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I don’t disagree with the point that the cost is prohibitive. But there’s several things about this discourse that I feel like we need to interrogate. A thread. 1/ https://twitter.com/neuroyogacara/status/1333793555228233733
First, in the replies to this comment is the familiar refrain: if it’s online, it should be cheaper (like online courses should be cheaper) or free. Ok. Here’s the problem. 2/
Just because something is online doesn’t mean it’s cheaper than something that’s in meat space. Ask anyone who’s taught in the last nine months. Online is fucking work. I’ll come back to labor in a minute, 3/
The other thing is the “everything online should be free” mentality. Why? I understand that the internet has made us believe that “information should be free.” But, seriously. Why? 4/
Please understand that I’m asking this “why” in the grand tradition of good academic critical discourse. Whenever we assume something is true or universally accepted, aren’t we supposed to ask, at a bare minimum, why? 5/
The idea that things on the internet should be free is just that, an idea. In action, it serves some function. Who does it serve? Who benefits? Who doesn’t? At what cost? Both in terms of dollars and “value” (moral, ethical, whatever) 6/
This gets me to labor. IMO, the “everything online should be free” is part of a larger discourse that gave us great things (open access, Creative Commons licenses) but also crappy things — the gig economy. 7/
The gig economy benefits from this idea that things should be free and the people who *actually* benefit from that are the owners, not the workers. Gig workers don’t benefit while being told they’re part of some some technoutopia. 8/
What’s this gotta do with academic conferences? Whether they’re online or in meatspace, they don’t just *happen*. There’s an army of people — mostly underpaid and all completely unappreciated — making it happen. 9/
Every #sblaar20 panel I was at today had some dude who was playing the role of tech guy making sure all us nerdy academics knew how to run the webinar. Those dudes need to be paid. Who pays them? How? 10/
Registration fees. Full stop. 11/
Complaining about the cost of a conference effectively invisibilizes the labor that it takes to make a conference happen. 12/
Can we reduce costs? Yes. Are some conferences too expensive? Yes. Are some *unreasonably* expensive? Hell yeah. Should we find ways to make them more accessible? Fuck yes. 13/
But let’s not pretend that conferences exist in some other world, some alternate reality devoid of capitalism, some idyllic utopia where people work for their own pleasure and don’t have to worry about health insurance or child care or putting food on the table. 14/
Conferences exist inside capitalism. If you’re pissed off that they’re expensive, you’re actually mad at capitalism, not the people who run them. 14/
Which means you have two choices: (1) join the proletariat, seize the means of production, and revolt against the ownership class; or 15/
(2) join the fucking the conference committee, show up at organizational meetings, and convince the conference organizers to find ways to make the organization more accessible and inclusive in spite of capitalism. 16/
And I can guarantee you this: complaining about it on Twitter won’t change a goddamn thing. 17/
I’m saying all of this not to pick a fight with y’all (y’all are awesome). I’m saying all of this because we’re academics. We spend all our time critiquing systems and power relationships. We know how this works. 18/
And many of us have spent the last nine months being told to work just as hard or harder than we did in the Before Times while juggling child care or sick relatives and we know, first hand, how hard this is, how much labor it takes to do our work. 19/
Take that experience and use it as empathy for the people we take for granted who make our work possible — the conferences organizers, the journal editors, the tech support dudes and the hotel staff. Without them, we’re nothing. 20/
Does having empathy mean we absolve the systems of their failings? No, of course not. But the system that’s failing us is capitalism. Not the folks in trenches who, like the rest of us, are just trying to make it through the day. 21/
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. 22/end
