oh wow another hoi4 twitch streamer. how novel. I'm so tired of these grifters that make a "job" out of making "ermmm akshually" dunking and reaction videos between two sessions of whatever paradox game.
Yeah bro you dunked on an online reactionary good on you. There are protestors being killed by police in Kenya but it's vitally important that you post about this youtube guy sure.
The moment you make money from your streaming stop calling yourself a communist or divide the two completely. One side of you is a communist, the other is a streamer. You simply cannot reconcile making money from this, because you will self-censor yourself very quickly in order to chase more money.
But this isn't even about the money aspect. I'm so tired of online "communists" in general. Lemmygrad and PW are the only reasonable places left. Prior to 2020 I learned a lot online in those spaces but now it's just devolving into a flanderization of itself. It's all about the post-irony "ermm what did he mean by this??" types of posts that even the OP doesn't know what they mean by it, they just wanted to post. You make your own meaning because they're on 5 levels of irony and clearly saying their point would cancel at least 4 of those layers and we can't have that. It's a contest to be the cleverest smartass all the time.
And when you point people to fully-owned spaces like the aforementioned, they don't want to join. They keep getting banned and driven off the lib platforms but they want to stay there. One argument is that the people are there, sure, but nothing is forcing them to exclusively use one platform. Imo they just want either the money and the fans.
They don't want to be part of a collective platform because that entails work, and rules, and giving up your name to an extent. It pays more to be doing their own thing.
It's very individualizing. People start getting followings of fans that will defend them just because they like them. You see that any time one of these guys gets called out for being a sex pest. Thus instead of building a movement they are building a cult. If what you're doing ends up being a Logan Paul then you're not really doing communism.
A ton of maoists and ultras too on social media, and very vocal too. They don't know what they're saying either, just like the rest. Before the internet these are people who would have thought "gosh maybe if I'm the only one that thinks like this I might be wrong". Now they find each other and they get to stroke their brain to Bordiga all day long on their armchair. Then once in a while post something that a trotskyist would say (but still claim they're not trots).
What can communist streamers/content creators do to improve on these issues? Trying to brainstorm a little bit. I was thinking for example, how streamers usually have an overlay or a info section that contains links to their other social media pages. Would it help to add links there to your personal PeerTube, or a Lemmy instance, etc? Like "twitch: [username], my youtube: [username], Lemmy: [@instance.ml]" so that maybe people will come in mid-stream and ask "what's a Lemmy?" "Good question, so I don't have my own reddit sub, but I'm part of Lemmy where..." Type of interactions. Or like "my videos are also on my peertube, if you prefer no ads, peertube is a video platform where...." If those examples make sense. Would that type of thing work to help increase engagement and awareness to federated media? I would love to hear opinions and other ideas on what to improve. Of course making good content people want to watch is the main priority, but what are the little things to add onto it? (I very rarely post so sorry if this comes off as jumbled/hard to read)
They mean people like Hasan/Deprogram. Not like ml theory reading streams. The former have like a million strong audience and make "big bucks". the latter don't.
I can’t hate on The Deprogram. They create podcasts that are engaging and perhaps most importantly provide a larger platform for a lot of smaller content creators.
Not saying we can’t be critical, we should be critical in a constructive way, but I do enjoy their content. Each of them also have quality, well-researched videos.
Yeah, I can get Hasan hate but hating on the Deprogram? Really? They are some of the most well read big name communist "influencers" out there. Any one of them alone has done more to spread communist ideals then this entire instance ever has. Let alone the people complaining about them. It's getting really close to ultra and purity testing attitudes. Gatekeeping online communism discourse by...going online and complaining about it. "Don't talk about Communism online unless you are the literal reincarnation of Marx."
Hell, the Deprogram subreddit is fully communist. I see the same kinds of posts here and there. Same kinds of memes. Same jokes. Same pro China sentiment. The only difference is, that subreddit, by itself, has more subscribers, gets more views, more conversation, and does more teaching to newbies than all of Lemmygrad.
An openly communist subreddit? Where have I seen this before...
In all seriousness, I'm glad to hear there's an ML sub. As others have mentioned, most others get banned or end up as left/right deviants.