Jesse Watters Interviews Anti-Work Activist, and It’s Exactly What You’d Expect

This article comes to us from a mystical corner of the internet known as Reddit. Some of you may be familiar, but for those of you who aren’t, let me give you a bit of background before we dive into the story.

Reddit is a site that manages to encompass the best and worst of social media. Users choose various “subreddits” to follow, which offer tailored content based on the sub’s subject, rules, and interests. On the more positive side are subs like r/PartyParrot, r/huskytantrums, and r/bearsdoinghumanthings. The content contained within these subs has never harmed a soul.

On the other side of Reddit are the toxic hiveminds that make us all really sad about the direction of humanity but also fully aware of how we got here. Today’s story is about that side. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the senior moderator of r/antiwork.

Doreen Ford is 30 years old, works 20-25 hours a week walking dogs, aspires to teach philosophy, and evidently has social anxiety so bad that [checks notes] she can’t maintain eye contact with even a camera. Oh, sweetie.

So, there’s some misconceptions about the movement. So, um We’re a movement where we want to reduce the amount of work that people feel like they– they’re forced to– to do, um, and so, we want to still put in effort, we want to put in labor, but we don’t want to necessarily, ah, be in a position where we feel trapped.

Can someone please check on this person and make sure they’ve actually interacted with reality like, at least twice in the past ten years? I don’t know where she’s been living but it’s clearly not here.

But yeah, absolutely, people still want to do things, they just want to do things where they feel rewarded, and they feel like they’re in a good spot in their life, ah, and that their job respects them and stuff like that.

Jesse Watters pointed out that no one is being forced to work, as contracts are voluntary and quitting is an option (and of course, r/antiwork would argue that if you have to work to survive that’s coercion because no living organism has ever had to work to survive ever before so that’s clearly the natural order of things). He went on to ask Ford if the philosophy is encouraging people to be lazy, and Ford offered this gem:

So I think laziness is, um, a virtue in a society where people constantly want you to be productive 24/7, and it’s good to have rest. Um, that doesn’t mean you should be resting all the time or not putting effort into things you care about.

A good work day, in case you were wondering, is “whatever people want” according to Ford. I don’t have anything witty to add to this. It doesn’t need it.

Response to this interview was widespread, but pretty universally negative.

“I couldn’t finish it, it was too cringey,” said one source (my husband), and even the r/antiwork community was less than thrilled; the sub was temporarily made private (it is now back open) due to “brigading,” which is the Reddit word for when a bunch of start some sh*t in one single subreddit and which for some subs is constituted by someone sharing a differing opinion (I’m permanently banned from participating in r/GenZedong, a pro-China Marxist sub, after commenting “Source?”).

“Most of the posts on r/antiwork are from retail and fast food workers, nurses, teachers, and other essential workers who are being screwed over during the pandemic,” wrote one user on Twitter. “But then this walking stereotype goes on TV and sets the entire thing back by a decade.”

Here’s the thing about the “walking stereotype” in question: She is THE incarnation of the anti-work movement. Yeah, those essential workers have legitimate complaints and are being screwed over in a lot of ways. But if the complaint is “I have to work or I don’t get nice things,” you’re a joke. You’re as big of a joke as Doreen Ford. It is impossible to hold anti-work beliefs unless you are so privileged by your position in the world– which can only be afforded by capitalism, by the way– that you can live comfortably by walking dogs for a couple of hours a day. And I know Ford’s life is comfortable, because people who are uncomfortable try to get comfortable, and dis bish isn’t trying at all. At ANYTHING.

But hey, at the end of the day, I love a good joke. Life is empty without laughter. So I’ll be over on r/libertarianmemes, laughing hysterically at the expense of r/antiwork. Because that sub is the biggest joke of them all.