Yes, he got my ass by acknowledging it in the final tweet, "hmm curious that this is liberal and reductive, almost like I meant it that way"
I like his videos, but his Twitter takes, not so much. Is this a me problem?
I think it's weird that people are demanding more explicit politics from someone who makes video essays about movies. Most of these people were never advertising themselves as socialists or their silly videos as important work. Redditors just decided to group them together as "breadtubers" because they weren't outright fascist. Now they're expected to be some heralds of a new age of socialism and people get mad that they aren't. Dude deals in vibes, not rigorous study, and he's never pretended otherwise.
I want a society with a short skirt and a looooooooooooong jacket
In his recent video about 300 and its fashy overtones, he generally has a decent understanding of what he's talking about but then he had an additional point tacked on like "I like Lord of the Rings and would be really sad if someone pointed out the things bad in it and calling it fashy. I would not like it if someone showed me legitimate criticism because it would inevitably ruin this thing I cherish and I suppose I've just done that to all the people that have different interpretations of 300 and in a way I'm kinda happy with that because you should look more critically at media."
It feels like without a coherent ideology he's just kinda left treading water. I get the fear of having a deeply rooted connection with a story becoming this problematic thing, but as much as I love Steven Universe for talking about trans people and being a positive thing for queer kids to see themselves in, it also does a lot of imperial apologia. Lord of the Rings does the Asiatic hordes trope. With a more coherent ideology you're able to call this stuff out and recognize it for what it is without having to be like "I'm sorry but it is kinda problematic."
I think his media critique is hit or miss in general, his God's not Dead series really misses the mark with Christian cinema having this awakening or whatever. His stuff on Dr. Phil is generally pretty fine. The very vague platitudes he offers as an ideology fall apart though since he has no concrete beliefs.
I want people to be healthy with relative ease.
What does this mean? You could argue our current system is exactly this. People can get healthy relatively easily, if they're relatively wealthy. You could say instead "All people have a right to healthcare" which implies that anything standing in the way of that is at its core unjust and immoral.
I want a society where no human is seen as exterior to the overall political project
I get what he means with this, but again it's just vague good vibes stuff. I don't want to live in a society where the people that want to kill me are just as valued to the political project as people that want me to have human rights. Nobody should be excluded based on any intrinsic details to their being, but their beliefs can and should disqualify them should them be an active threat to a just society or a group of people.
I know I'm being pedantic, but I feel like if you want to have general good vibes platitudes you're ignoring intrinsic flaws in the system you've never come up against. I don't think he's a particularly bad person or anything, he doesn't strike me as an obnoxious centrist like Boogie2988 and I could see him swayed with decent arguments, but at best he's a succdem and a :LIB:
I really like the way you explain your thoughts comrade :blob-no-thoughts: very organized and easy to understand
Also good points obvs
What does this mean? You could argue our current system is exactly this. People can get healthy relatively easily, if they’re relatively wealthy. You could say instead “All people have a right to healthcare” which implies that anything standing in the way of that is at its core unjust and immoral.
I'm losing my mind. I feel like this entire website has Natural Rights Theory brainworms. His formulation is not great, but it is clearly superior to yours.
If being wealthy is a necessary element to being healthy in a given society, then in any such society where it is also the case that social mobility even vaguely resembles ours conceptually (or is much worse, like in a caste system), it logically follows that not everyone can easily be healthy in such a society because the existence of a populous, downtrodden underclass is a necessity of that system and therefore lack of access to health resources is a necessity of that system.
His, uh, axiom, wish, whatever you want to call it is worded in an overly soft and potentially game-able way, but talking about "rights" independent of material reality is completely useless.
Now, if you mean a legal right to free healthcare, that's something else, but the rest of your statement implies a moral prescription which, by itself, is worthless.
joel seems like a nice person but he reminds me of one particular friend whos extremely idealistic and privileged enough to not really have to think about things too much deeper than "ah ha like we should all be like super chill bros with each other." Like the things here are nice things but i dont think we'll ever have a conversation about how to meaningfully get there based on this.
I think its generally harmless if empty? Idk seeing it as goofy twitter shit is as much as i think it deserves
I want a society where I am not alienated from the value of my labor
You want a society where people aren't ashamed of silly things
we are not the same
Idk maybe but I try not to care about the beliefs of people like this as long as they're not actively spouting political opinions. Idk what he's like on Twitter, but I enjoy his videos because he mostly just stays within the movie analysis and occasional dunking on chuds. If he is just an idealistic :LIB: he's self aware enough about his lack of knowledge to not speak on topics he doesn't understand, which is where I set the bar for "influencers".
"As a professional liaison between corporations and audience". You mean as someone who works in and makes money from advertisements. I can tell this troubles him. I've worked in jobs where it felt inherently unethical. He should just say "As someone who works in advertising I would like to see it abolished". I would agree. The idea that you can use tons of money and public and private space to use sophisticated techniques honed over decades of psych research to harass and manipulate people and their behavior—including and especially children—should be greeted with anger. It pisses me off, for sure. I'm sure I have a price just like most people do, so no shade on content producers because what the hell else are you gonna do.
Would that I had your strength. Now I've learned. Gotta use the "pay no mind list" more often
Aside from the blatantly stupid shit, e.g. silly things (what the fuck does that one mean?), the biggest issue I have is the lib tendency to frame everything like it's going into a suggestion box. Instead of "[X] is a human right" it's always some shit like "it would be great if we could have [X], but we live in the real world so we can't be overly idealistic and have to compromise."
Many Marxists would argue that the "human rights" framing is an idealistic artifact of liberal philosophy, and explaining things in terms of results rather than deontological rules is more productive.
The more important critique to that and his post is that explaining things just in terms of end goals and not immediate action to move in a better direction is a waste of time.
And then we get nothing anyway. Arguing that your idea which will never be implemented is more realistic than someone else's idea that will never be implemented is among the least productive ways you can use your time on Twitter, and that is saying something.
I want a society where your job is mostly just a fact about you.
I want a society where work is unalienated and central to our personal and collective lives.
I read all this in his voice. He has nice politics about silly movies idc if he's not marx. I like his list too. I'm starting a political movement around it. Bigism and our 8 point plan to revolutionize society.
