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.
Thinking about it, it probably has to do with having that income secured. If they could have done so they’d probably have worked at the current speeds since the beginning, but youtube only pays you for videos you put out (and most views come from the first few days after release) so they probably felt an urge to get content out there that no longer exists.
You can probably find examples like this on many other parts of the content creator world, I’m conjecture it’s a common thing.
Didn’t folding ideas take a huge break due to their massive work being paid about the same as reactor #234?
I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest but tbh I don’t have a clue about the rest of the content creation world, aside from what is implicitly materialist or explicitly Marxist so yeah.
I don’t follow Folding Ideas closely so I wouldn’t know but that’s another thing I’d be inclined to believing.