I'm not mad at the steamer. I'm mad that this is the state of the young American left. Talking about streamers. There are no parties or movements or platforms. It's just a guy streaming on twitch as all discourse follows the orbit of whatever is happening in his life. For every 1 person working and organizing on the ground, the energy of another 1000 potential active leftists is wasted on the daily drama of streamers and podcasters.
A few weeks ago, I posted an essay about basically this. The commons that social media is enclosing is our attention, our socialization, and therefore our ability to organize. They are in the business of converting attention directly to capital and vice-versa on a scale that didn’t exist prior. And of course, our interests are fundamentally misaligned.
The network effect is the tendency of certain commodities to become more valuable as more people have access to them. Phones lines are like this. Importantly, so are the commodified images of celebrities all the way from the Kardashians down to Vaush. So we give our attention to social networks and the networks then lend that attention who are capable of producing more. For example, if your favorite streamer is on a social network, you may visit more often, so the network lending that streamer your attention will be a net gain in attention overall.
Since these companies are looking to maximize engagement, the attention centralizes on a small number of people because, thanks to the networking effect, that attention is more valuable when centralized than it would be if it were distributed evenly. And of course they can’t let any of the highly-viewed figures be too revolutionary, so you have a manufactured-consent-style filter going on.
As it turns out, organizations are more resilient and capable when connections between people are redundant and plentiful rather than centralized, so this is a model that fundamentally disrupts our ability to organize and larger proportions of human time are spent on corporate social networks.
Honestly I think the whole "We don't have a party, movement, or platform" thing and the fact people immediately try to shut you up if you ask where the some 300+ million the left has raised over the last few years is going are heavily related.
Besides, twitch subscriptions are, uh, not money that the left has raised. And that's really what we're talking about when we're discussing streamer income.
The discourse follows him purely because right-wingers prop this shit up to try and invalidate his message. It's literally just the "you have iPhone" argument but bigger. What's sad is that people fall for it every time. I also think a lot of people waste time on this shit because they feel they have no power and this online culture war feels like a replacement for them. I wish they'd take this energy IRL.
I'm not mad at the steamer. I'm mad that this is the state of the young American left. Talking about streamers. There are no parties or movements or platforms. It's just a guy streaming on twitch as all discourse follows the orbit of whatever is happening in his life. For every 1 person working and organizing on the ground, the energy of another 1000 potential active leftists is wasted on the daily drama of streamers and podcasters.
A few weeks ago, I posted an essay about basically this. The commons that social media is enclosing is our attention, our socialization, and therefore our ability to organize. They are in the business of converting attention directly to capital and vice-versa on a scale that didn’t exist prior. And of course, our interests are fundamentally misaligned.
The network effect is the tendency of certain commodities to become more valuable as more people have access to them. Phones lines are like this. Importantly, so are the commodified images of celebrities all the way from the Kardashians down to Vaush. So we give our attention to social networks and the networks then lend that attention who are capable of producing more. For example, if your favorite streamer is on a social network, you may visit more often, so the network lending that streamer your attention will be a net gain in attention overall.
Since these companies are looking to maximize engagement, the attention centralizes on a small number of people because, thanks to the networking effect, that attention is more valuable when centralized than it would be if it were distributed evenly. And of course they can’t let any of the highly-viewed figures be too revolutionary, so you have a manufactured-consent-style filter going on.
As it turns out, organizations are more resilient and capable when connections between people are redundant and plentiful rather than centralized, so this is a model that fundamentally disrupts our ability to organize and larger proportions of human time are spent on corporate social networks.
Honestly I think the whole "We don't have a party, movement, or platform" thing and the fact people immediately try to shut you up if you ask where the some 300+ million the left has raised over the last few years is going are heavily related.
Didn't most of that go to Bernie?
Besides, twitch subscriptions are, uh, not money that the left has raised. And that's really what we're talking about when we're discussing streamer income.
For a leftist streamer whose subscribers and Patreon lean heavily to the left, there is an opportunity cost involved
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Frankly, I don’t know how you’re not banned yet lol
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The discourse follows him purely because right-wingers prop this shit up to try and invalidate his message. It's literally just the "you have iPhone" argument but bigger. What's sad is that people fall for it every time. I also think a lot of people waste time on this shit because they feel they have no power and this online culture war feels like a replacement for them. I wish they'd take this energy IRL.
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