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.
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No, I get that it makes sense as an annual salary for a real job, but 2 videos a year is piddling output
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Per month
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Except a lot of video essays are fuckin' full length documentaries, with someome like Abigail Thorne doing full costumes and shit snd sometimes musical numbers.
You could certainly criticize Breadtube for moving away from educating audiences in radical politics amd failimg to direct people into actual organizing, but "I'm not getting enough raw slop" is an equally consumer brained criticism.
It's also basically looking just at Contra and other big names and ignoring anyone that isn't white as shit or who actually does ficus on radical politics - the people who actually, literally talk about the Conquest of Bread, and the various media they put out besides just YouTube. In particular there's a ton of podcasts that will cover the news or explain theory that might have one or more of these Youtube personalities on, as it seems it's a lot easier to disseminate that sort of thing when talking for four hours straight is considered a desirable quality while someone works their shift listening with s single esrbud.
Especially when I look at someone like Hbomb, I see someone with decent enough politics that's still primarily an srtist and entertainer - if "the plan" is to whine that the dude is making videos about how a guy lied about making the Roblox oof sound, I just don't know what people are expecting. Find something else and let them make their art, go sub to Zoey Baker or GDF or something if you're trying to learn shit and then promote that.
If anything, something like I Did A Thing occasionally bringing up politics and only once in a while condemning NATO's role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems better suited if people here are concerned about Breadtube's perceived loss of propaganda value. Make normie shit most of the time and then be vocal about your politics occasionally without expecting the entire brand to exclusively be politics.
But for Christ's sakes let's not start talking like fucking gamers crying about lazy game devs or whatever. Why the fuck is anyone demanding people grind their life away?
You're trying to have it many ways at once, but at best you're arguing that -- for example -- Contra's work is wildly over-produced and it's the overproduction that is the primary cause of the slowdown. That might be true, but I'm just as content to blame her for overproduction as any of a number of other reasons. She started out making videos on political topics and still does about half the time, but her political messaging at this point is mostly dogshit and half of it is this bizarre, psychosexual navel-gazing. She's basically gotten her Patrons to fund dramatic reconstructions of her diary entries and then somehow strings that together with "vote Biden". Don't tell me that someone who went from a vaguely anarcho-communist antifascist to a guest on Chelsea Clinton's faildaughter make-work documentary really deserves an assumption of integrity.
Hbomb is a fucking moron who is high on his own supply but has even less of an excuse because, while his videos are also overproduced most of the time, they aren't nearly as much as Contra. He just refuses to get an editor or take a more disciplined approach to his own writing, so he's out there painting five mile murals to document how he has a net feeling of "meh" about a disappointing sequel to a game that he likes.
I'm not saying these fuckers need to work themselves to death or even maintain fulltime hours (lol, like they ever would), but just the tiniest amount of self-criticism [distinct from self-loathing] would go a long way in helping them to allot time and resources effectively to achieve an output that seems commensurate with what their paypigs give them outside of the crassest economic terms. "Work smarter, not harder," as the saying goes.
FD Signifier is okay, but I really think that color is more a predictor of who gets a chance to sell out rather than whether or not someone will once they get to a high enough level.
Big Sean is arguably the best counterexample, because his Minneapolis PD video is, as he himself said, the first and only "important" video he has ever made, and he made it just recently. It is not likely to be joined by many others though, because he's just a slop sommelier at heart like the rest of these fuckers.
I don't know what to say about PhiTube because her shit's always been wildly overproduced even if a bit more academically solid than Contra, but it's just so boring. Like, does the fem Riddler cosplay really add to your discussion of epistemology?
It's not even remotely what I'm arguing.. I'm fine with their videos (aside from Contra as her videos are mostly just her shit takes) in the same way I'm fine with Dark Souls not having excerpts from Capital in the loading tips. I don't really see them as overproduced because they're edutainment about niche topics and I like listening to people do passionate infodumps. I am subscibed to enough interesting people that I do not need them to put out a video every week to not feel betrayed. I don't agree with the premise that the videos are bad, I think most are better (aside from Contra because I think her ideas are often bad).
My criticism is that all this nonsense about "lazy" artists is absolutely barking up the wrong tree when you cam simply go watch a different channel if you want theory so badly, and it results in this frankly petulant display of entitlement to whatever artist's entire creative output because they get money and say leftist shit sometimes, to the point where people here sound like conservatives complaining about striking writers.
It's such a myopic obsession with a handful of white people who got this label despite not partaking in the label's original purpose of producing specifically anarchist YouTube videos, everyone acts like "beaftube" as they knew it in 2018 is some huge fall from grace and just ignore literally everyone else that makes shit, or imposing some fucking brand on a human being so that if they ever make explicitly leftist content then they're obliged to make that the only art they ever put out - or even obliged to put out more art, period. There is just so much content of regular people figuring out video editors and putting out videos to explain perspectives that never get attention otherwise, "The Autistic Horror of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" is something you can just go watch right now, but people would rather complain about some YouTubers because they aren't making slop fast enough.
Capitalism has us brainwormed so we expect human beings to act like brands and get upset when they go "off-brand". "Breadtube" became these few white people's brand, they said most of what they could usefully say, and now people sit here unironically claiming that the problem with Contra is that she should make more political videos. Like motherfuckers where do you think her shit takes come from? If she recognized what she had to say on politics had a limit, respected that limit, and then focused on other topics while bringing up capitalism bad once in a while, that would have been better. People do not have an infinite amount of shit to say on a topic - hbomb figured that out and makes videos dissecting random and examining them in autistic detail, and that's why I love hbomb videos. If he started to shit out every fucking half-baked idea in his head about politics, that he didn't spend a long time thinking about in excruciating detail, he'd probably be known for shit takes too.
If at any point you needed any of these people to teach you what a feminine penis was, it is OK to move on to someone else, they do not need to be relevant to you forever. It's OK to read the damn theory yourself, but I'm not moralizing reading your assigned book, it's fine to go on Youtube and.see what other people think while you eat dinner. But it just makes people look ridiculous to act this upset about philosophytube or whoever taking too long to make a video and talk as though the revolution ever has or ever will hinge on their content output (and their content output alone).