maybe this is just a ploy by the synthtuber grift cabal to get us off dusty old forums and on to their discords and patreons
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i agree with what rmr is insinuating when they flash an image of a guillotine while talking about how a few hundred people are systemically enriching themselves
but itâs obvious theyâre using this rhetoric as a flimsy vessel to vent about what really catalyzed the video (âelektron and i donât talk anymoreâ)
this video can also arguably cause more harm than good as it can further conflate peopleâs perception of capitalism vs. commerce (which are not only two totally different things but an intentional obfuscation that capitalists love to disseminate)
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The beauty of Capitalism is that people donât have to buy what they donât want.
Yet conversely, if they have a desire, and the market supports such desire, acquisitions can occur between parties at market defined pricing.
We all know TE is on the upper tier of pricing, but the Design, Quality and feature set justifies the pricing model.
How does one expect a nice Kia car to be priced the same as a nice Lexus car.
I personally feel that the market regulates itself. If a product is priced too high then the Market we react accordingly with their wallets.
Synth companies arenât to blame for GAS.
Human nature is to blameâŚbut thatâs just my perspective having traveled around the sun a few times.
Isnât this like the 15th time that RMR has done one of these âCapitalism baaaad, Elektronauts toxicâ videos?
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It takes a certain degree of affluence to actually have a choice. Many people have to buy what the can afford, which is not necessarily what they want. It might even be something they hate.
When all you know about tigers comes from watching them in a zoo you might very well conclude it is in the nature of the tiger to pace back and forth all day long.
Looking at how humans behave in capitalism and feudalism forms not give you much of a glimpse of human nature, but more about the effects of culture.
Research about early humans demonstrates what made humans unique was their capability of empathy and cooperation. So that appears to be in our nature, too, probably more that what we see today.
Capitalism, as feudalism, appears to bring out the worst in people, whereas in other environments people could thrive and be a much better version of themselves.
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tbf the thread is self-inflicted
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i think so yeah lol
while theyâre right about the first half, the triviality of the second kind of deligitamizes whatever point theyâre trying to make
iâm not entirely sure they completely know what capitalism is
100% / iâm reading a book about all of this right now!
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I am perfectly at peace with my belief system because it works very well for me.
Enjoy yours and i promise not to impose mine upon you other than by following the golden rule 
youtubers definitely bring out our worst behavior on Elektronauts, thatâs for damn sure.
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Was it not human nature that created the culture?
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Do you mean this thread? Or elsewhere on here?
Iâm not really seeing anything Iâd call bad or âour worstâ behavior in this thread, itâs critical for sure, but itâs fairly polite and restrained IMO.
Perhaps thereâs a vitriol filled thread elsewhere Iâve missed
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To me it all sounds something like: donât go to Amsterdam as they sell drugs in the coffee shops l.
Yep, sure. There are plenty of other things too, though.
We all have a brain capable of discerning stuff, I guess, and buying stuff is a choice, and not necessarily a bad thing full stop.
I personally entered this world not so long ago, amd thanks to places like here, and videos on YouTube, including Jeremyâs, I was able to get up to speed to this beautiful new hobby.
Yes, I cycled through gear, I spent, or maybe wasted, a lot of time reading and watching stuff about gear, but I honestly enjoyed the process, and as far as it doesnât impact any important task in my daily life or my bank account, whatâs the problem?
Iâd probably had a lot more musical output concentrating on my first ever musical toy, sure, but that wasnât my goal nor is today. Itâs an hobby, and part of it is trying various stuff, discover new way of using the one I choose to keep and also meet some like minded people both here and in real life, maybe through a deal on a used synth or whatever.
I sometimes feel thereâs a lot of unnecessary drama around this kind of sruff.
Buy, play, enjoy, sell⌠Buy again. The bad evil corporations make money about that? Ok.
I craft nice moments and pull out good emotions out of it, to me itâs a fair exchange.
What I donât like is people acting like they have the thruth in their hands, considering everyone else just a puppet who needs guidance to avoid âbeing victim of the evil systemâ
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As Umberto Ecco said once âTV is mainly talking about TVâ.
Now, itâs just internet speaking about internet⌠And human kind is going in circlesâŚ
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Ok, watched the RMR video.
Some counterpoints.
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People that cry about specs generally arenât being manipulated by capitalism, theyâre usually just shit at music and want something to blame.
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Working class people arenât all angry we canât afford expensive shit. Some of us can afford expensive shit, or see that expensive shit is, in fact, shit, without it being the result of some financial resentment.
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A lot of the anxiety I see on here, I would say, is more likely the result of a personâs mental health or neurodiversity. Of course society influences that, but the video doesnât address any of these other, pretty blindingly obvious, factors.
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If you havenât experienced people being nice on here you clearly only came here for the toxic shit, because youâre toxic.
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To be fair, theyâve pointed out all the things I donât like about this forum, but then kind of made it seem like thatâs all this place is, which it isnât, obviously. Maybe if the Datsun thread hadnât been torpedoed people could all see what a bunch of really nice people we all are, and how knowledgeable we are about Datsuns.
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I think thereâs a bit of hypocrisy in making a video and saying âthis internet community is toxicâ because theyâre benefiting directly from the thing theyâre criticizing by making it the topic of a video, knowing that drama content is good for views.
It seems like the insinuation is that this forum is toxic because people have those sort of FOMO discussions, but just because itâs being discussed here doesnât mean the forum is responsible for people feeling that way in the first place. Maybe this is anecdotal, but I would suspect social media/influencer culture is much more responsible for that than anything else.
I mean, these content algorithms on YouTube and elsewhere incentivize content creators to appeal to these sort of feelings; âWhat you need to know about thisâŚâ, âWhy you need this thingâŚâ, âYouâre doing this wrongâŚâ, etcâŚ
How many countless YouTube videos have phrases just like that on the title or thumbnail? That sort of framing directly appeals to peoplesâ insecurities; I have some knowledge or some tool that you donât, watch my video now so I can explain to you why you need it. And Iâm not saying RMR does that (although even just making it your thing to show off your shiny new toys once a week can absolutely contribute to this FOMO or whatever, even if unintentional), but I think itâs hard to argue that social media doesnât reward that sort of behavior. On the other hand, we donât stand to profit from the discussions we have here. So I think that whole point is way off base.
Beyond that, the implication that people criticize expensive hardware because they canât immediately afford it makes no sense. I coud order an OP-1 Field today if I wanted to, but I wonât because I personally donât think itâs worth that price for me. I just donât agree with the way they connect the dots in order to construct a narrative for the video.
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I would not put it that way, itâs probably more complex than that.
Click here if you're interested in the long answer.
If âthe cultureâ were the only possible culture, then one might certainly see it as an inevitable product or consequence of human nature. And I donât even claim to have answer where human nature starts, and where culture ends, after all our susceptibility culture is definitely human nature (even in ways that would nurture or hinder the development of certain cognitive capacities in response to culture).
However, we can observe that culture is not homogenous, it can differ radically in different places or communities (like in this community, where the culture is mostly positive and respectful, and elsewhere it might be rather toxic), and we can observe that culture is also dynamic, because it can change over time.
Therefore we can conclude that there must be some factors outside human nature that have a significant influence on culture.
What these might be differs in the various theories about culture, but letâs say there is a degree of emergence (chance, natural phenomena like droughts, man made things like wars or climate-change, as well as the results of billions of people just living their life, often acting habitually according to their cultural imprint, but at the same time interacting with each other and pickig up new cultural cues), and a degree of intent (e.g. people making a decision to stand against the flow and change things, or to amplify the flow)
And both the capacity as well as the incentive to shape culture does not appear to be distributed equally (some people have significantly more power, which they can leverage to that end), and can also be linked to certain traits (people with less empathy appear to be more interested in obtaining power over others, and feel less inhibition against using violence to get what they want), so culture might very well overamplify a relatively small part of human nature to the benefit of relatively few people, and in contradiction to the needs of a majority of people.
No worries, I did not assume that you tried to impose your belief system upon me, I merely replied to some of your claims that stood out to me.
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A few additional elements:
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Elektronauts is not moderated by Elektron. This is just absolutely wrong. In 9 years of moderation, they have never told me what to do, itâs more the opposite actually, I can be a bit insisting
The community is moderated by old users, with the help of other users. -
RMR was responsible for leaking Model:Cycles. I wonder if they had to pay the fine for breaching their NDA, but they surely were blacklisted.
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This forum is open to everyone that wants to participate. Some people (not all regular) get into a frenzy when a new piece of gear is revealed, but RMR is also concerned with such curiosity. They precisely made money and fame out of this appeal for new gear + curiosity for more info.
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Elektronauts is also about sharing music, tips, helping each other, identifying bugs, and even refrain GAS. A more balanced view wouldnât hurt, rather than insulting a community that tries to offer a safe space for musicians to discuss.
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I think the thinking process here was⌠Hmmm, this Benn Jordanâs Capitalism video is having so many views⌠Wondering if I should do the same?
Hell yeah. Let me shit on consumerism, Elektronauts, and try to weave everything into a half-assed story. And while saying you should not spend money on anything Iâll end my video by asking you to spend your money on my Patreon please!
Personally, I feel this is the least toxic online community ever!
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I thought being a youtuber a while ago. Money was not the first motivation. It never were a motivation - but it is certainly a pain and most of the time a struggling to deal with it. As a child I come to music by dancing, and as a teenager thought to become a graphist because of English club flyers. I even thought to extend to work as special effects in the cinema because of Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator stuff like that⌠didnât follow because of the Money, in fact. (my parents didnât get anything from their parents, so do I - they succeed to live kinda ok)
My school training was communication and graphic design and for music I have to get better in English to read books, find magazines and when my English was better watch multiple times courses and tutorials DVD and then later online materials.
dematerialization, was the concept that change everything for me.
(I thought to create a digital music school⌠Youtube channel, Udemy Courses⌠stuff like that.)
because of multiple events, i learn very fast that Digital products cost less because they donât need to be manufactured in quantity, and so the bad idea is that they should be sold for less. (regarding music, what a stupid move by Apple to set a fixed price for a piece of musicâand then everyone else followed.)
Even though it started with vinyls and cds, network and sharing for free (warez) along with digital product - make every business difficult. (Cinema, Music, SoftwaresâŚ) Some products need to have a beta stage / dj promotion stage, that way before those products are actually in sale the sharing start. And, watermarking didnât change anything⌠itâs impossible to protect a damn digital product⌠even syncrosoft (already ended) and ilok will probably take the same route with digital app to activate stuff.
Note: yeah you can share IRL but itâs not the same scale so not the same impact
(come back to the topic)
So yes, at one point I thought about becoming a YouTuber, but I got lost in concerns about money, presenting and talking myself with big health issue - I thought as well to Avatars like Reid Stefan⌠also other concerns was succeed in :
Iâve always straddled the line between graphic design, communication, and music, but Iâve never managed to find a way to do it all and eventually teach it as one meaningful whole.
also Iâm quite sensitive and tend to overthink or imagine things easily. (I can manage those IRL or face to face, not easy to manage online)
I decided Youtube is not for me
so, dealing with the ones (that know everything and know usually better than you, even thought there usually multiple ways to do one thing)
yeah comments (whether to enable or disable them), and the whole community aspectâwhere nice people end up paying the price for the bad ones. Itâs impossible to truly protect your content, and I didnât want to risk burnout from the pressure of the algorithm. Switching to Vimeo? Not much better, because then the issue becomes the lack of audience.
And thatâs kind of the problem with YouTube: unlike Elektronauts, where everyone shows up because of Elektron gearâwe all either own it, used to, or want to buy itâso we share that connection. It brings us closer. No one really ends up on Elektronauts by accident, whereas on YouTube, thatâs totally possible. So you get people leaving comments without even understanding what theyâre watching. Why is YouTubeâs algorithm even pushing videos to people who have no real interest in them?
And maybe thatâs exactly why I was drawn to YouTube in the first placeâfor the audience and the exposureâbut clearly, thereâs a downside to all that.
Also, People are in a rush, under life/work pressure⌠and for some, the internet becomes a temporary outletâonly when theyâve had a bad day. Others are constantly in a bad mood and get a fleeting sense of relief by hurting others, as a way to take revenge on life. But there are far better solutions than that: stopping for a moment and taking care of your life, your body, and your mind.
Of course, that too can come with financial costsâunless you exile yourself like Robinson Crusoe, but even that has a price⌠In the end, itâs all about balance, harmony and still : compromises. And moving toward the wisdom of not doing to others what you wouldnât want done to you⌠but that sentence works well in real life, much less so from behind a screen.
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