A bit of a passionless rant about the recuperation of /r/antiwork:

I don’t even consider myself an anarchist and I’m annoyed. Having visited the place a few years ago (2017?) to see what it was, the place was quite clearly as the name suggested: against the current concept of work. Not anti-labor (generally), but certainly anti-work.

Today, we’re seeing posts like this gain popularity (part of a screencap posted to the sub, 700+ rating currently)

And I can understand if that’s a naïve attempt at pitching or pandering to an audience not familiar with the nuance of ‘work’, ‘job’ and ‘labor’. But that’s not the case here.

After going through the comments, sorted by best, it takes the 7th reply to point out that the sidebar explicitly and unambigously says, at the top:

“A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas […]”

and another 7 replies to find this chain with some OP replies:

and then soon this one, marked with the controversial sign:

When you get to a stage where stating the absolute basic theme of a community is considered controversial, it’s a tragedy.

This is an example of recuperation. I honestly think the recuperation was more organic than forced or conspiratorial, caused due to the sudden rush in size by enthused reformists rationalizing the name rather than any intentional agenda. This has happened to other sites and subcultures too, where a sudden and largely unopposed rise in popularity dilutes the original community and its unique qualities.

A wide range of anti-capitalist subreddits seem to have come closer and closer into a homogeneous paste of (often the exact same!) twitter screencaps repeating fallacious or vapid ‘gotcha’ jokes and ragebaits. And I don’t want to see the same happen here.