You’ve come across the gentrifiers before, I’m sure. They browse the front page of reddit and the trending tab of YouTube, buy Ruth Bader Ginsberg figurines and wear Che Guevara T-shirts. They vote for Bernie in the primaries and Biden in the general, first outraged that anyone could want Biden and then outraged that anyone could not. They share articles about how the 2020 BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful and then hop online to cheer “ACAB” and “F — — capitalism” graffiti and pictures of burning police precincts. They shout “Defund the Police” while angrily asserting that nobody wants to abolish the police. They manage to boldly stand at once for every fashionable cause and against every unfashionable cause, embracing the aesthetics of radicalism while denying complicity or knowledge whenever that radicalism gets too real. And /r/antiwork was the perfect community for them to turn into a cause celebre.

tracingwoodgrains