When I see a thumbnail that shows multiple red arrows pointing at a piece of land, my expectations for that video immediately get set to rock bottom.
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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GenZedong
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Also the fact that they have a sponsor. I can't take anyone with a sponsor serious.
The "...this doesn't justify the Russian invasion..." crap is pathetic. Of course it does, it's literally what was used to justify it?! It's such a shit framing.
I get frustrated generally when people who should know better revert to christian-brain and make a faction's moral correctness or incorrectness the be-all end-all of a conversation. Like dude, JT, you're a communist, you know that all states unavoidably traffic in morally bad actions because of what they are, that material concerns of security and survival overrule conversations about good or bad, right or wrong. You know this, stop being naive. Or if you're playing to your liberal viewers, stop coddling their naivete, they need to learn what anti-imperial struggle looks like.
Or if you’re playing to your liberal viewers, stop coddling their naivete,
Seems like this is the strategy.
He's the opening to the lefty pipeline. He has said this is his strategy and talks more openly about his beliefs on the Deprogram podcast.
It's like he's afraid to sound to pro-Russia so he tones it down. I think that communists need to be more open about the true nature of this proxy war otherwise we will never convince anybody.
Damn there's a lot of dare I say reactionary opinions here. First of all, who the hell cares if a single person who does socialist videos sells out, they gotta make a living too. And socialism is not a poverty cult. Stop worshipping figure heads.
If you find the coverage too liberal, well it's not for you. Go read theory. Go do praxis.
People can still be upset about someone they admired selling out and making videos devoid of all meaning. If someone cultivates an audience of baby leftists in need of guidance and then tells those same baby leftists "the western narrative is the correct one, don't worry." they aren't going to improve, or learn, they'll sit in that comfortable defanged western leftist space where they smugly dismiss the struggles of people in the rest of the world for failing to meet their perfect standards. It sucks to see someone be a worse person than you thought they were, that isn't reactionary.
That's a fair point, and I sort of regretted the comment afterwards. From my perspective, first thought hasn't been as good content wise as Second thought or the Deprogram. So I'm going to assume either it was just a meh video, or they are winding down firstthought operations.
Thanks for your comment
It's been a shame watching the deprogram boys go from something special and kind of unique to another generic sort of "breadtube" group that no longer say anything too radical. It's been a slow descent though, but I think a lot of people have tried to pretend it isn't happening, because it sucks, so it hits harder once it's no longer deniable.
Yeah, I think it's hard to maintain a communist podcast for this length of time tbh. Especially maintaining the entertainment factor. It's probably inevitable, given that so many creators end up being more moderate, due to profit motive etc.etc.
I do think the best thing they could do is drop first thought, and maybe wrap some of the ideas into the Deprogram. Sort news and news analysis, theory, and shit posting.
But they gotta do what gets them views so idk
Yeah, probably why they switched to having a guest on every week instead of talking about things on their own. Just ran out of things to say without turning into a more theory focused podcast. I think they chose to keep the same basic tone the whole time and a lot of us were expecting them to go a bit more "serious" eventually, and start actively covering more advanced ideas and theory, but they might never have even intended that in the first place. I think a lot of people (myself included) were hoping when First Thought was announced that it would be exactly that, only to find it is just as basic as JT's other stuff, making it feel redundant.
I started going down the leftist pipeline a few months before they launched the podcast. When I heard about it, it seemed perfect for me - something to deprogram liberals and get into more complex topics as time goes on. Learned a lot at first, but after about 6 months or so I started viewing it as entertainment. And I'm not an avid theory reader or anything. They still discuss some interesting topics, but it's really not radical at all and it has gotten to a point where it keeps baby leftists stuck at the start of the pipeline, instead of pushing them further
and it has gotten to a point where it keeps baby leftists stuck at the start of the pipeline, instead of pushing them further
Yeah, it was always more focused on entertainment rather than education, but it's also kept a lot of people from going further, would be nice if they had a proper "further reading" section at the end of their videos and actually discussed theory every now and then. I'm always advocating for injecting humour into socialist education, but the education does still need to be there for it to work.
Yeah, right now theory is like once every 20 episodes
I just download the good episodes and put them on my Jellyfin media server, so that the people I'm trying to radicalize will only have access to the juicy stuff.
How does that work, is it a public server? Do you have any resources on Ukraine there by anu chance? I'm interested to read more about it and have some links on hand to show to friends/family, but so far most of my knowledge comes from this instance and some media like Geopolitical Economy Report, not exactly lib-friendly
Well, I would not say it's public, rather it is "publicly accessible". I give out user accounts to people I'm trying to sway, or to people who ask. Yes, there are plenty of resources on Ukraine - some YT downloads (a hodgepodge of sources, a lot of that from Ben Norton/GER), some documentaries, etc.
Someone just asked him on his server and he replied as to why he didn’t want to go into the politics of the conflict
“I don’t have final say over decisions”.
Is that not a blatant admission of selling out? He’s just straight admitted that he’s just a face for the camera and doesn’t have the authority to make content decisions on his own channel. He only has 2 employees that work as editors for him, so who’s making the decisions if not him?
That seems like a damning nail in the coffin for all the accusations of deprogram and JT selling out.
I remember getting downvoted to hell several months ago for saying that JT was selling out and the liberal aesthetics were becoming undeniable. Guess I wasn’t wrong.
Is that not a blatant admission of selling out?
If he's "sold out" he'd give a far less "gun to my head" answer. It's obvious he's saying that the decision was not his. Who do you think he's sold out to exactly? Can you elaborate on the conspiracy theory?
Corporate sponsors. But more importantly, a wider liberal audience.
There is a lot of money to be made from the milquetoast “leftists” who dominate the western world and essentially want to pretend to be leftists while just being liberals. Look at his and the deprograms videos on Russia as other people have mentioned, it is just regurgitated state department lines. Or the other content they make, which rarely looks at interesting communist topics and instead in random things like “poking fun at and listing all the bad and weird things X US President has done with minimal analysis” for multiple episodes; something they would primarily cater to an American audience. Compare that to their content before, with bringing on Vietnamese comrades, doing hardcore analysis while still being goofy, and doing in depth introspections on news topics. But genuinely what has their recent content been? Bringing on liberals. Random tech YouTubers, pop history.
If you can draw in that audience and establish yourself as a “centrist” leftist with “unbiased” facts. Then you can farm a lot of money off of that crowd.
Why is he doing this? I noticed things deteriorating rapidly on deprogram and his channels roughly around the time following the birth of his child. Which would be a good motivator to try and make as much money as possible.
I noticed things deteriorating rapidly on deprogram and his channels roughly around the time following the birth of his child.
Let this be a lesson about making your family's livelihood dependent on a corporate controlled platform and always living with the fear of putting your family in financial straits if you offend your western audience's liberal sensibilities.
They would do much more good if they still had regular jobs and only occasionally put out videos rather than becoming full time YouTubers but compromising their integrity in the process.
At the point when it becomes a business it stops being a revolutionary act. And like what happened with Hasan, their material interests and lived experience are diverging more and more from those of the working class as they become more petit bourgeois.
They would do much more good if they still had regular jobs and only occasionally put out videos rather than becoming full time YouTubers but compromising their integrity in the process.
Honestly this is why I believe that Hakim’s channel is still holding relatively strong compared to JT and Yugo. He is a doctor. Not a content creator. This is a hobby and a pastime for him, not how he makes his bread and butter. In turn, that means he has little to no incentive to try and squeeze as much money as possible from a corporate algorithm that pays his salary.
Indeed. Hakim seems to be the least affected by the decline that is happening to the Deprogram.
He is also the only one that is well read.
Honestly this is why I believe that Hakim’s personal channel is still holding relatively strong compared to JT and Yugo. He is a doctor. Not a content creator. This is a hobby and a pastime for him, not how he makes his bread and butter. In turn, that means he has little to no incentive to try and squeeze as much money as possible from a corporate algorithm that pays his salary.
Material analysis - hits the mark every time.
Fuckin' Boy Boy had a better video on Ukraine and the USA's role in instigating it then this.
Thank you for linking this, I had no idea they made a video about it! I will watch it as soon as I can.
Most westerners are as brainwashed as they believe north koreans to be.
^ what I want to say anytime a westerner starts talking about the DPRK.
Unfortunately, that route isn't likely to result in them listening to me and questioning their beliefs.
The amount of comments just missing the point and saying “Well, Putin didn’t have to invade,” is astounding to me. Did they not watch the video? This war has been dumbed down so much that people just have automatic responses to any sort of explanation because they can’t conceive of anything outside “Putin is Hitler, Russia is evil.”
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