So many social media/user-generated-content communities follow this herding pattern. You can actually model social communities pretty easily and see how they follow similar dynamics irrespective of the actual subject matter. There’s a whole branch of academic research into this and it’s fascinating stuff.
I’m holding out for ‘Cuckoo explains politics’
‘well let’s see what happens if I randomize all these parameters…don’t really know what I’m doing here, ha ha…well this is rather like socialism and it’s quite remarkable, all sorts of funny things are happening…but if I turn this control to the right it becomes rather Stalinist…this isn’t very nice at all, I think I’ll turn it back again…’
wait, so the guy who cried in public (video posted higher up at the beginning) about music brands not compensating him or other geartubers enough for the hard work they put into the promotion videos and how they sell a lot of units for these brands now saying consumption is bad and it’s because communities?
the channel has ~500k subs, how much of these are from him doing promo work for companies and hyping new gear?
but all of a sudden what’s wrong with the world is consumption and the communities are to blame, right… no geartuber has anything to do with over consumption, they are misundesrtood, underpaid, hated saints in a toxic world.
It’s really hard to keep giving them the benefit of the doubt. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s difficult not to read it this way. It all keeps coming back to that Mark Fisher quote I’ve been flogging into dead horse territory lately, “So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange”.
Looking at the amount of positive comments on the video makes me realize a whole lot of people know a lot less about the world than I think they do.
I also made a comment politely challenging the video on a few of the points I made above. No sign of my comment anywhere (although I do have form for accidentally commenting in the wrong place, or accidentally saying fuck or something, so pinch of salt maybe) but I’ve challenged a couple of their other videos, so maybe I’m blocked or something, I dunno.
I don’t recognise the way he describes this forum at all.
When gear is announced a thread will appear with speculations, but it’s not some dark capitalist dystopia it’s just excited fanboys speculating. I don’t find it interesting so I simply ignore those threads. Elektronauts is probably the most positive communities I’ve come across on the internet full stop.
There are a certain proportion of the community in any hobby who are much more interested in flipping the new shiny than doing the activity it’s self, but that’s absolutely fine and is also a valid hobby.
I highly doubt he gives a flying fuck about the topic, he just want engagement and the payout for the views, if he did give a single fuck about the topic he would held himself (and others he spoke so highly of in the past) accountable at least to some degree. again, in his previous videos he claimed that he sold more units than any other advertising medium, but all of a sudden speculation threads are the evil reality of capitalism and consumption.
and I wouldn’t be surprised if he deletes or downvotes comments so they disappear.
also, the audacity of personas switching gear on weekly basis and preaching to others that it’s wrong.
Had the same feeling, I got RMR’s video recommended this weekend, and I simply could not keep watching after all the ranting about Elektronauts which was a complete misrepresentation of my experience in this forum.
It sucks because, like @Fin25, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. This video though was extremely grating, RMR seems to have an ax to sharpen, and I think they were very dishonest on the cherry-picking of comments from here. Also, they are unfortunately turning to be very uncharismatic, it’s some kind of subtle whining that takes a while to realise but bores the hell out of me, I just didn’t have any desire to finish the video.
I hadn’t watched any of their videos in a long while, it’s just not very interesting content in general and their personality doesn’t help to make uninteresting videos at least entertaining… It’s just a bit grating.
I think RMR is a really great teacher and very musically talented indeed, but I find his all-or-nothing approach where he genuinely hates anyone who doesn’t think exactly the same as him on political and social issues a bit… well… deranged, tbh.
Highlighting that RMR might be being just a teeny bit internally inconsistent or, dare I say it, hypocritical, is not going down well. This was posted as a follow up with the caption “what reading through some of the comments on the new videos feels like”.
To make the meme more representative, the fox needs a sackful of synths on their back that they’ve been selling for years to the guy in the well.
Ah yes, RMR’s video. Bit unfair to bash Elektronauts. A place where synth enthusiast live, so you’re bound to see people wanting stuff. It’s their hobby, they like that stuff. Wouldn’t be different on any car/bike/expensive watch/boat/drone site. I think getting gear thrown at you and making a video about it in return while getting paid for views too isn’t the worst job in the world, but doesn’t that boost consumerism too? Oh well…
I haven’t watched this latest video but I have watched some others by him and related topics by other youtubers.
So the guy doesn’t like every aspect of his job. Get in line. I think we’ve established pretty well by now that the youtuber thing is difficult and you that you need to keep churning content to make anything much out of it. We knew that already. Same as being a musician, you have to keep generating something to sell if you want to make a living from it. Every idiot with a webcam can have a go now, same as every idiot with a DAW can make some music.
Being self-employed is difficult and being a public-facing figure (musician, actor etc) always comes with some negative feedback. I sympathise when you’re on the receiving end of nasty comments and people hiding behind anonymity.
Being an employee isn’t a bed of roses either by the way. I got made redundant recently and the job market isn’t all that great. Companies are expecting more and more, asking for several years of experience for “entry level” positions, mangling 2 or 3 job roles into one etc.
I guess we all bitch about work in the pub with our friends, we just don’t all do it in a very public way and try to monetise it.
EDIT - I’d like to add, for the record, that I don’t dislike RMR. The guy clearly has talent and has made some great music and some great content. You just have to take the rough with the smooth if you choose this job, same as any other job.
God yes, I’m so tired of that crap. Everyone tripping over each other because they think they’re in a position that validates them telling me what to think or do. Just give me the facts, I’ll make up my own mind thank you. If others don’t agree with my view, fine, it’s my life.
I’ve learned to make my own music in part by posting stupid questions here. I’ve found a friend here that now lives next door to me and plays in a band with me. I’ve found people here helping me with my mixes and encouraging me to make music when I felt nobody wants to hear that. I’ve learned so much about different approaches to making electronic music and how they’re all kinda valid on Elektronauts.
I can’t say the same about Youtube or RMR. So if this has to be a match, I’d say it’s 1 Elektronauts, 0 RMR.
To be fair, I’ve also bought way too much gear and spend too much time thinking about it because I’m on here. But if I was on Youtube and channels like RMR instead, it would be much much worse. I know that because I spent a lot of time there buying gear I thought I needed before I joined Elektronauts. If I wasn’t on Elektronauts, I’d be gassing somewhere else. At least there’s also threads here that are decidedly anti GAS and actually helpful without talking down on you.
Haven’t watched the video and I’m sure there’s lots of valid points in there. But Jeremy always seems to go over the top with these and paints these black and white pictures, also uses clickbait methods. Everything has to be a fight or rant. I’m totally turned off by this, as it’s the worst parts of the internet / social media. And I’ve decided that Elektronauts is my form of social media because this “toxic” behavior is mostly absent here.
That’s the only reason I ever clicked on this video - I watched a lot of his gear demos before and think he’s a talented performer with a lot of creativity. I can’t imagine what it’s like having a lot of musical talent and building a platform about music with brand partnerships and a lot of subscribers, and thinking “ok, time to start making video essays on class struggles and consumerism!”. But who knows. I have seen personal friends get their heads f****d up by even a little bit of power or notoriety before…
Also, I’m not saying mistakes can’t possibly happen, but if I had a partnership with a famous gear brand and signed an NDA to demo an upcoming piece of gear, I think I’d take every precaution under the sun not to slip up and breach NDA. Those relationships can’t be mended and are paramount to someone in the seat of a gear YouTube guy.
i feel the same way with elektronauts, this is an helping forum on many points.
Not to say with synth tubbers i learned the hard way , look closely as one day he’s praying some module to be THE thing to have and next week the same module is not even in his gigantous rack. we all pay for our gear here ! so not the same
Believe it or not, they don’t act on this forum apart from dropping news and interacting.
Actually, now that I think of it, I was in their HQ during the DTII leak, and they notified me while I was playing with a Monomachine kb, saying they were annoyed, and asked me if I could do something about it.
I reached the user that leaked the info and he was comprehensive. And not banned.
Any user that gets banned is our decision.
And usually for very good reasons.
All I’m saying that if you want to shift the topic away from consumerism, spend your time on making content that actually leads to that result. There’s a million ways Jeremy could do that. You are a content producer, just make the content you’d want to see and lead by example. Build a healthy community, give away your gear for free, focus on one device for a year.
Instead, he’s spending time on animating a fox that rants about consumerism, click baiting Elektronauts users with another diss. I’d just like people to focus on positive encouragement, instead he chooses the lazy route of social media algorithm rewarding anger and negativity.
That would be nice. On the other hand, the unfortunate reality is that they probably would never have amassed such a large audience in the first place doing this alone rather than hyping the latest gear.
