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.

  • @agarorn@feddit.de
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    12 years ago

    I see this happening all the time with small subreddits. As soon as they get traction their messages slowly becomes less radical.

  • Amicese
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    02 years ago

    Makes me wonder what would happen if Lemmy got recuperated…

    Is there any way to deal with this pattern of sudden recuperation?

    • comfyOP
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      22 years ago

      There are ways. I’ve had to rush this at the end, so there might be some poorly-thought out points. You’ve been warned.

      Relevant to lemmy.ml, if that’s what you meant:

      1. We have political admins. The people with ultimate power on this site (ignoring server host company (I don’t know who) and relevant government, who do have power but are less likely to use it) have already shown themselves to kick detractors, and openly state that this instance’s goal is not popularity. I honestly believe they would forcefully coup any anti-socialist recuperation to the best of their ability. Hopefully they are benevolent to all reasonable anti-capitalism and anti-bigotry. Having moderated and dealt with a variety of moderators, I understand some of the complexities involved in balance.

      2. Develop a strong culture and gatekeep where appropriate. Gatekeeping can often be bad! Yes, but in a group with a focused, unambiguous themes those are the only reason the place exists and they should be preserved, so views incompatible with the core values should be ruthlessly criticized or even censored before they can become normalized and tolerated.

      3. Engage in forceful administrative action in the case of a sudden influx. If a community of 120 anarchists gets famous and within a week attracts 5000 liberals who are against police brutality but think anarchism is bad… do the maths. This is a case where exclusion from a discussion group is necessary for its self-preservation. 5000 people can self-sustain, so bullying from 120 people isn’t an effective strategy unless they have a culture capable of doing this.

      An interesting case-study is 4chan’s shock culture in the late 2000s which many users and some staff intentionally utilized to counter the influx of ‘normal’ people and identity-referencing (e.g. both women or men revealing their genders) in order to preserve their anon culture, with debatable results after repeated fame and dilution. (I don’t tend to do trigger warnings but this 2013 formal paper on the topic obviously contains intentionally offensive language!). Prior to the /pol/ board, much of 4chan provides an interesting study in anti-identity (exemplified by their green-skinned, suited mascot, an intentionally class-neutral figure), a potential aid to counter identity politics. However, targeted antagonism by stormfront forums and some later complicit staff, plus recent elections, lead to the current situation.

      I realize this comes off as ‘censorship good’. That’s not a general statement I agree with. Society is complex. Take wolfballs, for example, which I initially mistook to be a US-libertarian “free speech haven”, until the admin said “Nazis are not welcome”. And that’s inevitable if you have values you want to preserve in a community or keep it productive against detractors, malicious or incidental. The admin hosts things they disagree with, but they drew a line when a few new users started spreading explicit race nationalism/separatism. It contradicts their values of freedom (and also implies that those users want to kill people like the admin who ‘race-mix’, so it may have been personal. I don’t know).

      Even pro-freedom places have to have these values, unless they want to become the place that only rejects banned from everywhere else will land. Those tend to be child abuse endorsers, intolerably hate-fueled radicals and literally mentally-insane spammers who cannot participate in mutually-enjoyable or productive conversation.

    • @chobeat@lemmy.ml
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      02 years ago

      isolate yourself and become irrelevant. Any form of “purity politics” inevitably leads to sectarianism.

      Engaging with the world means becoming contaminated. It’s inevitable and it’s also good. If one’s politics is not able to deal with this simple fact, those politics will soon become irrelevant, as did many radical ML or anarchist fringes.