I'm sure you've seen it, you scroll through a news site and recognize a post from Antiwork that's being passed off as a story by a mainstream publication.
On the one hand, I was quite excited to find that Newsweek had published one of my comments on their site. I always wanted to be a writer for a big name publication, but never expected to fire off a string of text (while pooping) and have those words end up in Newsweek. For what it's worth, my contribution to that particular thread did not qualify as high-quality content, but I'm still going to put ''Newsweek contributer'' on my list of accomplishments.
I'd noticed this type of thing in the past and thought about how 'lazy' it was to essentially copy and paste a reddit post, add a few lines of original text to establish context, slap your own name in the byline, and collect a paycheck. Those of us who actually produced the content might get our reddit handle mentioned in these articles, but not always. Obviously we don't get a cut of the reporters salary.
I get it. As soon as we hit the 'post' button our words become public domain. We don't own the rights to our own work at that point.
On the other hand, I came to see this as a positive when viewed through the antiwork perspective. We're posting our thoughts and experiences, not because we are being forced to, but because we want to. We're contributing without compensation, we're doing 'work' for the love of it, which is proof positive that we do not fit into the ''nobody wants to work'' and ''nobody would contribute if they didn't have to'' stereotypes.
Beyond that, our content is being used in a way that allows people we've never met to afford basic necessities. Our words allow these people to obtain income, health care, and hopefully a quality of life many of us aren't currently able to enjoy.
I, for one, am okay with that.