I find some of their stuff useful for exposing people to new ideas, such as "Days of War, Nights of Love" and "Fighting For Our Lives", followed by "Recipes For Disaster". I really liked "Work" for its comprehensive but accessible writing, and their posters are often pretty decent. The last few years have shown better, more mature, more productive analysis, more global and more insightful. They have somehow overcome a lot of the factionalism and infighting of other recent anarchist subcultures, and do more than just talk shit on the internet. They allowed for a lot of networking to take place, even if some stupid shit came from it sometimes. They also sell their shit for a lot cheaper than AK Press. They produce a prolific amount of diverse media and I respect them for that.
There are a lot of reasons to criticize folks in that tendency for their background or behavior early on, but really, all of that shit applies just as much, if not moreso, to non-anarchist people that Leftists love to put on a pedestal, so I don't really care. They have certainly said some moronic things at some point (i.e. in Evasion), but they at least seem to be receptive to criticism for the most part.
I don't love or hate them but I think we're certainly better off with them having existed than not. Even if people only do "lifestylist" shit (hate that term btw), hundreds of millions of people are just passively buying into the dominant framework as the world burns, so there are better places to direct our criticism, in my opinion.
