JT going from making amusing apolitical science videos to tanking his own ad revenue and Curiositystream bux by pivoting to anti-capitalist content is the antithesis for general sellouty-ness of American leftists but yeah there is a trend.
Yeah I definitely respect the genuine believers like JT but even the people that are partly doing it for the money I don't really blame them. And even some people like Hasan (who I genuinely respect and recognize has done a lot of good and far more good than I'll ever do) have some really dumb takes (specifically about his wealthy lifestyle and how he justifies it, but failing to recognize there is a valid criticism and its environmental and not monetary because the environment can't support a lot of first world lifestyles). We are all capitalist subjects and pretty coerced into most of what we do so I don't actually have too much shade for the lefty media ecosystem. At least what they're putting out is good. Sellouts that go pure right wing are just trash obviously.
A bit rambling but I do find the streamer podcast etc phenomenon interesting. Like it's so much a parasocial thing.
I honestly think these things are the modern equivalent of the newspaper. In many cases reaching many more people. The issue however is pace of content production doesn't match print whatsoever. Several of these should have drastically expanded their operations using extra income that they don't personally need in order to produce content at the kind of rate it deserves. But instead of expanding the operation many are just pocketing it like every independent streamer is.
the WSJ should be writing articles about how ad revenue from Bad Empanada and 500 other youtube channels is arming third worldists; but instead they are just armchair quarterbacking AES countries.
Yeah even non political stuff from the left would be great. Nothing like listening or watching a video before realizing the creator is a bit of a libertarian and therefore everything coming out of their mouth is probably infantile nonsense lmao