I’ve been picking fights on reddit about this. My feeling is that X has become a neo-nazi platform, and anyone who stays on there is implicitly endorsing fascism. The popular sentiment seems to be that, even if you accept this as true, it doesn’t extend to music artists because they need to promote their music to make money. My personal feeling is that music artists do not get a pass. I don’t care if you are trying to make money. Preventing fascism is more important than making money. There are many non-fascist platforms that you could promote your music on.
Am I off base with this? I mean, I hate corporations and capitalism and view them as the main evils of our modern world, yet I work for an evil corporation at my day job. I think I get a pass because I need to make money to live. Am I a hypocrite?
Most people aren’t going to put their livelihood at risk because it’s morally right. If they all hopped ship overnight it would be a different story, but until the dominos start to fall they’re too ingrained to make it likely.
I do agree with you, everyone has interest dropping the platform, but at best I can see some mirroring accounts just in case.
Nobody said anything about surviving? These are people who worked for years building a career that means something to them.
What you said wasn’t incorrect, but it is about as useful as telling someone “just learn to code!” with an added layer of moral superiority
It’s also worth noting that most jobs you work are going to be for a corporation of some kind that ultimately has some kind of negative impact on the world in some way. Should they quit making music and go work for Amazon instead? What if that’s the only job they can get? Maybe they don’t work for Amazon but they work somewhere, contribute to pollution every day, and work for an employer that lobbies for billionaire interests or uses materials that were sourced from horrible working conditions or flat out slave labor. On that note, is your phone ethically sourced? Your shoes? All your clothes? You’re sure you haven’t contributed to sweat shops by buying from the wrong sources?
It’s difficult to exist in this world and make money while having zero negative impact, and not making money isn’t an option for the vast majority of people. I think when you really think about it you’ll see that you almost certainly engage and support in ideas you don’t support, just by accident as a consequence of living, and leaving x isn’t a solution for everything that you think it is.
My feed doesn’t have any neo nazy stuff. Maybe I use it differently or it is because of my country, but here leftists are on twitter and killing it would be very troublesome. Right wing only has some bot accounts.
what’s stopping leftists in your country from using an alternate platform? i mean, i’m not going to tell you what the left in your country should do, but twitter is now an explicitly pro-Donald Trump platform and likely contributed to him winning the US election. I think leftists elsewhere in the world care about whether the US descends into full-blown fascism, because that would be generally bad for the entire world? But I could be wrong about that, I could also see people feeling like that could be a good thing for them because it would mean the US meddles less in other nations’ affairs.
If you do think Trump winning the US election is a bad thing for your personal political aims, you should probably be looking for a way to get off twitter, because twitter is now a part of his machine.
Yeah that’s kind of where my mind is changing. However, I do think the conversation is different depending on whether it’s an unsigned indie artist vs. Billie Eilish. Billie is gonna sell her records and tickets whether she’s on X or not, and besides, she’s probably made enough by now to never need to work again.
I’ve been picking fights on reddit about this. My feeling is that X has become a neo-nazi platform, and anyone who stays on there is implicitly endorsing fascism. The popular sentiment seems to be that, even if you accept this as true, it doesn’t extend to music artists because they need to promote their music to make money. My personal feeling is that music artists do not get a pass. I don’t care if you are trying to make money. Preventing fascism is more important than making money. There are many non-fascist platforms that you could promote your music on.
Am I off base with this? I mean, I hate corporations and capitalism and view them as the main evils of our modern world, yet I work for an evil corporation at my day job. I think I get a pass because I need to make money to live. Am I a hypocrite?
Most people aren’t going to put their livelihood at risk because it’s morally right. If they all hopped ship overnight it would be a different story, but until the dominos start to fall they’re too ingrained to make it likely.
I do agree with you, everyone has interest dropping the platform, but at best I can see some mirroring accounts just in case.
They’re always welcome to get a regular job. They’re not choosing what they have to do to survive, they’re choosing what they want.
Nobody said anything about surviving? These are people who worked for years building a career that means something to them.
What you said wasn’t incorrect, but it is about as useful as telling someone “just learn to code!” with an added layer of moral superiority
It’s also worth noting that most jobs you work are going to be for a corporation of some kind that ultimately has some kind of negative impact on the world in some way. Should they quit making music and go work for Amazon instead? What if that’s the only job they can get? Maybe they don’t work for Amazon but they work somewhere, contribute to pollution every day, and work for an employer that lobbies for billionaire interests or uses materials that were sourced from horrible working conditions or flat out slave labor. On that note, is your phone ethically sourced? Your shoes? All your clothes? You’re sure you haven’t contributed to sweat shops by buying from the wrong sources?
It’s difficult to exist in this world and make money while having zero negative impact, and not making money isn’t an option for the vast majority of people. I think when you really think about it you’ll see that you almost certainly engage and support in ideas you don’t support, just by accident as a consequence of living, and leaving x isn’t a solution for everything that you think it is.
Of course it’s real easy to make this statement when it’s someone else making the sacrifice.
My feed doesn’t have any neo nazy stuff. Maybe I use it differently or it is because of my country, but here leftists are on twitter and killing it would be very troublesome. Right wing only has some bot accounts.
what’s stopping leftists in your country from using an alternate platform? i mean, i’m not going to tell you what the left in your country should do, but twitter is now an explicitly pro-Donald Trump platform and likely contributed to him winning the US election. I think leftists elsewhere in the world care about whether the US descends into full-blown fascism, because that would be generally bad for the entire world? But I could be wrong about that, I could also see people feeling like that could be a good thing for them because it would mean the US meddles less in other nations’ affairs.
If you do think Trump winning the US election is a bad thing for your personal political aims, you should probably be looking for a way to get off twitter, because twitter is now a part of his machine.
Musicians also need money to live so why don’t they get the pass?
Yeah that’s kind of where my mind is changing. However, I do think the conversation is different depending on whether it’s an unsigned indie artist vs. Billie Eilish. Billie is gonna sell her records and tickets whether she’s on X or not, and besides, she’s probably made enough by now to never need to work again.
You’re right, and those with a following are the important accounts that would help get the others to leave