Site with over a million users and one of the biggest agitprop vehicles of the last five years and now it's private. Lol. Lmao.

Edit: Ok, now the mods are saying making the site private is only temporary while they "deal with the cleanup from ongoing brigading."

  • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I guess the question is what's the alternative? We can only work with the conditions we have; is there a better way to connect mass numbers of alienated workers? I don't think anyone expected the place to be an openly revolutionary Leninist site, but it still played an important role in allowing workers in a moment of crisis to realize their numbers and share examples of small victories over their exploiters.

    Then there's also just the inevitability of it. People are congregating online like never before, that's just a reality. I expect that there will be other, similar sites that will come after antiwork, and so long as they exist we may as well use them to further class conciousness among users.

    • Three_Magpies [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I take a very dim view of online-only political work. Maybe those workers did feel good when reading examples of small victories. But there's no next level -- all they're doing is feeling good and righteous from reading stories, some of which were probably fake.

      What's the alternative? In-person stuff: tenants unions are something I'm impressed by right now -- stuff that gets you moving and meeting people in real life with real stakes. You could argue 'well we can do both' but I don't see the online stuff as leading anywhere.

      To me, it's like the belief that, "Oh, canvassing for politicians is useful because it teaches people social / organizational skills!" But the situation of asking someone to vote for Bernie Sanders are much different than asking them to participate in a rent strike or direct action. Antiwork is similar to my mind, as would be campaigning for Bernie Sanders. You'd probably even hear the same sort arguments from its advocates: "Maybe this won't get us up the hill, specifically, but we're building the possibility of something in the future."

      • riley
        ·
        11 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • Three_Magpies [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It’s not the same as being in person. It’s time-asynchronous, you aren’t using body language or tonality to communicate, and your level of investment is significantly lower. Compare going to hang out a neighbor’s house vs. texting them on social media. One of those is a bigger investment than the other, and people feel it.

          If you enjoy living like this, whatever. It seems to be the new normal they want for us. But with the ‘ease’ of communication comes a drawback imo: i don’t think we care the same for someone we’ve only met online. For working together? It’ll be fine. For recruiting them into a risky political project? I doubt it will be very effective.