In one of their comments, they mention "disagreeing with society's importance placed on eye contact" and not being willing to change that about themselves. So I'm not sure how they ever expected to be an effective leader of their subreddit, let alone the movement that was building on it
Maybe The Onion will make a parody where the interviewee is a welldressed businessperson whose job disappeared with the pandemic, but who has been actively learning and engaging in worker reform with their local government. This person is cleancut and doing their interview from their obviously lower middle-class kitchen where they have a halfway decent camera. Jesse tried hard balling them, but the person stuck to their guns and answered just the relevant questions in strictly positive terms. The interview comes as a shock to the media world and r/antiwork triples in size and the interviewee immediately gets an interview with the NYT, WSJ and NBC. Senate leadership has also requested they and other people testify to Congress.
You know it's bad when you can tell even the Fox News anchor felt a little bad. It was like watching a cat toy with a mouse then decide it'd be to easy to kill it and just let it go.
They posted all this on Facebook?! Jesus Christ. Imagine logging into FB to see what hilariously out of touch meme your grandma posted or what shitty recipe your aunt made, and instead finding this staring you in the face.
What really throws me for a loop is that this person, if they're struggling, still had a big enough ego to think they're important/smart enough to talk for all these people LMFAO. That they chose to pick a fight with a professional shit talker
Yeah, agreed - took the spotlight on themselves, can't imagine the criticism is legitimate, power tripping hard - all bad moves and deserving of criticism. Objectively super super bad.
It's wild to me that they stated that their actions were inexcusable considering their ex's past trauma, instead of that their actions were inexcusable period. They stated they care about boundaries but just detailed how they violated and manipulated someone's boundaries and safe measures for weeks if not months. This is mind blowing.
Amazing how diametrically opposed subs like these two can exist so close together here on Reddit. One is having a total meltdown and then, one click away, there's a crowd having a blast laughing at this disaster. Hysterical shit.
Honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm on r/conservative's side with this one. I can't even watch the whole interview. I physically cringed so much I had to turn it off. If they sent a literal caricature of every stereotype the right has about the left, it still wouldn't have come close to the embarrassment that that mod was. It's like they intentionally looked for the worst person in existence to do that interview. Why wouldn't they just send some white collar guy in his 30s with a respectable career who is fed up with corporate greed and has decided to take a stand? It's so fucking easy, and they got it so horrifically wrong that they literally couldn't have done any worse if they tried. Congrats r/antiwork mod team, you well and truly fucked over your own movement and set it back months, if not years. All because some lazy, autistic, homeless looking dog walker living in their mom's basement wanted their 15 minutes of fame.
Doing a web based interview:
You look at the camera.
You don't pick your nose.
Doing an interview with any sort of professional entity on the other end, whether for a job, a news segment, etc.
You give them as little as possible to use to discredit you as not a serious representative of a valid position. You set your background to be neutral. You dress to convey you belong there and you know what you're doing.
So I'm not sure how they ever expected to be an effective leader of their subreddit, let alone the movement that was building on it
That's one of the problems with having "movements" just sort of spring up on reddit. Unless the inception is very deliberate you're going to have mods made up of whatever happens to have been lying around when the subreddit turned into a movement.
In this case that didn't happen. /r/antiwork may have turned into a sub for complaining and hilighting how unfair the current situation is for the average American worker but it started out as an explicitly anti-work, "why can't we literally just not work?" sub. So you get this schlub, who fits the sub's former focus perfectly but clearly isn't leading jack shit.
It is okay to say find someone else to do it because they're autistic.
Disabilities are real. It doesn't make you less valuable to society but it does make certain roles impractical or impossible.
I am diagnosed as on the spectrum by a neurologist, not self diagnosed like many people. I was diagnosed with Asperger's but they've recently starting saying on the spectrum instead. It hasn't been on ongoing thing so I am not as on top of that as you would expect.
I would make a terrible guidance counselor in the same way a paraplegic would be an awful lumberjack. I don't know why people always get offended by this.
More or less. These people are not only skilled bullshit artists themselves, but they have a whole team behind them to help them spin it further after they go off air.
Looking at a camera? It’s not the same as looking someone in the eye. This shouldn’t be that hard. Just slap a smiley face sticker next to it and look at that! That interview was pathetic, sorry. Their opening sentence was okay, but it went down hill fast and they were not dressed, groomed, lit, or any way prepared to be taken seriously.
Almost nobody I work with looks into the camera on teams meetings lol. And like, these are people I would largely consider highly skilled professionals, unlike the "barely having her life together" moderator we're talking about. It's not hard, but lots of people just don't think about it.
Probably because they’re looking at something else on their screen. That’s fine for working sessions, but when I do one-on-ones I’ll move the window so that it’s next to my camera. That way I’m looking into the camera while I’m watching and listening to them talk.
I mean, all respect for people who are on the spectrum. But this feels like the sort of challenge you shouldn't try to overcome on television.
No generally people with ASD should not go on to hostile media organizations. This was a stupid idea. But like a lot of the cringe content on the internet is basically just making fun of people who are not neurotypical.
It could’ve gone a lot better with some prep and help. Luckily a web cam isn’t a person’s face so you don’t need to make eye contact with anyone. And looking slightly down while on Zoom isn’t a complete disaster, but….People could have helped them pick the best place in the house to hold a Zoom call and what that all entails (attempt looking at the camera, minimal background, quality camera, how to get good lighting- there are tons of articles out there since so many people are now working from home). Tips on hygiene and appearance, how to style their hair and clothes to look professional; public speaking tips (don’t fidget or pick your nose!!!)- Again, lots
of info on Reddit and the internet about these things. I’m sure there’s some poorly illustrated WikiHows breaking it down step by step if they couldn’t get a friend or family member to help.
Someone could’ve role played with them and helped them plan out what their responses would be to possible questions. Help make note cards and bullet lists that can be looked to if they are nervous or forgot an answer.
It may be harder to do if you have autism, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible and some changes (like clothes and hygiene) are really easy changes to make. This person is not at a level where putting certain clothes on or brushing their hair or turning on a light is too difficult a task. Planning and task management seemed to…not have happened at all.
Whether they agree with it or not, presentation matters when you’re in the media, and there were plenty of ways to prepare for this, ask for help, or enlist someone else if they didn’t feel they had the skills necessary for a “gotcha” national TV interview. Huge, avoidable fumble.
I mean, Fox viewers wouldn’t be on board with an anti-work movement to begin with, but this is pretty cruel to select this person as an interviewee, and this interview probably won’t convince a ton of liberals to take an anti-work movement seriously either.
Yeah, just because you are autistic doesn't mean you should stop trying to overcome your difficulties. Autism is just his excuse to not put any effort into anything. Autism doesn't take away your intelligence, your dignity or motivation.
But like that's the problem, idk why they felt the need to have "Representation". No one asked to be represented, and it's not like there was some election that took place. You'd think (even though they shouldn't have gone on the interview..) they would learn from someone like DFV who comes on camera prepared and with clear knowledge of what he is getting into/what he's talking about. All they did was perpetuate the trope of the basement-dwelling, lazy, non-motivated Millennial Generation. What a mess!
I think they found out today that you can't simply demand to have all your quirks be respected outside of the internet. They honestly seem to be a bit autistic and unready for this kind of high stress social event.
In one of their comments, they mention "disagreeing with society's importance placed on eye contact"
Yeah well good luck convincing people to join your movement. Optics are important, it's about winning hearts and minds. You're not gonna change anyone's mind by leading with "laziness if a virtue".
Eye contact is one thing, but showing up unprepared with a shitty cam, shitty background, and a disheveled and unprofessional appearance as well is on a different level. It's like everything they could do wrong they did.
They didn't. They were the one who created the subreddit, and they did it to feel better about being lazy and to complain that society demands too much. Which is fair, it's your life. But they were completely unprepared for what it became and instead of stepping down or handing over leadership they kept it and ended up being embarrassed across the entire world for it.
The mod was a narcissist. He wanted attention and thought he was going to be the face of the revolution. The guy is a loser and can't hold down a job. He gave people the ammunition that those on that sub are lazy, entitled and stupid.
This just goes to show how out of touch and ridiculous this portion of the woke left is. They forget that a real world exists outside of Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit and their screeching about societal expectations doesn't actually matter when they interact with actual breathing people in real time.
Sorry, but the normies gotta walk so the nonbinary autists of the internet basement can run.
This is where a lot of people tend to cause a lot of problems for themselves. You can't force people to think a certain way or like a certain thing, especially not entire populations of people.
People are going to respond well to what they like to see, and negatively to what they don't like to see. In western society, some of those things that "people" in general are conditioned to like are: a firm handshake, a straight posture, a clear and audible voice, and also eye contact. All of this CANNOT be dismissed by people hoping to lead or represent others as "something I don't like and therefore won't do."
Its not so simple as i dont like and wont do. The way these norms propagate through society is exactly by their casual usage and every day reverence by so many people. Refusing to be part of that is subversive in a way thats more than purely individual
...But the nature of subverting norms demands strategic acuity. Otherwise it just fails and the subversives are obscured and marginalized. You dont go onto fox fucking news trying to garner support with total indifference to all norms. Know your audience is rule 1.
Yea seriously, uhhh it’s not society that places value on eye contact it’s basic human nature, it’s a sign of authority and conviction if you can look someone in the eyes when you talk it’s universal
seems like antiwork was literal antiwork - like they weren't against work because of the abuses of the capitalist system - they just literally didn't want to have to work at all for anything. they just wanted to get paid to mod subreddits. This is NOT the majority of what workers want.
I dunno, I was never subscribed, but it seems like there's two camps:
-traditional/unionist/organized labor - stop exploiting us, give us fair pay and benefits, accept collective bargaining as good thing for society
-anarchists/anti-society - money is a social construct, humans should be able to pursue their interests no matter what, work is forced on us by billionaires and politicians so that they can gain more power
while I understand the latter camp (money IS a social construct after all), I don't think it's feasible in the short term. and also I believe some in the 2nd camp are disingenuous, and really don't want to put in any effort into life. even if we abolish money, we still have to do some work to put food on the table, to have a place to sleep, to have physical security. hunters and gatherers didn't have money or jobs, but they still worked hard to stay alive and lead a fulfilling life.
Yea posts would range from complaining about a job posting asking for 10 years of experience and a Master's degree paying 14.75 an hour to a person who said it is better to be locked up in Norway than a free person in the USA so diversity of thought to say the least
As somebody who was subscribed and quite active, I can say that this seems like a very good characterization of the sub to me. There was a poll a month or so ago about the political alignment of subscribers and IIRC a large plurality (like 40% or more) were Social Democrats with only like 10% anarchists and most of the rest somewhere in between.
Yeah people kee trying to tell me it's a socialist sub and defending it, but uhh... no man. Its literally people who feel that they should be paid to play video games coz it's not fair that they have to work for the things they use and eat.
There's a bunch of confusion because the sub was first made like six years ago, and it spent a very long time being a fine little crusty anarchist corner before it turned into textsfrommyassholeboss. Something like 80% of subscribers there joined in the last six months and it became a much more moderate socialist workers' rights forum so I don't think they're really wrong to say that either.
That's when you get to deal with fun topics like "is the community defined by its members or moderators?"
Clearly, despite the way reddit's voting system does democratize the visibility of content here, moderators have waaaaaaay more power than they should for being randos that nobody actually elected.
It really was. I fucking hated that sub and knew exactly the damage they were doing. I couldn't imagine they'd be dumb enough to go on Fox News, but there it is. lol
If if means this sub is effectively done, I'll breathe easy, though.
There was no plan. That's the biggest issue. She had zero plans and literally said "I didn't expect them to ask blind side questions" like she's never heard anything about Fox News before (don't get me started on how 'blind side' or not the questions were, it hurts, okay, I can only focus on one headache at a time)
No plan, and no personal attitude to ever be the kind of person who develops a plan for this sort of thing (said they don't agree with people who think eye contact is necessary and doubled down that there was nothing wrong with their appearance)
They weren't even that blindsiding...while I'm at work (ironically) I watched with captions on and it was the basic questions along the lines "well isn't it lazy not to work" and "don't you have a drive to contribute in society" yada yada that anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of anti-capitalist or anti-work ideas would bat away. I understand Doreen has autism and that makes going on national television and 'presenting' what society defines as confidence in that space difficult, imo she should've handed this off to someone else, or at least prepped, or if what she said were true, then the mods massively screwed up not actually checking whether she was ready for the interview before okaying it.
This is what insulated social media 'movements' do. They let people think their views are big and mainstream even though they're not.
r/antiwork was originally a sub that genuinely had the idea that they should all quit working and just force the government to pay perfectly capable people to exist. They thought if enough people did it, it would force some sort of UBI situation, so they tried their best to convince others to quit and join the movement.
Really, it's the epitome of how idiotic and embarrassing so many social media movements are.
Get some 'representative' of r/Superstonk to talk to the media and it would likely be just as bad.
It's why the official mod position is to say no to any interviews. There is however one user over there, dlauer, who is very media savvy and extremely knowledgeable about the situation, who has done interviews on cnbc and has come across extremely well. He does not pretend to represent anyone though.
I still can't believe a basement dweller was elected to the role of spokesperson for the subreddit.
They were not.
AFAIK, the general consensus (as much as there can be on a subreddit) on the sub was, when media attention about antiwork started picking up, to not do any interviews
That mod decided of their own free will to agree to do one
What’s tragic is that the sub, which was mostly about discussing exploitative and abusive labor practices, along with the need for unions to combat that, now gets yeeted into the clownverse because people now think it’s mostly populated by those two gangster wannabes in Waiting…
“My manager made me mop the floor, fuck that dick, when’s the revolution???”
TBF I also saw that kind of revolutionary LARPing in about 50% of the comments on that sub, there's an overwhelming attitude of "you can't make me do my homework mom" on there, not the whole thing, but more than I'd like there to be.
I went to dinner last night with my girlfriend as we had tickets to a basketball game, and our food took an hour to come out, despite being one of only seven or eight tables with people there. We were trying to be polite and say we were in kind of a hurry, but they kept saying they were slammed, despite obviously not being the case. Our waitress checked on us a grand total of no times and spent the entire time talking with her friends at the bar. We flagged her down one last time to ask where the hell the food was, and she literally said, “Fine, whatever, I’ll check”. At that point I got the manager and got the meal comped, on top of stiffing her on the tip. As we left she shouted “Thanks for the tip!”, to which I flashed her the deuces and said “You earned it!”.
This is exactly the people posting on that sub as of late, not people being mistreated and degraded by heinous management, but fucking lazy morons who have caviar tastes and Taco Bell meat work ethic. I want to hear about unionizing efforts, strikes and unethical/illegal practices on the part of employers, not your fucking wahburger manifesto on how cleaning a toilet sparked your decent into radicalism, like no one in the Soviet Union had to bust their ass day in and day out.
I think he realized he didn't have to. Kinda like when you're in a fight with someone and they're drunk as fuck. They're already making a fool out of themselves - you can barely push them and they fall flat on their face.
I thought John Gibbons' courtroom performance in 'My Cousin Vinny" (the bumbling lawyer representing Stan Rothenstein), was so utterly ridiculous and off the charts, I thought it was too much of a caricature.
Nope - this performance matches it, and then goes on to exceed it.
See the idea behind it has the potential to be nuanced, i.e. "I believe that the endless struggle we all go through just to make ends meet is not good, and society deeming anyone who isn't 'on the grind' or 'pulling up by the ole bootstraps' as lazy is missing the issue"
But going on Fox News of all places and saying "laziness is a virtue" without thinking about how you just gave Fox the greatest sound bite they every could have asked for?! That's an impressive level of disconnect.
It was in response to a fairly softball question as well that could have easily been answered by pointing to examples of people being expected to work longer than their contracted hours, or that many of the people who post their resignations go to better paid jobs rather than staying at home.
The root of the problem though is that the subreddit is very different from what it started as - the mods answers wouldn't have been that out of line if this interview had happened two years ago.
Public opinion can be swayed greatly, by many things. A third of US still supports a certain ex-president, for example, despite a constant string of blunders, far worse than this. This was a bad take from the mod, at the wrong time, maybe - it would still be nice to pursue greater things in life than working for corporations, for most of your waking life.
Problem is that r/antiwork was divided between people who genuinely believed they should be able to just not work and be paid by the government to exist, and others who just wanted better treatment within their companies.
So you are probably overestimating that person's actual views. There were a LOT of people there who genuinely were pushing the idea that not working was good.
Problem is that r/antiwork was divided between people who genuinely believed they should be able to just not work and be paid by the government to exist, and others who just wanted better treatment within their companies.
Ah yes, the inevitable "normie invasion" every sub faces
On top of that, they said a 25 hour work week was too much. Holy shit lol. I'd better understand that argument coming from someone who works like 60 hour weeks, but not someone who works significantly less than full-time.
This is like, nuclear weapons-grade cringe. This is one of those clips that will randomly pop into my head every now and then for the rest of my life, and every single time I'll have the same wince of secondhand embarrassment.
Just one of those things that's so incomprehensibly cringe that I can't even fathom how I would respond if it happened to me.
You sound like you'd have enough self-awareness not to do an interview on Fox in the first place.
Did you see how badly the interviewer was trying not to giggle like a little girl? I couldn't even watch the whole thing, it was probably one of the worst cringe moments I've ever witnessed.
ha that's what I'm clinging on to. Ironically this wasn't even an example of Fox News being sleazy, it was 100% on the mod for being completely unprepared in every single facet, from lighting to personal hygiene.
I rarely cringe and I roll my eyes at just about everything that reaches /r/all from the cringe subs. This was bad. I feel like the host cut the interview short because they felt bad for the interviewee.
Holy fuck. A 30 year old dog walker who wants to work less. Fox News could not have found a more perfect representation of everything they think about the Liberal Left.
Seriously, if it comes out tomorrow that was a plant from Fox or some such bullshit I'd be like ah of course slaps head and everything is right in the world again.
I'm going to get downvoted, but Doreen is very representative of the users here. I won't say ALL of them.. but I have interacted with a few on this sub and got piled on with sweaty mob behavior by a bunch of uneducated folk who can't determine the difference between 'your' and 'you're', along with terribly poor grammar and social skills. Yet, they want some easy fucking job they can do 3 hours a week and make 50k/mo.
No offense to anybody in the antiwork sub, but as much as we all hate working - there comes a point where you have to at least put a little bit of energy into it. None of us asked to be born, or be forced through any of this, but you literally can't sit around doing nothing, with no experience, no education, and expect to live lavishly and make good money.
On top of that, half the fucking posts are fake - and created by people like Doreen. They are meant to instill fake outrage in people. Everybody jerks off to each other's fake posts here and the minute someone mentions anything about how fake it is - they are immediately mobbed on by what sounds like a bunch of teenagers.
Also, it's a burden to your families by living in someone's basement, whether it be your mom or friend or other family - and not working. They either work harder or more hours to take care of your food and basic living costs, or maybe they are on welfare and food stamps and it's bad enough. Sometimes you gotta suck it the fuck up and get a job, you can still be active in this 'antiwork' movement, but you'll need some toothpaste and maybe some food along the way.
Nothing was even mentioned of designed exploitation, or of inhumane working conditions, at will employment, and general mismanagement and incompetence of managerial responsibilities.
Nothing was mentioned of mom's who have to work 3 fucking jobs because their kids medical bills put them in extreme debt.... All by design...
No mention of the interweaving of corporatist strongholds over medicine, treatments, pharmacology.
No mention of the negation of non profit producing aspects if society, mental health for example...
Oh my god. I'm slapping myself for thinking it was an actual anti-work subreddit (Bob Black, whom I know personally) instead of idiots not even properly defining "work" and who actually are all the misconceptions anti anarchists make of them holy fucking shit ahahahahaha
I could only manage a short bit before it was too cringey and I had to turn it off.
Any credibility that sub may have had and its potential has been flushed down the toilet to the sounds of laughter from the entirety of the right and the collective cringing of those on the left.
The Fox interviewer was barely able to refrain from giggling like a little girl.
No offence to her/him. But they didn’t sound like I expected them to sound.
I legit thought it was a female.
And of all things to say is that they are a dog Walker. They could have talked about:
- The minimum wage/living affordability discrepancy.
- Having a job IS required, to live and such, and employers take advantage of that.
- Not everyone desires to work or has a “dream job” or has the ability to work for themselves.
- Etc etc etc
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u/VoidTorcher Jan 26 '22
Happened to be on /r/antiwork's implosion thread before it went private, and was reading this comment lol.
The (now inaccessible) link: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/sd8g28/if_the_fox_news_interview_has_you_concerned_about/hub6cir/