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Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

I think this article is trying to have its cake and eat it too. If the sub has been sanewashed and overrun by average left-of-center opinions and become wildly popular, then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement? The movement changed, as the article points out, and therefore Doreen was a terrible choice of representative. The fact that she predates the change is exactly the reason she is not representative. Instead the article tries to argue opposite. I have to admit that the author appears to be doing everything possible to make me assume this is due to their partisan bias as hardly a sentence goes by without a verbal jab.

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> then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement

Represents the "movement", or represents the sub? They obviously still represented the sub - they were there when it got created, were a moderator, were picked by other moderators to be a representative of the subreddit in media events (which is conflated with the nebulous concept of "the movement")

The issue here is that the "movement" may not be represented by Doreen, but there may not even be a movement outside of the sub, and they do represent the sub. A lot of people treat "the movement" and "the sub" as basically being equivalent. They may actually be equivalent. If the sub shut down, there isn't really any guarantee that the same kind of antiwork internet discourse would be as loud, focused and frequent as it is right at this moment.

You could ask the same about Fox - which is hardly ground zero for sanity itself.

Does it represent a movement, or a TV channel?

If it's a movement, by what process was it elected?

Point being I doubt anyone at Fox was unhappy with how the Doreen interview turned out.

Did they ask to interview anyone else from the sub?

All this really does is highlight the difference between online opinionation - always easy - and effective activism. The latter is much harder and absolutely needs informed - ideally effective and professional - handling of public presentation and messaging.

"The latter is much harder and absolutely needs informed - ideally effective and professional - handling of public presentation and messaging."

That sounds like a ton of work.

Yes activism is hard, which is one of the reasons why social media gave rise to slacktivism instead. It's a low effort gratification that is reinforced by ones social network.

It's one of the issues with subreddits as they get larger. Low effort "look how great I am for standing up to my boss" posts win the day.

> Point being I doubt anyone at Fox was unhappy with how the Doreen interview turned out.

Yeah, and what else could you expect from Jessie Waters? He's a smug propagandist, and people like Doreen Ford are perfect for his message. It's pretty stupid to cooperate with him unless you 1) agree with him, or 2) have good reason to believe you're up to effectively representing yourself to a hostile audience through a sleazy host, all of whom are more interested in mocking you than listening to you. And frankly, if they ask you for an interview, it that's probably good reason to believe #2 is false.

Fox is a selective amplifier like most news media. They pick topics that make their beliefs look good and much more importantly topics that make their enemies look terrible (see the antiwork interview)

And on more than one occasion, I've seen them pick interviewees who seem completely unqualified to speak on a topic. For example, I once saw an advocate for free universal college interviewed. It was some idealistic college student still going for their undergrad talking about how it's what "everyone deserves" and would "make the world a better place". The interview was a brutal public lashing. Regardless of where you stand on the topic of free universal college, I think we can all agree that it makes sense to speak to an expert on the topic, not someone in their late teens still trying to find their footing in this crazy world. That interview was uninformative and just plain cruel.

Representation is really at the heart of it. What the article left out was that Doreen was asked by mods and by the community(by poll) not to participate in the interview. She did it anyway.

The broader social epistemic question of "what makes someone a representative?" or "How do people gain the social status: representative?" is the most interesting part of this. Reddit itself plays a role in the construction of representative status by visually framing mods in the sidebar under the subreddit rules section leading people to mentally label both as the rules and rule-makers of the space. There are examples of mods in other subreddits also being representatives, making it natural to apply that syllogistically and generally to all Reddit communities.

If a mod created the sub, and actively participates, but is disavowed as a representative, are they still a representative? Would this have changed if the interview had gone well? How does representation work when communities disagree? Antiwork members don't see Doreen as a representative, but individuals outside of antiwork do. Does that make her a representative or not? It's fascinating that what is obvious to one person is a tremendous number of questions to another.

>If a mod created the sub, and actively participates, but is disavowed as a representative, are they still a representative?

by reddit's rules, yes. You have to be fundamentally destroying a decently large and active sub before the admins step in and kick out a mod. But the number of times this has happened in 15 years can be counted on one hand.

Otherwise, admins don't care about what mods do with their subs. seniority first, most senior mods ultimately has the power to kick out everyone else and ban every user if they wish. And that's why these kinds of "movements" are doomed to fail under reddit's structure.

Subreddit's changing their spots isn't uncommon, it's the norm for reddit.

The author has a very clear agenda here, and while they're welcome to construct a case for that view, they've left out inconvenient details while attempting to appear neutral.

The core issue is that the subreddit already had an agreement that no one would attempt to represent the movement or do interviews. The forethought there was that a reddit mod (or similar) are unlikely to be sufficiently prepared to act as a spokesperson for a politically sensitive movement. Doreen's actions were entirely self-serving and the subreddit was absolutely right to make a stand, especially as Doreen did not represent the community or its views - as given by the enormous backlash.

It's deeply disingenuous to suggest that the work reform principles of the subreddit are moot because a mod started the original subreddit as a protest against work.

> It's deeply disingenuous to suggest that the work reform principles of the subreddit are moot because a mod started the original subreddit as a protest against work.

This point might stand better using a word other than "principle," from principium (beginning), from princeps (initiator).

Usage intended as per https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/principle

This is the key, I think. It's possible for an individual to start or grow a movement. It is impossible for an individual to own or control a movement, at least for long, because that's not what a movement is. The movement will eventually either die (which might happen) or escape control (which might also happen).

The phenomenon of a movement's founders going on to reject what the movement has become (or maybe has always been) is pretty common. If I take the article's claims at face value, this is just the inverse of that. The movement became something that rejected its founder.

If you see the interview with Doreen, it seems like she is actually in favour of what the author refers to as the new movement. What stands out to me is that she says that the movement is to reduce the work that people are forced to do, that they still want to put in effort and labour but not in a position where they feel trapped. This seems to contrast what the author says was the original purpose of the subreddit; to abolish work.

If you subscribe to a subreddit literally called antiwork that clearly states its ideology in its sidebar, you shouldn't be surprised by Doreen celebrating laziness as a virtue. Just like with politicians, just because your representative is a disliked doesn't mean that they aren't your legitimate one.

Where did the author say Doreen Ford was still representative of the current user base? It was pretty explicit that she represented its original form, not what it had become. The whole takeaway for me anyways was the shifting nature of group ideals and membership. One person or founder may represent the typical ideals of the original group, while later they may be wildly unrepresentative due to an influx of more “moderate” members. Again this was a pretty clear takeaway.

As someone completely detached and not a part of this “antiwork” movement in any way, your post reads to me like someone who joined the community in its later stages and are bristling at what you think is a takedown that is trying to misrepresent your “totally normal, reasonable views of advocating for better working conditions”. And maybe the replacement of anarcho-communists with people advocating better working condition is a good thing! The tragedy is that the current, moderate ideals are mismatched with the original, extremist group name and ideals. Thus the need for “sane-washing” like so—

New member: “Actually anti-work isn’t about not working, it’s really about improving working conditions.”

Original anti-work founder: “No we literally are anti-work and want to abolish work.”

New member: “Nooooo you don’t represent us!!”

Like that is the exact process described. Same dynamic if you s/antiwork/abolish the police/

It’s in paragraph five, stated very very clearly.

Author of the article here. The user above you is correct. My claim that Ford is indisputably the best representative of the space has nothing to do with its current user base and everything to do with its history. The user base shifted, but I don’t hold that a place’s present is so extricable from its past that 7 years of history become irrelevant when the space grows.

Then it's odd to call her the "single most accurate representative" then if you agree that Doreen is not representative of the users or the movement anymore. The historical information about the sub was well-researched and interesting, though.

Anarchists are going to have a hard time accepting this, but I think the lesson here is that you can't have a coherent community focused on its original subject without quite a lot of gatekeeping.

On Reddit, r/AskHistorians has a good approach. The blogging model (as revived by Substack) also seems to work.

These are explicitly non-democratic. AskHistorians gives historians higher status. A blog is about whatever the blog author wants it to be about.

Hacker News has good moderation but it's a lot more anti-tech than it used to be and that's a reflection of the broader culture. If they really wanted to resist that then it would require stronger moderation at the expense of growth.

>have its cake and eat it too

whenever i have cake, i tend to eat it also?

Once you eat the cake, you can no longer possess it

EDIT:

Let me make it more clear, as English may not be your first language, if you're asking this question in truth (I sometimes miss sarcasm online, sorry).

Cakes can be beautiful things which people (of a certain time period, especially) wanted to show off as a sign of their wealth, as refined sugar was expensive. Once it was eaten, you could no longer display such wasteful extravagance.

i hate how americans always assume we are from there and understand everything they say

| i hate how americans always assume we are from there and understand everything they say |

It's a forum where everyone was typing in English, so my first assumption was that English was your fist language. I didn't say anything about American. And I tried to fix my mistake =/

Oh, I wasn't talking about you. You were helpful.

There's a similar idiom in a couple different languages. The French supposedly say 'avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre' (have the butter and the money from [selling] the butter), and I once recalled hearing that there was a Spanish idiom along the lines of having a chicken in both the pot and in the yard, but alas I'm not able to find that phrase.

It is actually an idiom originating in England in the 1500's.

Ey up duck, ever since I was cut and carried to me British trouble and strife, I've had to learn lots of slang it's done my lump of lead in.

it's an idiom that's confusing because of how "have ... and" can imply both a sequence of events and simultaneous events.

You can either eat your cake or have your cake. You cannot eat your cake, and then also have it too.

More on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can%27t_have_your_cake_and...

Well then you don't have it anymore ;)

It's an old idiom that people started saying wrong a long time ago, its correct, original form is "Eat your cake and have it too".

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