Asklemmy

Lol this is a misuse of statistics to make it look like Hasan isn't rich. The median US net worth is roughly $200,000. That means 50% of people have less than $200k of net worth, and remember it's not real money. It means liquidating all of your assets.

Hasan makes the median net worth of an American in one month on Twitch subs alone (from the Twitch leaks where he was the 13th most paid on the site at ~$200k and that's just one of his income streams). Which means he makes the average US net worth in 5. Using just his house price as his "net worth" is laughable.

Using the Twitch leaks numbers, Hasan bought his house in 2021. Twitch leaks were about 2019-2022. If he makes $200k since 2019 (which is a low estimate because his line go up), he's made $12,000,000 off of Twitch alone. He can arguably buy 4 of that same house cash and carry.

I get it, he's a cool guy, but are we really gonna pretend here that he's living some life comparable to normal people when he's mad $12 million in 5 years?

Do you believe everything they tell you without applying mind ?

you need to be part of an org to be a socialist

Saying shit like this makes you feel special because you can call yourself a "Real Socialist", while gatekeeping political self-identification from anyone you feel isn't as pure as you.

Telling me that I'm not a Socialist because I'm not a registered member of a Socialist organization doesn't encourage me to join any organization. It encourages me to dump you and find an actual mutual ally.

Stop saying stupid exclusionary things about your left-wing allies if you want to actually have a movement capable of change. I'll happily accept anyone who believes in Socialism as a Socialist.

Rutgers and Princeton have an intertwined history, but that's pretty much it. Rutgers is seen as a good state school and to many it's mostly because it sounds like a private school.

Plus as far as I know socialists have always been fine with class traitors who join them.

A person’s class is defined by their relation to labor, not their wealth.

This is literally not true. Like quite literally, even in socialist history this is not a true statement. Leninism particularly had some very funny hijinks about linking wealth to class.

He’s not exploiting labor.

I don't want to really get into it, but Hasan like every other content creator indirectly exploits the labor that provides the platform that he makes money off of.

Twitch.TV is a stage that is built and maintained by workers working for a Twitch. Those workers are exploited. The stage is a means of production. The artists that use the stage also exploit those workers, because they procure use of the stage. The cool thing about Hasans typical response to this which is the thought terminating cliche of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is that it by definition has a corollary. If there can be no ethical consumption, there can be no ethical production.

Engels was famously in a very similar situation.

Engels' factories were all unionized.

Hasan has literally in 2019 after all the "podcasters don't pay guests drama" that he very well knows of given his friends, had exploited people that did free work for him. There's controversy about whether Hasan actually pays his mods. Most online personalities are not very forthcoming about how they get help with their content/community management and whether that is properly compensated, Hasan included. For a venture that's made $12m over 5 years Hasan 100% should be paying every single person that touches anything related to his work without them having to ask, whether it's hourly, piece work, or full time employment.

Hasan is nowhere near Engels in his understanding and treatment of labor.

I’m not sure the people claiming he’s a hypocrite for having money understand anything about communist/socialist theory.

Most of Hasan's fans and Hasan himself don't have understand anything about communist / socialist theory or history. This thread at large is a perfect encapsulation of this where the history and theory is bent entirely in the defense of one online entertainer in 2024. I say this as a person who occasionally watches (e.g. election night since I dind't want to watch broadcast cable and nobody else good had election live streams).

The real problem here is the deification of Hasan and the comparison of him to Marx or Engels that's done up and down this thread is indicative of the seriousness of the commenters in their understanding of socialism. A lot of these arguments are vibes + socialist bromides, they don't actually do anything beyond surface level reflexive defense. Nobody actually wants to open the Pandora's box here because as the famous tweet said "some of our faves might be implicated".

Thank you for a nuanced reply. When you put it this way, I can see why many listeners find value in his content. I worked another shift today with him constantly droning in the background and I think my opinion is largely being colored by his presentation style, and my own distaste for "streamers" and "react culture" in general, with his aforementioned privilege issues now coming in third.

His comments about people working "real" jobs having an easier time of it than he does certainly rubbed me the wrong way, though, and his response when called out on it was more of the exact same "BROOO WHAT ARE YOU STUPID? THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT! OK!?" that his streams are full of.

I was going to comment the same ö

Yeah the problem with living in capitalist hellworld at the heart of the empire is that you have two separated insular communities of leftists that are knife fighting rings. One in meetings and one on message boards, and they frequently know nothing about each other.

While the meetings communists sometimes eke out wins like Kshama Sawant, they often struggle to connect to the message board communists who really should be their base. Meanwhile both struggle to connect to society at large.

What's really funny is that most meetings communists I know locally essentially think of him in essentially the same way message board communists think of AOC. Most meetings communists cannot stand his level of yadda yadda when pressed on any specifics he often just goes more general and says things like 'I just want everyone to have healthcare bro'.

Also, class is not defined by wealth, but by relation to labor. He is doing the work he is getting paid for, regardless of whether someone thinks its too much. He's not exploiting others to make that money as far as I know.