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I think you can see folks who are a bit isolated from the leftist online community who also make more money getting a bit more lib-ish in their politics. I guess I'm saying I think being invested in the community helps a lot to keep people invested in leftist politics
I mean especially by contrast I think you can see folks who are earning a happy stable wage through patreon but stay in touch with the community and/or real world activism don't shift towards the centre
most of all though I think this, whenever it comes up, has to be seen with the context that its used to harass and bully smaller creators who have only just barely started earning a minimum wage. eg I get a bunch of shit for earning a London living wage shared between two people
But getting down to some sexy raw materialist analysis - the establishment commentariat reinforce the status quo because there's a net move toward status quo politics in such a position. The natural inclinations are to earn more, get a bigger audience, and drift toward the centre
Capitalism encourages you to always compete for more and always compete to expand your reach, and part of doing that demands that you try to be as inoffensive as possible, AKA uphold status quo politics
Part of the reason people are so excited about leftist political twitch & YouTube is that the (potential) new commentariat are independent folks, the opportunity cost and relative entry cost is very low, so for more or less the first time we're seeing the result of like,
plugging everyone's brains directly into one another's rather than just having a corporate controlled media dictate your reality.
That's not exactly what the reality of new media is, obviously, but that's what people are so excited about, in terms of material difference
That's not exactly what the reality of new media is, obviously, but that's what people are so excited about, in terms of material difference
A lot of the reason I think this discourse is so messy is that new-left-media's critics often criticise it by comparing it (accurately or not) to both establishment media and new-right-media which are both corporate funded and parrot the politics of who funds them but at the same
time, new-left-media's defenders defend it by talking about the dream as if it's real. The reality is a bit more complicated obv.
The pressures as I said above have a net direction towards the centre, and if there's a net pressure to drift towards centrist politics, and it's community that maintains your politics, you can see why a community could become more centrist one leading figure at a time
like even in establishment media that has relative freedom to do what they want, the establishment media COMMUNITY is just so full of gosh darn liberals that it's very unlikely that a communist is gonna succeed, socially or professionally
LBC in the UK brands itself on presenting a wide variety of opinions, which sometimes gives leftists an opportunity but it also mean they platform shit eating fascists like Nigel Farage for example
