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Far away from the world of cheery Zoom meetings and virtual workplace happy hours exists a movement, of sorts, intent on shattering the traditional dynamics of the employee-boss relationship. It isn’t a union or an angry mob wielding pitchforks outside Jeff Bezos’s rocket-ship factory. It’s the subreddit r/antiwork, a community of 1.7 million self-proclaimed “idlers” who post personal stories of quitting jobs, share memes that lampoon capitalism, and generally revel in sticking it to all manner of horrible bosses, from corporate plutocrats to overbearing middle managers.
Recently, the online community has been rocked by the fallout from then-moderator Doreen Ford’s appearance on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, and the subreddit was briefly made private on Thursday (Ford has since been removed). And despite the ideological quarrel currently spreading throughout the community—between founding moderators’ more militant anti-work stance and reformers who say they are more pro-union than anti-work—the rapid growth and popularity of the subreddit is worth noting.
Unfiltered venting. The subreddit is a wildly popular watercooler brimming with anti-boss invective, where the unemployed and underemployed gather to vent openly about the downsides of hustle culture and to question the very notion of working to meet the expectations of employers. Which is to say, it’s not sympathetic to Toby the HR rep, regardless of his winter blues.
According to Reddit spokesperson Jene Wheeless, the community grew “279% in subscribers and actually surpassed” 1 million members between 2020 and 2021. “It was one of the most popular communities of 2021,” she told HR Brew.
The subreddit advises its readers and subscribers to enact change beyond the confines of Reddit, providing links on how to organize a workplace in its FAQs. One frequenter of r/antiwork, Rachel Stephens, who reached out to HR Brew, offered this advice to any HR practitioner willing to listen: “HR should understand that people have lives outside of work and [that] rest makes employees more productive. People need paid time off to give birth to babies, to vote, and to go on vacation.”
HR can vent too! The fervor behind r/antiwork’s meteoric rise may be contributing to spin-off subreddits such as r/workreform and the nascent r/laborrevolution. Of course, HR professionals also struggle at work—the subreddit r/humanresources is something of a parallel universe for HR people lamenting their own problems. Now we just need an r/c-suite subreddit for this venting session to come full circle.—SB
Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.