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.

  • keepcarrot [she/her]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Breadtube is (largely) an audience curated identity. Like, there were a bunch of videos about trying to make it more than that, but it was primarily about the community (of mostly radlibs) the audience created. I think it's better to analyse it from that perspective more than from creators. That said, we are talking about creators behaviour in this thread, so idk. It feels very similar to me like fan fiction communities (I was going to say marvel fans, but Disney has much more control over what does and doesn't count as marvel)