Capitalism Thoughts

Google’s AdSense poked my movie blog into adopting their ad network, saying based on the last month of traffic I could earn a whole $13.73. Woo.

This inspires some introspection. After all, those of you who have read the blog know that it is avowedly Communist and Marxist. Is it not the height of hypocrisy then to be earning money from people reading it? Is not this sort of compromise with sin exactly how liberals are incorporated into a capitalist ideology?

Well for one, to pretend I was not a part of capitalist ideology would be naive denial. I try to see the bars, but I am most definitely stuck in jail with the rest of you. I also share some participation with rationalist ideology, social justice ideology, and (white patriarchal racist) American exceptionalist ideology. I wish I didn’t, but I’m not going to deny what is plainly true.

But the more important point, is that $13 of monetary incentive is not the damn problem here. The problem is how we judge ourselves.

My most popular post on tumblr so far has been about a different perspective of gender issues. After that it was a post on social class, and after that it was a post arguing with @slatestarscratchpad about his art. I’m proud of those posts and am glad people have read and shared them.

But they are much less important to me than my fundamental posts about humanism, and trying to explain the nature of ideology, or my other blog describing tribalism. And I am glad for those “popular” posts because they bring people into contact with my ideas, and hopefully they will read the ideas that I think are more interesting and revelatory.

Really, talking about gender and social class and arguing with “famous” blogs are much more peripheral epiphenomenon to the deeper understandings about “how we think” and “how art works” that I want people to explore.

And yet, it is enormously tempting to churn out posts about gender roles and social class and stupid arguments with bigger tumblrs, to pump up the likes and followers here. That will get me attention, and more validation (ie, likes and reblogs and the very nice comments people have been leaving, thank you). And I can rationalize it as purely instrumental to get exposure for the “real” stuff, but we know what’s happening here. If I did that, I would in fact be a blog about gender roles and social class and stupid controversy.

This is how capitalism gets you. It’s not about the monetary incentive, it’s about any meritocratic system that judges your work by its reception among the populace. And then once there’s a number showing how much people like you, our desire is so strong in wanting to make it bigger.

I have a job, of course. And I’ve been unemployed. The material comfort of my life was not greatly changed between employment and unemployment (because of my privileged background), but goddamn I felt a huge difference in my psychological well being based on “whether someone wanted me to work for them.” I think this is true for most of the people going through the crisis of a slow labor market - the problem is half material deprivation, but half identity validation. You want capitalism to tell you you are a worthwhile person who is contributing to what other people want. Just the same you want likes and followers and hits to tell you that what you are writing appeals to people.

But in none of those cases, is that actually good is it? We know what sells. It’s not our best stuff. So we can decide to focus on our best, and hope that hey maybe some day someone will find it, or more likely we can go all in pursuing that validation, and constantly morphing to what the social market demands.

That is what I hate about capitalism.

Related, see this incredibly depressing piece about attempts by the larger tumblr blogs to get rich quick. Reading it, money just seems a scorecard by which they were trying to support their self esteem.