I mentor college students as part of a structured mentoring program. Some of the young people who come through the group have wildly pessimistic views on the world, especially as it pertains to jobs and capitalism.

Part of our job is to defuse some of the more self-defeating views, but it’s increasingly difficult to compete against the non-stop onslaught of pessimism that comes from their subreddits and Twitter follows. When someone has been conditioned for hours each day to believe that capitalism is evil, that no one should have to work, that UBI is as simple as taxing Jeff Bezos a little more, and that jobs are “wage slavery”, it’s hard to compete with healthy mentorship advice.

Some of these online communities are downright toxic. Some of my most difficult mentees subscribed to “NEET” (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) communities on Reddit that felt like the notorious incel communities we’ve all heard about, but with the vitriol directed at jobs and bosses.

There are even explicit anti-work movements, like /r/antiwork on Reddit, that have a stated goal of ending work. No alternative is proposed and no one explains how society would function if no one works, but instead they complain about having to work at all. Someone consuming this material on their phone before, during, and after work every single day is obviously going to become bitter and miserable.

This doesn’t explain everything, of course, but it is a growing factor among the most disgruntled young people I see coming through our program.