work movement and interviewed them live. The subreddit for the movement hated it, got shut down by its own mod team temporarily, and now a new subreddit is trying to replace it. The movement has been made to look bad, without any actual critical assessment of its aims, because a small group of people in a position of power underestimated a right-wing media outlet.

r/AntiWork has been gaining traction in the media as it's grown in subscriber count a fair amount recently, and of course the topic it covers is also gaining its own traction.

As such, Fox News reached out to the moderation team for the subreddit to request a live interview. According to the moderation team they even went as far as to specifically request the person seen in the interview. The moderation team discussed the request and accepted as the moderator picked had done media before (apparently).

Cue a fairly gentle opening set of questions and good answers from the moderator (called Doreen). The only initial issue might be the low quality webcam being used. However, after gathering a bit of info the Fox News interviewer quickly turns the heat on and asks bad faith questions. Doreen is revealed to be a dog walker who does a 20-25 hour work week, and might maybe one day like to teach Philosophy. Not anything actually bad, but definitely playing into the stereotype of a lazy young person the network wants to use as a symbol of the movement.

By the end of the interview it's apparent Fox has what they wanted from it and that Doreen has not represented the movement well.

The subreddit is in uproar, mainly because they don't understand why a mod is representing them anyhow. They're function is to moderate, they're not the subreddit leaders in any way. The subreddit thinks that the content creators of the subreddit would have been a better choice. Or, better yet, the interview should have been flatly declined.

The uproar gets out of hand enough that the mods start deleting threads and comments and ultimately make the sub private to let things calm down.

A new subreddit is founded in response called r/WorkReform. A lot of people move across swiftly.

This is just about where we're up to now, so it's hard to comment on what's going on accurately. But, I will say that it's very interesting to see a movement evolve in the moments. Even the terms 'antiwork' and 'work reform' are significant linear developments on how to better present a concept. One is adversarial, the other more progressive.

Also - Doreen has apparently already been called out for, and admitted to, instances of sexual assault on someone they were close to. Call it character assassination, or poor background checks by the mod team, or an unfortunate coincidence, or whatever. Basically, everything that could go wrong for a movement trying to be taken seriously, did go wrong, very quickly.