Reading Theory

I admit I haven't read much theory, and I have watched a decent chunk of Breadtube, but here is what I learned over the years:

Breadtube isn't a good way to get information out. I have watched a lot of Breadtube, and I still find myself asking a lot of questions about socialism, anarchism, communism, and stuff like that. They can produce good videos, yes, but they're just lukewarm summaries that don't really give you the full page of what anarchism or communism is in the first place.

For example, Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky was very insightful, and I took in the knowledge of this when I was already an anarcho-communist. The authors writing theory, Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, you name it, has a lot more information on their theory in their books than the Breadtubers reciting the information to you.

Also, I have an issue with Breadtube in general. When you get too deep into it, the hero-worship just becomes too apparent. Like when someone points out legitimate criticisms of Vaush, people just get so defensive. The Breadtubers are people, not idols. They are bound to do shitty things. Also, there are a lot of awful Breadtubers out there.

I’m going to keep this in a spoiler, because this may piss some people off. So if you don’t want to be pissed off, don’t read this spoiler.

-

Vaush, Unruhe, ContraPoints, and Maupin are transphobes. I know you may be confused about Contra, as she is trans herself, but she’s quite bigoted towards non-binary people, and bigotry towards non-binary people is transphobia.

Vaush and Finbol are literally pedophiles, and they are still growing. That’s concerning.

Peter Coffin just gets into these childish rants about identity politics and other Breadtubers, and they pretended to have a racist girlfriend, and also is one of those “anit-idpol” leftists who just make nazbol claims.

There’s more awful Breadtubers out there, but I think that is enough.

Anyways, we have seen Breadtubers being clowns over and over, and many other Breadtubes will even come to their defense, such as Hbomb defending Contra when people made legitimate complaints about Contra.

-

And watch, people are immediately going to start a flame war when they read this spoiler. It shows. It's too much idolization, and it's unhealthy. When I learned that a Breadtuber I liked did something awful, it felt like a betrayal, and that feeling wasn’t good. A cool person told me once that even YouTubers aren’t your friends. This applies to Breadtubers. Yes, I’m not saying all Breadtubers have their ears plugged from your complaints, but when they become more successful, they care about you less and less, and just care about views and attention. They’re YouTubers at the end of the day. Now, I am not saying that all Breadtubers are bad. There are some legitimately good ones out there. I am just saying that the environment in there is overall toxic, and people get too emotionally attached to it.

Also, a lot of Breadtube just tends to be analysis of movies and stuff, and it tends to be surface level. There are good videos out there as I said before, but your brain just grows so much more from reading. Reading can take a lot of time, yes, but aren’t you online a lot of the time? And if reading is frustrating, then audio books exist.

These theorists, whenever anarchists or communists, were experts on the ideologies they identified as. Like for example, if you were to revive Karl Marx, and you compared another person to Karl Marx, it would be very difficult to find someone who knows just as much as Karl Marx on Marxism. I mean for crying out loud, Marxism literally has Marx in the name.



A lot of the Breadtubers that claim to be anti-capitalist or socialist are socdems. Shaun and Hbomb are clearly socdems, and they are some pretty massive Breadtubers, so they really aren’t the way to go for revolutionary theory.


Watching Breadtube all day doesn’t make you a radical revolutionary that you so want to desire. Direct action, on the other hand, does. It starts with reading theory. These anarchist and communist revolutions that many admire didn’t start, because some person flipped a car. It was started by revolutionaries reading theory, such as Marx or Bakunin.

And reading is very healthy for you. Studies prove that it helps you improve in school. Reading just twenty minutes a day is fine.


I can hear the Twitter lords reeling at this post, but I don’t care. I have been on Twitter, and it fucking sucked. Like, it was genuinely worse than Reddit for me. I’m not being ableist, for fucks sake. Many people who cannot read genuinely want to learn how to read. They want to get an education. Reading theory doesn’t make you an ableist. I may get off course, but being influenced by Twitter isn’t the way to go either. When I was on Twitter, or I met people on other online forums that were influenced by their Twitter leftist friends themselves, I was influenced by them. Online leftism has issues. Many radical leftists tend to just LARP a lot (especially Marxist-Leninists), and its filled to the brim with Dengists. You also have a lot of horrible takes from Twitter leftists that are way too invested in liberal identity politics. Like a Twitter “leftist” claimed that PogChamp was racist, which is silly. They will also defend backwards things, such as incest. They are the reason why identity politics is so hated. I say this as a person who is an intersectionalist. I believe in focusing on both identity politics and class. They are more interested in dividing each other rather than actually doing praxis and uniting against the oppressors. Now, of course, I hate the idea of unifying with racists and homophobes. Never unify with bigots. But the fact that anarchists will oppose other anarchists, just because they have a different view on whenever PogChamp is racist or not, is just silly. I remember getting myself involved in a discourse within the LGBTQ+ community, and it was a fucking mistake. I was harassed and blocked. In fact, I tend to notice that a lot of Twitter leftists are just socdems that take liberal identity politics steroids. Twitter is such an awful place to learn theory. Read theory rather than use Twitter for the basis.


Now I am not saying if you watch Breadtube, you are bad. That’s fine. As I said before, there are a lot of entertaining Breadtubers out there, with good videos. What I am trying to say is just don’t use Breadtube solely if you want to become a socialist. Read theory.