I like Shaun though, he makes me laugh. Say something funny, skull man. Come on, skull man, make us laugh. Entertain us.
Hia video on JK Rowling and Harry Pottwr was great and he did a lot of public work on trans issues in general in the UK ao hes fine in my book
Idc if Hasan follows electoral politics, he’s still one of my faves. He’s had good guests on his streams and he’s pretty funny. I was excited that he was on The Deprogram(imo it wasn’t a spectacular episode like the one w Alan MacLeod or Luna Oi, which were like top 5 eps) and I don’t watch him as often as I used to but I still have plenty of respect for him. He isn’t as far ML as most people I watch, but he still dunks on people in chat that defend Ukraine and deny their Nazis involvement and his China takes are usually more sane than the vast majority of people online
Yeah, I found myself strangely disappointed with the Deprogram episode, I have to admit. I can’t actually say anything that could have been done better, Hasan isn’t an academic, doesn’t have some kind of unique insight for a more western audience like Luna Oi, nothing like that, but nonetheless I was sad that it didn’t really stick out when Hasan is basically the only leftist “content creator” I actually pay any attention to.
Hasan studied political sciences and communication studies
I’d rather watch Hasan when I want my mindless leftist adjacent entertainment, rather then someone like Vaush or Philosophy Tube.
What’s wrong with philosophy tube?
I’m not OP and wouldn’t put her in the same group as Vaush, but I feel that a lot of her videos, specially the newest ones fall a lot into the trap of being like “Isn’t this problem interesting? Let’s talk about how interesting it is!” without actually proposing solutions or challenging the pre-established “left” liberal narratives. I don’t personally feel any contempt for her as that could even be some defence mechanism since now she’s basically the most notable trans youtuber for politics, so to me it’s understandable to be selfishly careful.
There’s always the issue of pretending that a celebrity/personality is the best available source for information. Like sure, it’s useful to people who don’t have time to research because they work 8hrs/day (maybe we could change that ;) ), but lots of reddit “left” liberals like to pretend they’re the most educated on any subject because they watched one or two hourlong video essays on it, brought to you by skillshare.
I think she actually had two very good but low viewcount videos (Solitary Confinement and Housing Crisis ones) back in the olden days, but don’t watch her now unless it’s about my pet interests.
Edit: Also I think it’s detrimental to make it about individual youtubers, as if this is not a pervasive issue of the entire “edutertainment” industry that has only grown exponentially since the printing press.
Why do you feel the need to be told the solution? Her videos are often meant to provoke thought. The video on stoicism for example is very well made and teaches how harmful such a philosophy can be. It is an educational channel. The goal was never to fight prevailing political narratives.
Imo, what she does is very good for educating a broader audience and that already is not an easy task to say the least. The videos have to be made the way they are, because otherwise the audience would become an echo chamber of like-minded people, which would be counter-productive to the goal of broaden people’s views on the world.
Also, if some people misinterpret the videos and/or use popular youtube video essays as their main source of information, they are just ignorant. It might not work wonders, they won’t change their whole set of opinions after watching one video essay, but it is a step in the right direction, even if there are still some issues.
Oh yeah, I do actually agree with most of your points and think this meme is rather counter-productive to just group all of these youtubers and label them all as garbage. IMO some of these, like Lindsay Ellis are rather harmless, and others like Shaun and Philosophy tube seem to be a net positive to me, while I think Vaush is just a COINTELPRO infiltrator. Her video on stoicism is actually my favourite in a while as a mentally ill “treatment resistant” Rome nerd.
On the point about solutions, it’s not that I need her to give me some, as I already have some for the issues that I care enough about (and lots of them would break YT TOS lol), and a 40 minute video essay is never gonna be enough to understand enough of a subject to propose new ones anyway. Lots of the things she talks about don’t even have “solutions” because they’re more philosophical explorations or broad complex things rather than tangible societal issues. But I think it’s very easy for the “tangible societal issues” thing to become a kind of “wallowing in smartypantness” for liberals, who love talking about things like police brutality while being oblivious (often not by their own fault) to solutions that have already been provided by people for a very long time. I liked it more when she went “in his seminal work Capital…” on her older videos.
Either way, I still do agree with you (and disagree with the meme posted here) that she’s a net positive and nobody should feel bad about watching her. We should actually “yes and” her viewers a bit, a bunch of them might even not be aware of lefter ideas. I do really pettily dislike contrapoints for deleting her old stuff and paywalling all her new content because dollars are expensive, and I’ll die on this petty hill.
I know it’s a meme, but if I’m getting my braindead entertainment from somewhere I would prefer it to be from breadtube, other than the worst offenders like Vaush or contra
Yeah, and it’s not like some of those (like Lindsay Ellis who is listed there twice!) are all that harmful. We’re already bombarded by extreme liberal entertainment every day, I don’t see what is so bad about enjoying some slightly less liberal free content, specially for those of us who don’t have much access to foreign media and languages.
Most of breadtube is liberal though, its all cultural outrage discourse. If your interests are anywhere remotely outside of surface level discussions about race or gender issues with 0 dialectics, then you’re out of luck frankly.
True, but the number one way to turn people off on learning more about leftism is boring them to death with conversations about materialism that are far outside their ability to comprehend at the moment.
That’s why entertainment creators like Hasan are important, they introduce concepts (albeit sometimes surface level) to complete liberals, and act as an entrance to the radicalisation pipeline. It’s just important not the stop the journey at the start of the pipeline.
I definitely agree that they’re very liberal and shouldn’t be praised as the best stuff out there by any means. Lots of them even have partnership with big corporations like CURI and the B&M Foundation and people should at the very least be aware of that. There’s also this trend where, like contra, they start out closer to actual leftists but as soon as they get entrenched anda stable following with thousands of patrons they go full Bidenmode. However, I don’t think it’s that harmful to consciously watch their videos for cheap entertainment, specially if you’re smart and do it all for free with adblock and revanced.
There are definitely some false equivalencies in this group/list, some of these folks are very good entertainment and everything we consoom doesnt need to be advanced intellectual theory and hardcore conversations about intense topics. We need to have fun and pleasure too, and hbomberguy 3 hour long videos on deus ex are precisely the kind of thing i find great to relax to.
Western social democrats will literally spend hundreds of hours of their life staring at a screen and watching a dozen different streamers and youtubers instead of reading theory.