Tag: Capitalism

Would the world be better without Twitch.tv?

A streamer. I don’t know who.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently; since I basically gave up on mainstream media of all kinds and dove into Twitch streaming for something more human to watch (even if it is owned by Amazon).

Twitch is an interesting platform. It was definitely a pioneer in live-streaming as we know it today. And that’s generally a good thing. Live-streaming is a useful thing to be able to do. Anyone can use it for citizen journalism at a moment’s notice for example. And it’s an easy way to get into producing content online. It’s certainly easier than (scripting?), filming and uploading a YouTube video.

But aside from popularising and perfecting the technology of streaming itself, I can’t think of anything else positive Twitch is responsible for. It’s good at promoting conservative, individualistic thinking through its system of monetisation where it brings out the worst in so many people. Everything has a price. Streamers sell their dignity to the highest bidder all the time it feels like. It’s also good at creating either extremely right wing or anti-political discourse. It rewards stupidity in a way no other social media platform does. At least in my experience. And that’s despite other apps undoubtedly providing stiff completion. Its community on the whole practically celebrates anti-intellectualism. And that’s barely exaggeration, if at all.

And then you get into the gaming roots of the Twitch service itself. The original Justin.tv website which preceded Twitch was not gaming related. It was a more generic streaming service that came out of a sort of stunt; streaming the life of one of the founders 24/7 for a significant period of time. They chose to focus its successor service on gaming rather than IRL (in real life). And that was a mistake in my view. Presumably they chose to do that because they saw game streaming as the next big market they could aim it at to differentiate Twitch from YouTube. I guess it could also have come down to technical limitations of outdoor streaming at the time. Which would have been fair enough, even if it has seemingly not paid off in the long run. Shoehorning outdoor streaming into a platform designed for gaming was always going to be awkward and sub-optimal. Under social democracy, they might have felt empowered to take a punt on IRL / general variety streaming in the early stages.

The gaming world does have plenty of good people involved; but I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that it was and is far more toxic and unpleasant than it is welcoming and open minded. Had they chosen to (or been able to) focus on life streaming at the beginning, Twitch (or whatever they might have called it instead) could have been a genuine YouTube competitor by now. Rather than a relatively niche community of often angry / depressed gamer misfits (and that’s speaking as an anxious, occasionally angry and depressed gamer misfit). Had YouTube been put under pressure over the years, they’d likely not be as awful as they are now too because of their monopolistic position in online video.

Another interesting element to me, is just how easily the Twitch model has been copied by newcomers like Kick, which is even more right wing and problematic. Kick demonstrated how little of a unique selling point Twitch actually has, and maybe exposed their hubris. YouTube has that gargantuan back catalogue of videos stretching back 20 years. This is genuinely useful and makes them practically untouchable in video, as I said. What does Twitch have content wise? Yes, they have contracts with popular streamers. But we’ve seen big names abandon the platform for guaranteed cash payouts elsewhere already, and this trend will surely accelerate. In terms of archived streams, they now limit even paid accounts to just a few months of archives. And even when streamers choose to make full VODs highlighted permanently; watching 10 hour streams back is a very niche pursuit. I like to do it, because I find that very often, the best parts of streams don’t make the highlights (on YouTube of course). But I will readily admit I’m far from normal in that regard, and it’s surely not a money spinner for Twitch either. And even in this scenario, a lot of Twitch streamers actually just upload their full VODs to secondary YouTube accounts anyway. So Twitch loses out here too.

When you add everything together: the toxic, idiotic, extremely capitalistic culture; the gaming theme that has almost certainly limited the platform’s mainstream appeal; and the fact that almost the entire service can easily be replicated; it doesn’t look good.

If Amazon decided tomorrow to shut the whole thing down; everyone would just move over to Kick or another similar service, and barely anyone would shed a tear. You could even rebrand Kick with the Twitch name and logo, and turn the green accents to purple, and how many people would even be able to tell the difference?

To be absolutely clear; what we need now is definitely not Kick to replace Twitch. What we need is a non-gaming themed, socialist run live-streaming service that keeps the streaming tech but cuts out all the capitalist bullshit. Get rid of text-to-speech (TTS) donations; which hand a megaphone to rich arseholes who can promote fascist politics and climate denial as much as their fat wallets allow (Aka endlessly). Maybe allow one TTS message per viewer per stream. Free of charge of course (or very cheap if absolutely necessary). You’d still be able to be heard above the crowd when you feel like you have something really important to say. But you’d have to be very careful to make the most of it. To time it right, and really be profound. You wouldn’t have stupid spam messages all the time; and you’d allow socialists a voice too. Not just the cashed up, climate denying MAGA supporters. You’d also get rid of these sycophantic sugar daddy types that are way too common on the platform right now. And even that is hardly surprising given the rampant inequality in society. The rich are hoarding all the money!

You often get situations where female streamers are extremely reliant on (probably) older, (probably) rich (probably) men to pay their bills. Some of them are harmless, nice guys who maybe just really like the person and genuinely want to help them out. Albeit sometimes stretching their own finances to the limit to do so. But other times it’s more insidious. You can quite easily have situations where some men perhaps enjoy the power they have over women streamers in a way that pushes the boundary of innocent fun, or crosses it. Sometimes it feels pretty misogynistic, even if it’s not necessarily intentional. You would have a far healthier environment for streamers and viewers alike if you had an overall more equal society, with many people contributing smaller amounts. Rather than a handful as is so often the case now.

A left wing (or even centrist) Twitch alternative I think could very easily take the best elements of the technology, remove all the bad stuff; be a much more inclusive and open minded place for all kinds of thought and entertainment; and become a genuine YouTube competitor. I don’t think that would be too hard either these days, because I get the feeling many people kind of hate YouTube. I used to be a massive fan of YouTube before it became the undisputed home for all internet video not produced by a big corporation like Netflix or Disney. But in the last few years, the algorithm, the AI comment police, the censorship of small channels that speak uncomfortable truths, the incessant clickbait, the stupid facial expressions in thumbnails that creators are forced to make in order to pay their bills. The whole thing has just become so shit. So I think people are increasingly using it begrudgingly and are more open to alternatives. And especially if they’re live focused, because live is relatable, and has a unique, fun element when executed well.

If we do see something new come along, and Twitch does fall out of favour, then they’ll only have themselves to blame. Not least for choosing not to pay their “partners” what they’re worth; which is perhaps the biggest black mark against the company of all. It shows a disregard for the people who generate the money. A streaming platform without streamers is nothing after all. Even the lack of imagination in how payments are structured is mystifying. It seems obvious to me that you should have a progressive payment system. Pay small streamers the highest percentage, to enable them to make a living and potentially deliver more revenue for the company later on; and reduce it down to a base of maybe 50% as streamers earn more and more. But at the moment, you have a scenario where even streamers who have 100k followers and plenty of loyal subscribers are getting burnt out. It makes no sense for anyone. The whole streaming world is ripe for a totally new approach.

August 22, 2025
I’ll Never Forgive The Liberals

Fascist enabling liberals are responsible.

I saw some liberal responses to an Instagram video by Chris Packham; where they say basically “I voted for Labour because I thought they would turn it all around, but they turned out to be just as shit as the Tories”.

This shit broke me. It’s the most angry I’ve felt for quite a while. I haven’t been that angry about Trump. I’ve just been like “ah yeah ok” every time I’ve been told about the latest executive action Trump has introduced. I’m just entirely apathetic about it. Obviously I’ve been feeling for those innocent people impacted by these fascist policies. But I knew everything they would do, and I just generally prepared myself mentally for the worst policies I could imagine. So nothing shocked or surprised me in the slightest.

But when it comes to liberal voters and politicians; they really infuriate me. Obviously it’s the same all over the world; but considering I’m British, I’ll talk about the situation here specifically. The way Jeremy Corbyn and the left in general have been treated by so called Labour and the media is just nauseating. And then on top of that, the way we were ignored at every single point, when we were right at EVERY SINGLE POINT is unforgivable. This isn’t them saying “you were right about Jeremy Corbyn. You were right about Starmer. You were right to vote for Rebecca Long-Bailey.” This is “we fucked up by voting for Starmer” and nothing more. It’s like when they say nothing before October 7th is relevant when it comes to Palestine. They ignore history to justify the unjustifiable in their minds. They’ll never accept the left was right and they were wrong about anything (let alone everything).

They would rather play dumb and pretend that Labour under Starmer was always a social democratic proposition; until it suddenly wasn’t. It wasn’t an extreme neoliberal government in waiting from the very beginning in 2020 (5 years ago!) It wasn’t a party that offered nothing to voters because they knew as long as they remained alive, and gave away practically nothing on future policy; that by election day that they’d be in number 10 and 11 Downing Street. We can talk about the Tories making it inevitable that Labour would take over, and the media who ignored the only party that had policies that made actual sense (or any serious policy at all), the Green Party.

But at the end of the day, a special fuck you goes out to the liberal voters. The ignorant, insufferable morons who insisted that they knew better than us. They knew better about the economy. They knew better about the climate. They knew better about nature. They knew better about antisemitism. They knew better about protest. They knew better about politics and political strategy.

Except they didn’t. And they still can’t accept that they don’t. They never will, regardless of what goes wrong.

Fuck these people! I’m never listening to any of them again. Nor the liberal media, who are probably at fault more than any voters. I don’t know. There’s just something about liberal voters realising they fucked up but never taking any responsibility that particularly pisses me off.

Either way, they all need to own everything that happens from here on in. It’s nothing to do with the left. Climate breakdown and collapse. It’s on them. Fascism and the removal of all of our rights in the meantime. It’s on them.

If you’re reading this and you’re a neoliberalism enabler; it’s all on you. We’re always told that we need to go further to the right, even though capitalist ideology has failed time and time again. Ok, you win. The world is going fascist. You got what you wanted. Now let’s see you take responsibility for once. No one is going to believe you this time, when you inevitably try to blame the left for your utter failure; and the destruction of our only home.

I’m not even sure how far fetched it is to imagine a TV newsreader in a destroyed and smouldering newsroom in the future blaming Jeremy Corbyn and the left for our destruction at the hands of the fascists. That’s how insane our world now is.
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February 2, 2025
How to fix the music industry

End capitalism.

Ok thanks for reading. See you next time on my blog.

Seriously though, I did wonder if this is really a post worth writing, since, along with most other problems in our world; capitalism is the obvious cause. In the end, I did decide I could offer enough specifics to make it worth doing, so here we go.

The things I’m going to suggest could technically be done under capitalism. But we all know they won’t be. Just to be clear.

Pay artists properly via streaming

Clearly the current streaming model doesn’t work for anyone other than the executives of the platforms or the biggest artists in the world. Everyone else is struggling, and that’s not acceptable. From a climate change perspective, it is also disastrous because it incentivises bands to sell as much merch and physical albums (vinyl and CD, and sometimes even Cassette and more) as possible. It also incentivises longer tours (I don’t necessarily think that’s bad in of itself); but most importantly, higher priced tickets for those tours to make up for the lack of streaming income.

Streaming isn’t great for the environment, but it’s at least not the worst thing out there. As long as it avoids AI, downloads (which support artists much more) return to being the primary way of listening to your favourite bands; and streaming focuses purely on discovery, then it can work. But firstly, Spotify and the others need to be unified and then nationalised to provide a great worldwide service to all (especially the artists who are getting shafted right now).

Have radio stations (and streaming artist radio) play album songs, not just high charting singles

In order for this to happen, you probably require the end of corporate giant radio networks and the return of local independent stations with DJs being able to make their own playlist choices. Or the nationalised big stations like those operated by BBC need to lead the way in playing music that risks drawing in a smaller audience than if it were to just play established artists and hit songs. I’m not an expert on this particular point, and I do think the BBC in particular are probably among the better examples, but there do seem to be specific shows for new music, rather than it being throughout the schedule. And this is obviously far more so on commercial stations.

Governments support new artists properly and make the arts a big focus of their economies again

This is something I’ve seen being talked about by First Aid Kit and others. They were talking about how the Swedish government back home really looked after and supported them and other up-and-coming artists. Whereas, when they performed in the UK or US, they were basically left to fend for themselves, were paid poorly and not given even the basics from many venues. There is seemingly this kind of do it yourself attitude in the individualist countries (US and UK), that forms part of the whole artist attitude. But it shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be about who has the most grit and determination (or the biggest bank of Mum and Dad). It should be about talent. The arts have become the preserve of those who can afford to pursue whichever art form they choose. That’s entirely wrong.

Make it affordable and make quality instruments only

Music needs to be available to everyone. There needs to be support at every level. For example, to help school kids who want to start a band get ahold of good quality instruments that they can grow into. This idea of “beginner instruments” needs to go away, as cheap things need to disappear in all parts of our society. A cheap guitar that goes out of tune all the time isn’t a good beginner instrument. I don’t know why we have this idea that cheap means beginner. The way I see it, beginners need the extra help more than the established people do. It’s the same for photography, where beginner cameras are cheap and have less advanced features to help you take better pictures. It’s the same everywhere. Cheap isn’t good for beginners. Cheap isn’t good for anyone.

Conclusion

This isn’t an exhaustive list. I’m sure people who are actual music industry experts could come up with many more problems with record labels, agents, venues and many other things I don’t have a clue about. But if just these big ones were solved, it would make a massive difference already.

Music is like everything else in capitalism. I’m constantly astounded that anything works at all in our world, with the way everything is structured. It’s this human determination to make the best of a bad situation that drags capitalism into a situation where it just about functions. But it would be so easy to make just a handful of key changes here and there, to every part of society, and the positive difference would be immediately felt by everyone. Capitalism puts the shackles on everything we do. Even just loosening them will feel like incredible amount of freedom compared to what we’ve become used to over particularly the last half a century.
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December 17, 2024
How I would fix Football and other team sports

Recently, I guess because I know how fucked our politics, economics and climate system are, I’ve felt compelled to spend time watching a sport I used to love growing up instead.

The game is great. It’s everything around it that’s broken,

I’ve always liked Football (Soccer), but haven’t watched it much in the last decade or so. It’s the game itself I like. The passing, the tactics, the formations, the goals, the athleticism and skill. The reason I haven’t watched it is everything else that I see as being broken with it. Unsporting behaviour, violent conduct and cheating. The obscene money (in the men’s game so far). The ridiculous inequality of talent and lack of competition league wide in every country I know of.

Now that I’ve gotten back into it, it’s been in a different way. I’m watching a lot of women’s football, and the only men’s football I’m watching (aside from a bit of initial curiosity around Spain and Italy) is Scottish (mainly Celtic because of Palestine and their general left wing appeal), German (St. Pauli for similar reasons), and Japanese (because Japan is pretty respectful even in football). Otherwise it’s all been women’s leagues. The SWPL (Celtic of course, but also most other matches I can watch); WSL and Women’s Chanpionship in England, Serie A, Liga F, WE League. Anything I can find (except maybe NWSL).

I am enjoying these games, but there are still a lot of issues that I want to see addressed, and that I don’t see anyone else talking about in a serious way. People talk about financial differences between teams, but never about a way to solve it. And for the most part, they still hold the minnow teams to the same high standards they expect of title contenders with far more resources. There are elements of cheating and bad sportsmanship creeping into the women’s game, but I think a lot of that could be remedied by the other systemic changes I have in mind. So without further ado, let’s get into what reforms I would implement if given the chance.

A more equal method of player allocation

This is the biggest change of all, and can be done in various ways. Within the current neoliberal system, probably the easiest way would be to implement a confederation (UEFA, AFC etc) wide team salary cap and / or individual player wage limit. The highest cap would apply to all top division leagues under the UEFA umbrella, and there would be lower caps for each division below the top, and be uniform across all countries as much as possible. Obviously depending on how many football league tiers each country has. Presumably it would be 3 or 4 in most cases, although I’m not sure on that.

This would already make a massive difference to the competitiveness of leagues. You wouldn’t just have 3 or 4 title contenders and a bunch of no-hopers in the bottom half, just trying to lose the least games and not get relegated.

However, I’d personally go a lot further. Similar to what the ACO does in Le Mans endurance racing, where they rank drivers gold, silver or bronze; and then stipulate that you can only have certain combinations of those ranks in your 3 driver teams per car, in order to ensure a competitive field. I’d like to see the same principle applied elsewhere.

Every year, we see EA Sports rate every player in the leagues that are present in their game. Obviously, this wouldn’t be adequate for an official FIFA player rating, but you can see that it wouldn’t be that difficult to create such a system. presumably it would be significantly easier to achieve than what the IPC has to do for the Paralympics. Here, you’d only need to categorise players into a handful of ratings. As opposed to the huge variety of disabilities and severity of impairment in Para-sports. There probably would be a few controversies, but nothing serious. A player that falls on the wrong side of a gold or platinum rating would be highly sought after since they wouldn’t count towards a team’s top category allocation. So they would almost certainly end up at one of the most historically successful, most popular teams under the existing system.

You can see that while the existing top teams would still have a competitive advantage as far as being able to get the first picks of top platinum and gold players, the inequality and competitiveness gap in leagues would close dramatically, to the point of relative parity. It would just be like getting picked in high school PE class where you’d have alternating picks. You end up with broadly comparable teams in the end.

Ending in-season transfer windows

One of the worst things about all team sports now is the frequency of player transfers. It really loses so much of the joy in supporting a team when you are constantly losing players. It’s no coincidence that the most popular players among any fan base are the ones who have been with that particular club for a decade.

High player turnover may help your team win, but any victory will always be more hollow when it’s not with “your players” who have worked and improved for years until they win. Maybe you’ll have a couple of new additions each season under a new system, but no big scale revamps every offseason; and no in-season transfers.

There’s nothing worse than in-season trades for player stress, fan disappointment and disillusionment. Of course injuries are a big thing in football, and you need to replace those players. However, teams should be forced to bring up academy players into the senior squad in these instances. It would encourage investment into academies. These players will also be rated though, so if top players are discovered, a team might have to give them up or make room on their rosters to account. Transfers would still have to happen, but they would be far less frequent, and far less traumatic for the players and teammates involved.

Another aspect that I forgot to mention earlier in the equality of player distribution section is regarding large squads. Very often we see top teams filling their benches with quality players who could start for many other teams. This leads to intense frustration and talent being wasted. It also means that the top teams can avoid having to face these players. It’s a kind of power move so emblematic of this practically unregulated capitalist system. A change to a more egalitarian way of doing things will also alleviate this. Top players will always be playing and starting games. And decent players will always get good amounts of playing time off the bench at the very least.

Slashing player salaries and introducing wage brackets

This is a simple one. Male players in general are paid way too much, and I would even argue that the top female players are also paid way too much. I would cap both male and female pay at around £100,000 a year for platinum rated players. From what I’ve seen, there are women now making 8 times that. And Ronaldo in the men’s game something like 250 times that, which is beyond insane.

From there, it would go down progressively for the different ranks, to something like £50k for the average first division player in any league. This is just a rough estimate, but you get the idea. There wouldn’t be a huge wage discrepancy from bottom to top.

Ending corporate pay TV deals to get the money out

The current system where many games are behind expensive paywalls for sports TV and streaming packages simply doesn’t serve the fans. Even if you pay for all of the services, you still are very limited in the number of games you can watch. If you’re a fan of a team, you should be able to watch every game. Either for free, or for a small and reasonable fee. Paying through the nose for a very limited service makes no sense. This is another thing the Americans get somewhat right (aside from rookie player drafts). If you’re a fan of a team, you can watch every game. It’s still far from perfect, but it’s better than what we have in the UK and many other countries.

We need some combination or free-to-air TV, free streaming, affordable club or league specific streaming services or TV channels (with full access to all games if paid).

Fan-owned teams

This is an obvious one really. The fans are so crucial to football clubs. They’re such an integral part. They should collectively own the teams. It’s a model that works in Germany and elsewhere. It can easily be replicated. Get the capitalists out once and for all.

Conclusion

I think if we can achieve all or even just some of these things, the game (and other sports that are infected with capitalism) will be so much better. The focus needs to be back on fun and friendship, while still being competitive. At the moment, the money and high stakes (even in the women’s game now relatively speaking) encourages cheating, unsporting behaviour, and harder tackling which increases injury risk. And just generally it makes the sport much worse. The game as it exists now is far from “the beautiful game”. It’s an ugly, selfish, miserable game when you look beyond the glitz and glamour the slick media facade falsely presents. We need to take it back for the people.

October 12, 2024

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