So I think we already know the outlines of the typical criticisms of Breadtube, namely that it's vaguely-leftist content that focuses on cultural critique and gives a nod to socialist theory here and there but it doesn't actually achieve anything and it's just a media-consumption demographic with no moves towards anything that resembles on the ground organising and activism. (Obviously there are a few outliers but as a rule this generally holds true.)

I dipped out of Breadtube years ago for plenty of reasons but I just posted on Lemmygrad criticising the SPD Three Arrows movement which prompted me to have a look at the Breadtuber Three Arrows and they have done exactly the same thing that Contrapoints and a lot of other large figures in this genre have done:

They build up a healthy Patreon base and then their content drops off to like a couple of videos a year, if that, while continuing to draw off a personal salary which rivals that of a full-time worker.

In the past two years Three Arrows has produced 4 videos, amounting to less than 4.5 hours of runtime all up.

That's staggering for someone who is getting over 60k a year, at the most conservative estimate.

Likewise Contrapoints claimed to be getting 20k a month and she's putting out like 1-2 videos a year. And there's plenty of other examples of this too.

Imagine what could be done if people supported their local grassroots organisations instead of paying boatloads of cash for their twice-yearly YouTube treats smh.

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    hexagon
    ·
    1 year ago

    I definitely agree with you here.

    There's a reason why Breadtube is largely cultural critique and that's at least in large part because the culture is always going to produce something new for a cultural critic to respond to. If your channel and area of specialisation is in, say, Carribbean independence movements then there's only going to be a very limited amount of content to mine by comparison. This is also the reason why streamers always end up doing react content - it's relatively easy to produce and it's a virtually infinite resource.