I mean this post was just about streamers earning a lot of money - you’re kind of smuggling in the idea that their streaming requires a significant amount of wasteful consumption.
And obviously I’m not arguing that this is a reasonable way to approach resource distribution. I’m just saying on the scale of things that are actually problems, the billionaires and centimillionaires destroying the Earth in the conquest of ever-increasing surplus value and their stranglehold on ideology is like way way waaay more important than how much money Hasan gets.
Honestly, it’s way better still that a streamer gets a mil a year than a petty bourgeois car dealership owner gets half a million off of stolen surplus value. Or even a quarter million. Like streamers asking for donations and getting them is just so not an important issue right now.
I get wanting to be bitter, I’m just saying maybe it’s more useful to direct that emotion toward those who create and maintain the system of exploitation in the first place.
I don’t think you can divorce the streamers and YouTube content creators consumption of obscene amounts of bullshit from the amount of the money they make. Sure they may get “donations” and ad reads but that’s all contingent on this consumption bs in the first place. Streaming may be exploitative relationships that huge platforms benefit from; many of the biggest strangers are companies in and of themselves. Their platform and streaming is run like a business. They have employees through editors and mods (not paid monetarily) that do labor for them to produce content. Their expenses for videos are carefully calculated to generate revenue. I think there’s a few similarities here with someone renting commercial space the more I think about it.
Something that sticks out to me is “if you love my content and want me to make more…” which is not greatly different then a normal commercial exchange. It’s just veiled in para-social mediated charity.
That being said I totally agree with you about how it’s not problem A.
Edit: I hope it didn’t feel like I was putting you in a corner to defend a position you didn’t hold.
I mean this post was just about streamers earning a lot of money - you’re kind of smuggling in the idea that their streaming requires a significant amount of wasteful consumption.
And obviously I’m not arguing that this is a reasonable way to approach resource distribution. I’m just saying on the scale of things that are actually problems, the billionaires and centimillionaires destroying the Earth in the conquest of ever-increasing surplus value and their stranglehold on ideology is like way way waaay more important than how much money Hasan gets.
Honestly, it’s way better still that a streamer gets a mil a year than a petty bourgeois car dealership owner gets half a million off of stolen surplus value. Or even a quarter million. Like streamers asking for donations and getting them is just so not an important issue right now.
I get wanting to be bitter, I’m just saying maybe it’s more useful to direct that emotion toward those who create and maintain the system of exploitation in the first place.
I don’t think you can divorce the streamers and YouTube content creators consumption of obscene amounts of bullshit from the amount of the money they make. Sure they may get “donations” and ad reads but that’s all contingent on this consumption bs in the first place. Streaming may be exploitative relationships that huge platforms benefit from; many of the biggest strangers are companies in and of themselves. Their platform and streaming is run like a business. They have employees through editors and mods (not paid monetarily) that do labor for them to produce content. Their expenses for videos are carefully calculated to generate revenue. I think there’s a few similarities here with someone renting commercial space the more I think about it.
Something that sticks out to me is “if you love my content and want me to make more…” which is not greatly different then a normal commercial exchange. It’s just veiled in para-social mediated charity.
That being said I totally agree with you about how it’s not problem A.
Edit: I hope it didn’t feel like I was putting you in a corner to defend a position you didn’t hold.