Is this what happens when you leave your phone unlocked around Virgil?
No joke this is basically what Patreon is for in regards to Podcasters/Video Essayists. We should just consider it a part of the job description: You want to be a figurehead for leftism and produce commentary/content? Neat! NOW GET IN THE POSTING TRENCHES COMRADE, REST IS FOR THE WEAK. It's like we're crowdsourcing full time leftist organizers at this point. I'd like to see these media personalities cap their income and turn their Patreons into co-ops to boost their operations, but like, I get it. Having money is nice.
We'll never be able to do that. That's capitalist driven top-down astroturfing that only works because of concentrated capital. What we have to do is figure out how to beat that using our own strengths, not inevitably failing to beat them at their own game.
I think we'd have something akin to company PR voices such as you find on twitter that do that part of the labor. There's a whole team behind that, though, and part of that team's job could be following up strategic tweets with more targeted recruitment/organizing. Say someone leaves a positive comment, wouldn't it be cool if someone were to reach out and say, "Hey, we appreciate your support out there. Would you like to hear about opportunities to get involved in your area?" And then similar to like the Bernie campaign or existing orgs that already do this kind of work, they spoon feed the contact the information necessary to get involved.
These are people who would not be responsible for the overall memeing, nor would they be responsible for the stupid bad-faith arguments that spring up in every single internet space. A bot network will never have that kind of personal follow up- but as leftists armed with conviction and genuinely appealing theoretical analysis, we can. We'll build actual mass participation this way. Capitalists can only ever purchase the veneer of it.
Very few of those podcasters can afford to post full time. Chapo is an extreme outlier.
Yeah, I'm thinking something like a collective effort. I think if leftist breadtubers and podcast hosts started a collective, something like Jobs4Justice, they might be able to make it work.The benefit to having exclusively online organizers/posting coordinators is that they could base their operations in a relatively low cost of living area too. Keep their costs down to maximize their effect.
It would be like herding cats to get them to agree to it, though, but that's the kind of radical cooperation necessary to advance something like this.
It’s like we’re crowdsourcing full time leftist organizers at this point. I’d like to see these media personalities cap their income
Prolekult's patreon is doing this. https://i.imgur.com/NZhaldU.png + https://i.imgur.com/JNXa7fC.png
All the ML patreons seem to be in-touch with how they need to cap their incomes and be salary-based. It's the non-ML leftists that all seem to fall into the trap of becoming petty-bourgeoisie themselves as their income goes through the roof on these platforms.
Wait, so you're telling me the tendency that's committed to supporting mass struggle and training professional revolutionaries organized in a party structure has better discipline and displays a greater willingness to put political struggle over self?
:lenin-shining:
I could afford to pay someone like $10 a month to post. We just need to find like 500 more.
Honestly I’ve believed for a long time that posting and social media use overall is a form of alienated creative labor that we do on behalf of the techno capitalist class.
It's harder and harder to reach people with some form of creativity without going through these homogeneous channels. Really fucking sucks.
Exactly, they have always controlled the production of artistic mediums but it’s so much worse than ever.
It's way worse. They've commoditied artistisc output to such a boring degree. Not that there isn't still great art being made, it's just a bummer.
I remember hearing a Yiannis Varoufakis talk where he said exactly this. We are literally creating value as we post for firms like reddit, facebook, twitter etc.
https://youtu.be/9aK4OztueuE?t=3521
I will unironically argue yes, sorta, especially if you bother to follow up with the people who engage with that content. I check in with the libs who like my spicy memes and have generated a few contacts that way lol.
My old go-to with debate lords on reddit was to offer to send them my invoice and for them to give me 50% upfront before I continue with explaining to them why they are wrong.
Usually just shut them up but one guy went insane and started ranting about how corn wasn't a commodity out of nowhere.
Literally corncobbing himself. That was a great day in my posting history.
Seize the memes of production! You have nothing to lose but your permabands!
