Some dork with 200,000 followers saying the CCP is bad probably has 1/1,000,000,000th the influence on your average Americans opinion than one Fox News or CNN host has.

And on the flip side them stanning the CCP would have a similarly meaningless affect.

So idk why we spend so much time getting pissy at them for their hot takes when all when all of them disappearing tomorrow wouldn’t change anything.

  • LeninsRage [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The reason like MLs and shit hate shit like Breadtube is because they are quite influential gateways into our own ideology which is itself a tiny community in America. This makes what they say and do tremendously influential, and unfortunately by far the most popular producers (who coincidentally tend to have the best production values, senses of humor, and artistic stylizations) are not theory heads and almost universally veer toward being radlibs. The objectively better producers ideologically and theoretically speaking tend to have the most boring production values and stylizations imaginable (ie Paul Cockshott, FinBol, BlackRedGuard) or upload extremely sporadically if at all (TovarischEndymion, DemSoc01).

    Of course this is all largely restricted to the online sphere so it mostly doesn't matter. But at the same time look at how toxic the influence of someone like V*ush, who I had never heard of just a year ago, has had on "the left discourse" in such a short span of time.

    • SteveHasBunker [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Okay but the only YTers with real influence are the ones who stream Fortnite and Minecraft and yell “epic bacon pownage! air horns” and they’re all Nazis.

        • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          "I think having more people who do Youtube-y content who just happen to be communists would be a good tool for onboarding. Same goes for all social media. Meet people where there at, etc."

          I think this is a key detail. There are some people that just inherently aren't receptive to having theory directly presented to/ pushed on them. But, just having media figures that they enjoy, who share their interests, and who happen to be communists, socialists, anarchists, etc., could help just by opening them up to the idea that they could like leftists as people, that they could have things in common with them, and maybe even that they could be lefties themselves.

    • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Warlock and Ossoff won in part because the GOP tried to call them Marxist CCP supporters which was far too esoteric for the average Georgian to give a shit about.

      This is mostly correct, but I'd say it's more precisely stated as:

      • Voters who follow "the news" kinda-sorta give a shit about China, because they're bombarded with takes about it nonstop
      • Voters who wake up one day and say "There's an election this week? Who are these assholes and should I even bother?" tune most of that shit out

      In general, we greatly overestimate how much any aspect of foreign policy moves the needle for people.

      • HarryLime [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        In general, we greatly overestimate how much any aspect of foreign policy moves the needle for people.

        Partially. In general, you can see from election results that the American people are pretty subtly anti-war, which is why so much consent needs to be manufactured and they can't ever be given a meaningful opportunity to express that desire with a major candidate.

        • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That's a great bit of clarification. People do lean anti-war (at least "real" wars that the U.S. directly fights); it's more the endless variety of regional crises that most people tune out entirely. No appreciable amount of votes are determined by our relationship with Saudi Arabia, for instance.

  • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I've actually been told multiple times that the FBI closely monitors Chapo.chat and they'll automatically send the nukes without warning when enough people say anything bad about the CCP

  • Communist_Vegetables [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I don’t think we should underestimate anyone’s influence. Yeah today there might be some weird niche and they probably wont take over The Discourse ™️ but i mean Qanon is a problem and I don’t know if it will strengthen or mutate into something else but its not negligible imo.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Some dork with 200,000 followers saying the CCP is bad probably has 1/1,000,000,000th the influence on your average Americans opinion than one Fox News or CNN host has.

    Yes, that's exactly how math works. With 340,000,000 Americans (maybe 300M of whom have the capacity to be an audience), 200,000 followers is equal to 300M/1B, or 0.3 people.

    Following a channel is 0.00015%, or one-600-thousandth, of a person's political opinion.

    That's how math works.

    • SteveHasBunker [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Uh, I was kinda hoping by the tone of my post it was clearly I hadn’t done a fucking statistical analysis, and that “1/1,000,000,000” was meant as hyperbole.

      Apologies if that wasn’t clear.

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Anyone who tells you that 300,000 American followers is 1/1000 of the population, and that it's a fair bet that any given American has had a conversation with at least one of those followers, is wrong.

        Little drops of water make the mighty ocean.

  • friedchurros [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Gotta start somewhere, here's my horrible take: bad as it is social media and the likes on the internet are the newspapers of our time (cuz even less read those dead tree to flesh these days than watch your random Youtuber). We can't have access to other common media in this horrible place, no radio, no tv, no movies etc, this is the first modern medium the everyday person has even fleeting abilities over. If you can at least somewhat awaken 1 person its progress, not make them even principled, just get them a little more situational awareness than the average. Gotta have a foundation of sorts first. I think this whole "truth-seeking" reaction by the conspiracy community is partially driven by just an outward drive to fill that mental need for stimulation and awareness, but it fills it with dyed shit with pretty broken glass pieces instead.

    • SteveHasBunker [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Maybe, but based on this sub our attention is disproportionately focused on one.

  • boyfriend_ascendent [he/him,undecided]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I think about this a lot with reference to podcasts like the Antifada or Swampside Chats. Don't get me wrong, I like both, but they'll be discussing someone like Postone or Lasch and I'm just like "yes, but outside of a highly educated few, these ideas are non-influential, plus, if we accept the premise that the actions of the governing elite are overdetermined by the material conditions mostly, and the culture secondly that they live in, then does the fact that someone read one author or another really influence their behavior beyond a narrow band of acceptability?"

    As an example, Obama built the border camps, Steven Miller just put them into overdrive.

  • CALM_ORGANIZER_BOT [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    According to Nature magazine, being a reactionary is the lifeblood of the newly-speciated onlinicus terminus. They gather their sustenance by clinging to the underbelly of bottom feeders.