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.
This isn’t a counterpoint. Contra isn’t publishing nothing because she has just so much intellectual integrity and has covered every relevant issue so thoroughly that more publications would surely fall into redundancy. Even ignoring that most of her work centers on fantastical, avante-garde storylines, one would need to ascribe to her an astonishingly narrow range of topics to conclude she’s done it all.
She could actually fucking read Marx, for a start.
I definitely agree with you here.
There’s a reason why Breadtube is largely cultural critique and that’s at least in large part because the culture is always going to produce something new for a cultural critic to respond to. If your channel and area of specialisation is in, say, Carribbean independence movements then there’s only going to be a very limited amount of content to mine by comparison. This is also the reason why streamers always end up doing react content - it’s relatively easy to produce and it’s a virtually infinite resource.
Interesting, if we continue with this, why would the amount of time for each video increase as the regularity of the posting goes on? Is it since there’s less time to create something ‘short and sweet’?
I guess I figure that the scope of each video would scale appropriately to the resources at one’s disposal. I also think that long videos would take a lot more effort but that might be because talking for such a long period to me would be exhausting. Yeah, and I don’t think I could reasonably keep on topic as well.
I wonder what you or others might have to think?
The old quote “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter” comes to mind.
Making something long is easy, just cover every point you might conceivably want to talk about, and read off your first draft.
Making something concise, coherent, engaging, focused, informative, and clear, on the other hand, often takes many revisions.
20k a month for saying “I like my treats and that’s why tankies are wrong”
Death to america
Never trust a content creator that isn’t active in an org.
CW: Breadtube
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spoiler so as not to spoil joke. these are actually vegan, I think. “Natural and Artificial Flavor” could be genuine animal product but otherwise it’s bread in a tube lol
Ingredients: Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Water, Soybean and Palm Oil, Sugar, Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Baking Powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate). Contains 2% or less of: Vital Wheat Gluten, Dextrose, Fractionated Palm Oil, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Xanthan Gum, Mono and Diglycerides, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Preservatives (TBHQ, citric acid), Beta Carotene (for color).
