Redditโ€™s r/antiwork is typically filled with horror stories that make you want to quit not just your own job but strangersโ€™ jobs, too.

โ€œMy boss suggested I might not be able to take forty minutes to see my daughters [sic] first ever school play, so I told him try not to be a cartoon villain and he hung up on me,โ€ reads one post from earlier this month. โ€œThatโ€™s permission to take the whole afternoon off, right?โ€ the post concludes.

The underlying ethos of r/antiwork isnโ€™t just to be a place to ventโ€”itโ€™s to push back on the idea of work as we know it. So it might seem counterintuitive that on Thursday, a thread blew up that was urging members to apply for jobs.

The jobs in question are permanent positions at Kelloggโ€™s cereal plants in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Tennessee. The goal was to overwhelm the system with fake applications, making it a nightmare for recruiters to sort through.

โ€œItโ€™s very easy to empathize with the Kelloggโ€™s workers.โ€

Members of r/antiwork were aligning with the 1,400 Kelloggโ€™s workers who went on strike more than two months ago over stalled union negotiations with the company. Kelloggโ€™s announced this week that it would hire permanent replacement workers after those on strike voted to reject a tentative agreement with management.

โ€œItโ€™s very easy to empathize with the Kelloggโ€™s workers,โ€ says Kevin McKenzie, a moderator of r/antiwork. Hearing Kelloggโ€™s workers talk about being overworked, being paid low wages, and having a poor work-life balance resonates with others, he says. โ€œIt lights a fire in the community, and you get ideas like this that spring up and get supported.โ€

Kelloggโ€™s didnโ€™t respond to a request for comment.

Threads on r/antiwork compile timelines of the Kellogg strike, lists of products made by Kellogg to boycott, and links to the jobs that would replace striking workers. At the time of writing, the main thread encouraging subreddit members to flood the system with fake applications had more than 62,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. In another, members share tips on how to use features like autofill to submit applications faster.

r/antiwork has grown by 279% in membership between 2020 and 2021, now home to 1.3 million members

The striking workers are aware of the efforts, says Corrina Christensen, director of communications for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millersโ€™ International Union, which represents the Kelloggโ€™s employees.

โ€œItโ€™s phenomenal,โ€ she says.

Earlier this week, Reddit highlighted r/antiwork as being โ€œthe poster child for the great resignation.โ€ According to the company, the subreddit has grown by 279 percent in membership between 2020 and 2021, now home to 1.3 million members. The fourth most upvoted post of 2021 was a thread on r/antiwork of someone unceremoniously quitting their job.

Any organizing around flashpoints like the Kelloggโ€™s strike is member-driven, says McKenzie. McKenzie is a graduate social work student in South Carolina who says the philosophy of antiwork resonates with him personally: he holds down multiple jobs and internships while in school, and at times, work has taken over his life.

โ€œThatโ€™s why this kind of action gets popular,โ€ McKenzie says. โ€œEverybody feels the struggle, and the pain, and the misery that these Kellogg workers feel right now.โ€

Moderators pinned a post with suggestions on how to support the strike, including flooding the job postings, but otherwise have let members take the lead. McKenzie says some members reported the job site crashing throughout the day, and the initiative has now spread to Twitter and TikTok, introducing new people to the r/antiwork community.

Itโ€™s not the first time antiwork messages broke out of digital spaces. Last week, a slew of posts on social media suggested receipt printers were being hacked to spit out pro-worker manifestos, encouraging people to discuss wages with co-workers and form unions, eventually directing people to visit r/antiwork. McKenzie says the moderation team doesnโ€™t know whoโ€™s responsible for the hacked printers โ€” they originally thought the stunt was fake.

Now some in the antiwork community see organizing around the Kelloggโ€™s strike as an important way to turn their shared beliefs into real-world actions.

โ€œItโ€™s time for r/antiwork to make the news as a formidable fighter for the average worker,โ€ one post reads. โ€œI submitted four applications. How many did you submit?โ€

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