oh wow another hoi4 twitch streamer. how novel. I’m so tired of these grifters that make a “job” out of making “ermmm akshually” dunking and reaction videos between two sessions of whatever paradox game.
Yeah bro you dunked on an online reactionary good on you. There are protestors being killed by police in Kenya but it’s vitally important that you post about this youtube guy sure.
The moment you make money from your streaming stop calling yourself a communist or divide the two completely. One side of you is a communist, the other is a streamer. You simply cannot reconcile making money from this, because you will self-censor yourself very quickly in order to chase more money.
But this isn’t even about the money aspect. I’m so tired of online “communists” in general. Lemmygrad and PW are the only reasonable places left. Prior to 2020 I learned a lot online in those spaces but now it’s just devolving into a flanderization of itself. It’s all about the post-irony “ermm what did he mean by this??” types of posts that even the OP doesn’t know what they mean by it, they just wanted to post. You make your own meaning because they’re on 5 levels of irony and clearly saying their point would cancel at least 4 of those layers and we can’t have that. It’s a contest to be the cleverest smartass all the time.
And when you point people to fully-owned spaces like the aforementioned, they don’t want to join. They keep getting banned and driven off the lib platforms but they want to stay there. One argument is that the people are there, sure, but nothing is forcing them to exclusively use one platform. Imo they just want either the money and the fans.
They don’t want to be part of a collective platform because that entails work, and rules, and giving up your name to an extent. It pays more to be doing their own thing.
It’s very individualizing. People start getting followings of fans that will defend them just because they like them. You see that any time one of these guys gets called out for being a sex pest. Thus instead of building a movement they are building a cult. If what you’re doing ends up being a Logan Paul then you’re not really doing communism.
A ton of maoists and ultras too on social media, and very vocal too. They don’t know what they’re saying either, just like the rest. Before the internet these are people who would have thought “gosh maybe if I’m the only one that thinks like this I might be wrong”. Now they find each other and they get to stroke their brain to Bordiga all day long on their armchair. Then once in a while post something that a trotskyist would say (but still claim they’re not trots).
What can communist streamers/content creators do to improve on these issues? Trying to brainstorm a little bit. I was thinking for example, how streamers usually have an overlay or a info section that contains links to their other social media pages. Would it help to add links there to your personal PeerTube, or a Lemmy instance, etc? Like “twitch: [username], my youtube: [username], Lemmy: [@instance.ml]” so that maybe people will come in mid-stream and ask “what’s a Lemmy?” “Good question, so I don’t have my own reddit sub, but I’m part of Lemmy where…” Type of interactions. Or like “my videos are also on my peertube, if you prefer no ads, peertube is a video platform where…” If those examples make sense. Would that type of thing work to help increase engagement and awareness to federated media? I would love to hear opinions and other ideas on what to improve. Of course making good content people want to watch is the main priority, but what are the little things to add onto it? (I very rarely post so sorry if this comes off as jumbled/hard to read)
They mean people like Hasan/Deprogram. Not like ml theory reading streams. The former have like a million strong audience and make “big bucks”. the latter don’t.
I can’t hate on The Deprogram. They create podcasts that are engaging and perhaps most importantly provide a larger platform for a lot of smaller content creators.
Not saying we can’t be critical, we should be critical in a constructive way, but I do enjoy their content. Each of them also have quality, well-researched videos.
Yeah, I can get Hasan hate but hating on the Deprogram? Really? They are some of the most well read big name communist “influencers” out there. Any one of them alone has done more to spread communist ideals then this entire instance ever has. Let alone the people complaining about them. It’s getting really close to ultra and purity testing attitudes. Gatekeeping online communism discourse by…going online and complaining about it. “Don’t talk about Communism online unless you are the literal reincarnation of Marx.”
Hell, the Deprogram subreddit is fully communist. I see the same kinds of posts here and there. Same kinds of memes. Same jokes. Same pro China sentiment. The only difference is, that subreddit, by itself, has more subscribers, gets more views, more conversation, and does more teaching to newbies than all of Lemmygrad.
An openly communist subreddit? Where have I seen this before…
In all seriousness, I’m glad to hear there’s an ML sub. As others have mentioned, most others get banned or end up as left/right deviants.
They cannot take money first of all. None.
Secondly they must teach and encourage people to organize. No idea has ever come about from the loneliness of one’s own room.
It makes no sense to demand that people both have well organized and well researched, “quality” content, and be entirely unpaid for it when doing so in a capitalist society. That gates basically everyone of lower income working class from ever making this kind of content. Working class people have jobs and lives and bills to pay. Making properly organized and quality media for people is a job on its own. If they take donations for it and still give their media out for everyone to see, how is that such a problem?
If it’s low effort, and/or being turned into grift? Sure, fuck em, but sitting here and claiming that any and every content creator that takes donations is not a real communist is getting really close to “you support communism but have iPhone? Checkmate tankie” What else are we going to say communists can’t do while forced to live in a capitalist system? I have a 401k and a stock account. I once made some money in my HSA from trading stocks. Am I not a communist now?
At this point we’re the cutoff? Most communist organizations in capitalist societies, many of which also create media for their members, take dues. Are they no longer communists because they took dues to pay themselves for making the org their full time job?
There’s a huge difference between being a content creator and being a party. Not just one difference actually.
The online content creator will cater to making more money. The communist party, hopefully, will cater to existing and organizing.
It makes sense actually, and if they can’t provide it then maybe they shouldn’t do it. You’re not gonna live on your 3 patreon supporters paying you 3$ each, you need an actual critical mass of supporters to turn it into a job. So what’s the best way to get there? Start toeing the line to not getting banned from the platform (otherwise no money) and start diluting your politics so you have broader appeal. Start accepting a diluted community too, because they support you. And if they start asking you for custom content like talking about zohran mamdani because they like him then you’d be hard-pressed to refuse. Some will, some won’t. Some will find it hard to take the hard stance they want to take on mamdani because they might lose a supporter if they do.
The only way this can end is wanting to become a contrapoints of their own, making a half-baked video once a year while raking in thousands on patreon.
Every prolewiki editor does this without taking donations, so do Red Sails and USU.
If your livelihood is assured in a certain way then it’s in your interest to keep that certain way existing for as long as possible.