The thread where everyone in it hates streamers sponsored by DavidCroquet

[benji]

Here's some wisdom from Hasan:

“Both on the left and the right—due to Red Scare propaganda, due to a lack of education around what it means to be a socialist or Marxist principles in general—people have this false understanding of what socialism is and what socialism isn’t,” says Piker. “Socialism has never been and will never be a poverty cult. That’s not what it is. As a matter of fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s about uplifting others. It’s about earning your keep. I say this regularly from [popular video game] BioShock: ‘Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?’ It’s delivered by a supposed libertarian [character], but that is actually a socialist principle…. It’s wage laborers abolishing the profit motive and getting back more of the profits that they generate for their bosses. That’s the fucking point.”

“I have more autonomy and less alienation from my labor than the overwhelming majority of workers on this planet. But there’s still a big boss up there that dictates how many hours I can be on the platform and how much ad density I have to push and all these other things,” he says. “Twitch is a platform owned by Jeff Bezos, ultimately, [that] still wants me to work the most amount of hours for the least amount of money they can pay me. I want to work the least amount of hours for the most amount of pay I can get out of Twitch. That dynamic is the inherent contradiction within capitalism in every wage labor employer-employee relationship: capital owner versus wage labor.”

Livestreaming, though seemingly cushier than construction or an office job, is still work, and Piker’s belief is that all workers should have each other’s back. There’s no cutoff point for what, in this case, constitutes work. If somebody’s making money off your labor, you’re a worker.

“There’s this attitude amongst working class Americans that the harder and more backbreaking your labor is, the closer you are to real labor,” says Piker. “That’s why when Starbucks baristas get together and unionize, people are like, ‘Well, you’re not really a worker.’ The fuck do you mean? They’re in the service industry. Not everyone has to get black lung in the coal mines to be designated a worker. There’s fifty-five thousand coal miners in this country, total. There’s more people that work at Arby’s.”

But the gig economy, of which Twitch is a part, is moving workers further from reliable structures for collective action, not closer.

“We have a ten percent unionization rate, which is insanely low,” says Piker. “Exploitation that workers face under the regular employment structure is not enough, so they want to switch it over to the gig economy so they can further exploit people with no accountability whatsoever, no legal recourse available. People don’t recognize it because it’s packaged as ‘freedom.’ It’s packaged with American values. Pro-capitalist American values.”

Also this about the guy:

Beyer chalks this dynamic up to institutional support, or a lack thereof. Creators and controversies on the right—as evidenced even by Piker’s own experience becoming the Fox News controversy of the day in 2019—often work their way up an online food chain, from Twitter to YouTube to TV, and so on. The American left, on the other hand, tends to favor old media institutions like CNN and the New York Times as news sources. But those institutions rarely collaborate with or even acknowledge online creators—at least, not political ones. Moreover, Piker believes his ideological views—which regularly see him trying to heave corporate interests overboard with all his might—further alienate him from the traditional news media ecosystem. In truth, nobody knows quite what to do with him. Networks and publications see him as a threat or don’t see him at all.

But even this, Beyer thinks, is in its own way a strength.

“On the right, we don’t see a lot of [Piker]-like characters, because they are getting their audiences from institutional support of political content—like advertising, like being on Fox News. They’re not organically creating a community. They’re being force-fed down other people’s throats, through every possible means, whereas [Piker] is organically building up an audience who want to see him through blood, sweat, and tears.”

Some of it is just heartwarming:

Piker speaks to and is approached by numerous protesters, including a member of his community who was able to pay part of his college tuition by creating a Twitch channel that broadcasts replays of previous streams when Piker isn’t online. Another is wearing a shirt from Piker’s merch collection, which Piker is also wearing.

“This is why I do what I do,” says Piker. “What I do would be meaningless if people didn’t listen and take action.”

But what Piker is happiest to see isn’t any individual person or group. Rather, it’s everybody gathered together, fighting for a cause he’s supported his entire career, for which he’s been ostracized and smeared since October 7. This, through all the darkness and despondency, is what fuels him.

“I would never have imagined this much of a crowd at a college campus anywhere in solidarity with Palestinians,” he says directly into the camera, with his arm around the shoulder of a friend who’s been moved to tears by the enormity of the moment. “In my whole fucking life I never would have ever thought I would see this day. I didn’t stop advancing. I did not stop advocating for the cause. And now I don’t feel lonely; I don’t feel as lonely anymore. That’s because of you guys. That’s because of you in the chat and all of these people out here. They’re putting their bodies on the line. They’re putting their careers on the line. They’re facing possible doxxing. They’re facing assault. They’re facing being brutally arrested for doing what is right. So I hope that you can continue advocating for the right things.”