I had no idea Matpat and others worked with Defy Media. This is the company that bought out The Escapist and pushed it towards being a Gamergate hub to make money off the back of gaming outrage,...
I had no idea Matpat and others worked with Defy Media. This is the company that bought out The Escapist and pushed it towards being a Gamergate hub to make money off the back of gaming outrage, harangued and refused to pay it's contributors, and finally let the site languish until it was nothing but a half-dead forum and a place for Yahtzee to upload his videos first.
I feel for Matpat, even if I don't like his oeuvre. Defy and it's people have a storied history of doing things like this.
It is very sad for me to watch a lot of those young artists (re)discovering that the essence of Capitalism is exploitation. What I don't understand is why don't PewDiePie, MatPat, Markiplier, and...
It is very sad for me to watch a lot of those young artists (re)discovering that the essence of Capitalism is exploitation. What I don't understand is why don't PewDiePie, MatPat, Markiplier, and others won't just create a “YouTuber Union” and force YouTube and MCNs to fix this shit.
They're low-skill, replaceable people in a profession where a ton of people are lining up to try to make a living, any living doing what they do. They have no power. If they unionize, youtube or...
They're low-skill, replaceable people in a profession where a ton of people are lining up to try to make a living, any living doing what they do.
They have no power. If they unionize, youtube or content partners can just adjust and move on.
It's like video game streamers or esports players: there are way too many people lining up to give the dream a shot for unions to have any power.
Outside the area of online entertainers, unions themselves have been almost entirely crippled in a lot of the English speaking world.
That's been systematically going on since Nixon and Thatcher.
Unions lack punch and consequences. They lack participation so collective bargaining is way weaker.
That's the case even in a country like Norway were around half of all workers are still unionized. In the UK that number is less than a quarter. In the US it's less than 10%.
Western countries all have legal systems balanced around workers and employers bargaining on relatively equal terms through unions.
Fair wage, benefit and rights negotiations pretty much require unions so employees aren't pitted against each other, and employees don't negotiate alone against huge corporations.
It's no wonder inequality has increased tremendously over the last couple of decades: the balance is out of whack because unions have been systematically weakened, both legally many places, but also in becoming socially looked down on rather than something everyone belongs to.
As someone who watches a lot of streamers and let's plays, it's (kinda) insulting and true. Most people who are providing content started doing it without any prior training, and learned how to do...
As someone who watches a lot of streamers and let's plays, it's (kinda) insulting and true. Most people who are providing content started doing it without any prior training, and learned how to do it better through trial and error as they went. The successful ones are the ones who developed enough of an audience to support themselves, and the super successful ones are rare. And for the few superstars and solid stable of successful channels/streamers, there's tens of thousands of people doing it in relative obscurity who would love to get more views/clicks/subs for what they're doing.
Think about it: If everyone who had more than a million subs or 50k regular viewers for their streams suddenly stopped tomorrow, there would be a new batch of people who previously weren't interesting enough that would now get the attention from the existing audience on those platforms.
right, I was't denying most of what was said. but to say the 50 that got screwed by defy are just basically anyone could do it channels is what i thought was insulting (to them)
right, I was't denying most of what was said. but to say the 50 that got screwed by defy are just basically anyone could do it channels is what i thought was insulting (to them)
I don't have any data on it, but I highly doubt that anyone who follows any of those channels only follows one channel. If they go on strike, pretty much all demi-professionally made content needs...
I don't have any data on it, but I highly doubt that anyone who follows any of those channels only follows one channel. If they go on strike, pretty much all demi-professionally made content needs to stop. And it's unrealistic that they can get everyone - even just those in this subset - in on the union.
In some ways, this kind of thing has already happened. A lot of content producers got together and created their own companies to counteract Youtube's - ahem - less-than-stellar support for it's creators. You might be aware of Channel Awesome or NormalBoots. These corporations were never comprehensive, and they have been for the most part slowly withering away.
Because the big names aren't the ones who get taken advantage of, because starting a union is difficult and time consuming, and because they don't have the knowledge of how to do so. Really,...
Because the big names aren't the ones who get taken advantage of, because starting a union is difficult and time consuming, and because they don't have the knowledge of how to do so. Really, joining with an existing union in a related industry (like the Screen Actors Guild) would be an easier path, and could be started with less prominent individuals.
There are some smaller, creator owned organizations (Like Mindcrack, which grew out of Minecraft LP'ers) but they mostly provide logistical support rather than agitating for better conditions or negotiating as a group.
Really, having enough people on board that Alphabet (YouTube) or Amazon (Twitch) would actually consider negotiating on any point would be difficult. What do they have to gain? If some streamers or video makers went off to a different platform or tried to strike, there's new people who really want more views and will stay and take a smaller cut. These tech behemoths would 100% go scorched-earth on anyone who tried to hold out for better conditions.
I had no idea Matpat and others worked with Defy Media. This is the company that bought out The Escapist and pushed it towards being a Gamergate hub to make money off the back of gaming outrage, harangued and refused to pay it's contributors, and finally let the site languish until it was nothing but a half-dead forum and a place for Yahtzee to upload his videos first.
I feel for Matpat, even if I don't like his oeuvre. Defy and it's people have a storied history of doing things like this.
It is very sad for me to watch a lot of those young artists (re)discovering that the essence of Capitalism is exploitation. What I don't understand is why don't PewDiePie, MatPat, Markiplier, and others won't just create a “YouTuber Union” and force YouTube and MCNs to fix this shit.
They're low-skill, replaceable people in a profession where a ton of people are lining up to try to make a living, any living doing what they do.
They have no power. If they unionize, youtube or content partners can just adjust and move on.
It's like video game streamers or esports players: there are way too many people lining up to give the dream a shot for unions to have any power.
Outside the area of online entertainers, unions themselves have been almost entirely crippled in a lot of the English speaking world.
That's been systematically going on since Nixon and Thatcher.
Unions lack punch and consequences. They lack participation so collective bargaining is way weaker.
That's the case even in a country like Norway were around half of all workers are still unionized. In the UK that number is less than a quarter. In the US it's less than 10%.
Western countries all have legal systems balanced around workers and employers bargaining on relatively equal terms through unions.
Fair wage, benefit and rights negotiations pretty much require unions so employees aren't pitted against each other, and employees don't negotiate alone against huge corporations.
It's no wonder inequality has increased tremendously over the last couple of decades: the balance is out of whack because unions have been systematically weakened, both legally many places, but also in becoming socially looked down on rather than something everyone belongs to.
That's just straight-up insulting and false
As someone who watches a lot of streamers and let's plays, it's (kinda) insulting and true. Most people who are providing content started doing it without any prior training, and learned how to do it better through trial and error as they went. The successful ones are the ones who developed enough of an audience to support themselves, and the super successful ones are rare. And for the few superstars and solid stable of successful channels/streamers, there's tens of thousands of people doing it in relative obscurity who would love to get more views/clicks/subs for what they're doing.
Think about it: If everyone who had more than a million subs or 50k regular viewers for their streams suddenly stopped tomorrow, there would be a new batch of people who previously weren't interesting enough that would now get the attention from the existing audience on those platforms.
right, I was't denying most of what was said. but to say the 50 that got screwed by defy are just basically anyone could do it channels is what i thought was insulting (to them)
I don't have any data on it, but I highly doubt that anyone who follows any of those channels only follows one channel. If they go on strike, pretty much all demi-professionally made content needs to stop. And it's unrealistic that they can get everyone - even just those in this subset - in on the union.
In some ways, this kind of thing has already happened. A lot of content producers got together and created their own companies to counteract Youtube's - ahem - less-than-stellar support for it's creators. You might be aware of Channel Awesome or NormalBoots. These corporations were never comprehensive, and they have been for the most part slowly withering away.
Because the big names aren't the ones who get taken advantage of, because starting a union is difficult and time consuming, and because they don't have the knowledge of how to do so. Really, joining with an existing union in a related industry (like the Screen Actors Guild) would be an easier path, and could be started with less prominent individuals.
There are some smaller, creator owned organizations (Like Mindcrack, which grew out of Minecraft LP'ers) but they mostly provide logistical support rather than agitating for better conditions or negotiating as a group.
Really, having enough people on board that Alphabet (YouTube) or Amazon (Twitch) would actually consider negotiating on any point would be difficult. What do they have to gain? If some streamers or video makers went off to a different platform or tried to strike, there's new people who really want more views and will stay and take a smaller cut. These tech behemoths would 100% go scorched-earth on anyone who tried to hold out for better conditions.