this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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I remember people on reddit misgendering that antiwork mod for the crime of [checks notes] a botched interview on Fox News that didn't even fucking matter.
It was an ugly thing to see all that transphobia out in the open like that.
That was a colossal fuck up of an interview though, made the entire anti work community look like a load of stupid freeloaders.
Absolutely no excuse for the misgendering or any harassment, but I still wouldn’t undersell how bad that interview was.
I’m almost convinced it was deliberate
It was a Fox News interview. If the person who did the interview came off well they wouldn't have bothered airing it. Hell, if the person they interviewed didn't come off the way they did they wouldn't have bothered interviewing them.
I mean I agree Fox News will pick apart anything that they get, that’s just the nature of the beast. But the whole discussion in the antiwork community was that whoever did the interview needed to be prepared for that and give them as little ammunition as possible, while presenting the beliefs of the antiwork/workreform movement.
Instead, one of the users (a mod I think?) took the interview without further input from the community, had dirty clothes in the background, and was an easy target for the Fox News crowd.
Idk, it was really unfortunate, and the movement had started to gain serious momentum. It could’ve been a lightning in a bottle opportunity, and they fucked it up
This is what I'm getting at, though. If the interviewee didn't fit the checklist of stereotypes Fox News was looking for, there wouldn't have been an interview aired. It was a hit piece. Fox News went looking for a way to run a segment discrediting a movement, and found one.
The real mistake was going in Fox News in the first place. Nobody should do an interview on Fox News ever for any reason.
It really is hard to understate how bad the interview was, that's what makes the misgendering even worse, there were so many other things to critique...
It was Fox News. Even if had been a stellar interview, they would have made it look bad.
And I don't think it had any actual impact on how people viewed the community in general. It's just people being terminally online and blowing things way out of proportion.
I agree the interview was bad, but it's also one of the most inconsequential parts about it. That's the tiniest most petty reason I've ever seen a community tear itself apart over. It was like a bunch of mindless chickens pecking one to death because they saw a spot of blood. Definitely on brand for reddit though.
It was doomed from the start, and yet they went on anyway.
tbh I think they’d put a bad case forward even if they were given a favorable interview, considering they gave Fox more ammunition than they could ever ask for.
The misgendering and harassment is wrong, but I honestly think it’s right for the anti work community to call out how awful that interview was and distance themselves from it as much as possible. imo it did actively harm the public perception of the movement.
Again, this is greatly exaggerating the nature of the situation. Even if it did, it was so minor that it could have easily recovered. It's not like irreparable harm was caused.
Fox is not a small-time, they have more primetime viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. If people's first exposure to a movement is something like that interview...Several other news outlets also rehosted clips and wrote stories about just how terrible it was. That creates a strong barrier to anyone labeled as being "with" that person to overcome in order to be taken seriously. Whereas if you discovered the community where there were memes/conversations around workers rights and how they're getting fucked the perception is much different.
It also was directly against the wishes of a community vote and mod discussion of doing a fox interview. A very good way to tell supporters of a movement that a purported "leader" doesn't actually care about what they're saying. To say that it was minor damage really underplays how it affected perception and unity of the community.
Hard disagree. Again, you're blowing this way out of proportion. A movement isn't one mod. It's pretty clear that users were more interested in jerking their hate boners than in the movement itself.
It's telling that even after these years, you're still unable to gain a little healthy perspective on this. It's really hard to admit that you were wrong, especially if you actively contributed to what was essentially a targeted harassment campaign.
This is like talking to Gamers about why death threats to devs are wrong lol
The anti work community had a lot of idiotic freeloaders who just didn't want to work. After the interview when the sensible people left, it got so much worse.
Work reform was better, and came about as a result of that interview.
That sub was a joke even before that interview. They banned me for asking someone to explain why an investor shouldn't have all the negotiating power if they are putting up 100% of the capital for a new business. Like I wanted to know how they thought that system should work because I don't see how some random person asking for money has any leverage. I wasn't agreeing with the current state of things.
All I got was a permaban with a childish message from a mod.
The interview was a shit show, but your interpretation of this and that it supposedly destroyed I find ridiculous.
You think that interview didn't matter? It basically killed the entire conversation about wage/labor imbalance. And that had zero to do with that mods gender, but with that mods absolute stupidity, regardless of gender
They were a bunch of liberals, the chances they would ever do anything was well into the negatives.
This is so melodramatic lol
It "killed" nothing. That was one bad mod vs. a bunch of users who were determined to self destruct.
They abandoned the main AntiWork subreddit and split the entire community in two.
Yeah, whatever happened was a totally disproportionate response to a single bad interview for an audience of people who were never likely to support the movement in the first place.
I guess it's super hard to put one's personal feelings aside for the greater good, and it's frighteningly easy to get drawn into dogpiling and scapegoating a single person rather than pausing and reflecting on forming a more constructive response.
Neither of the communities ever really recovered from that, and in my opinion that says a lot more about the myriad users than it does about one mod.
That shit was blown out of proportions, yeah. Critique is fine and all, but that ended up as straight up harassment. Fuck the people using that as an excuse for their transphobia.
But I actually started chiming in when the mod team doubled down presenting themselves as spokespeople for the movement and, in a case of “cannot possibly be timed worse“, presented some kid as a new mod? Spokesperson? I don’t remember. That whole mess got so stupid I zoned out after a while.
The mods were misfiring for sure, but what made me step away were not the mods -- that could have been addressed over time -- but the users. My reaction to the video and what the mods said was basically, "Oh haha, that was bad!" and I think that's where it ended for me. I had noted issues with the mods prior to that and brought them up, and no one seemed to care at that time -- I even pointed out several times that one of the mods had a stickied post on their profile specifically requesting interviews -- so it's hard for me to believe that the users were acting in good faith. Why did no one seem to care before that interview happened? But everyone got drummed up into an emotional frenzy, and that sort of thing is what tears movements apart -- not one or two bad mods.
I agree the mods shouldn't have positioned themselves as spokespeople, but there were so many other ways it could have been handled without melting down.
That interview did irreparable damage to the labor movement in the media.
I... don't think that's the case. Last year was the year of labor wins across the board. Like, I don't understand how to parse what has happened in the world since with this statement. Media, especially corporate owned media, is always going to be somewhat antilabor. One bad interview from one person did not impact labor's perception in any meaningful way.
Gamer take
You already noted the problem: >people on reddit
"people" on reddit
spoiler
Bad joke, I know, sorry I couldn't resist