Why I decided to donate to Big Joel’s Patreon
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I had told myself it didn’t make sense. That I wouldn’t do it anymore.
Why the fuck would I be giving my hard-earned money to various creators who were making more out on Patreon that I did in my job while I was aching to make my own creative endeavours happens. It seemed pretty fucking self-defeating to me.
That’s when Big Joel happened. Well, that’s not entirely true. Let’s back up a little bit.
Finn McKenty, Anthony Fantano and my obsession with YouTube
I’ve been somewhat of a YouTube power user for a couple years now. I watch it considerably more than I watch television or other streaming platforms that mostly focus on fiction and more conventional forms of audiovisual entertainment like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Crunchyroll. My reasons for doing so are not important, but what you need to know is that it made my life better. Considerably so.
YouTube is the only entertainment platform that seems to understand better than I do what I’m really looking for. Not what I’m looking for specifically in the moment, but what I’m looking for in general. In life. Where I’m going and where I’m supposed to go. That’s why it constantly offers me videos made by people who want to share their knowledge about something. Unlike let’s say Netflix, it doesn’t try to force-feed me its latest production. It’s attuned to what I want. I know that a creepy algorithm is probably responsible for that, but it really works for me.
Because of that, I met a lot of creators who I really trust on issues that directly affect my life like creativity, criticism, art and sometimes politics. One of these creators is Finn McKenty, a marketing strategist who runs a channel called The Punk Rock MBA that discusses the business of music. McKenty was interviewing renowned music critic and YouTube superstar Anthony Fantano on his podcast the other day and they were talking about Patreon. They said something that was intriguing to me. I think it was McKenty who claimed: “You shouldn’t contribute to a Patreon for the rewards. You should do it to keep a creator going. You should give 1$ to many Patreons rather than contribute to one Patreon at the maximum tiers.”
I thought that was a reasonable argument, but still. I’m not exactly financially comfortable and I have creative goals that I want to achieve.These dollars seemed best invested in my pockets than in another creator’s.
The greatest problem I have with the world in 2021
If you have a fucking pulse and a social media account in 2021, you can see that society is polarizing. It’s been polarizing for years. You’re either a leftist or a conservative. You’re not socially allowed meander in both camps. Both faction have been waging what some have called a cultural war on social media for many years now, but it’s been increasingly more intense since Donald Trump became U.S president in 2016.
I’m not exactly perceptive for observing that and noticing it’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem.
Now, I’m a left-leaning person myself. I’m not militant in any shape or form, but I think that making the world a more equitable place for anyone is fucking awesome. I think black people should not be afraid to get killed by the police for things white people don’t even get arrested for. I think women should be allowed to wear what they want and say what they want without fearing to be forced into intercourse. They should also get paid more. I mean, that doesn’t seem unreasonable at all to me.
But I’m not exactly perceptive for noticing that it’s not productive to argue about this online. Or am I? Left-leaning and right-leaning people have been arguing in comment sections online for years now and it’s been thoroughly improductive. How so? Well, there’s a really simple explanation: you don’t ever change anyone’s mind without empathy and compassion. Facts and logic are awesome, but the problem when only using them without trying to understand your interlocutor’s point is view is two folds:
It’ll make him/her feel dumb if confronted with the invalidity of his/her opinions.
If you search the web hard enough, you can find an alternative explanation to justify your belief. I’m not saying it’ll be a good or productive one. But there are people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager who have made career of confirming’s people beliefs.
How the fuck do you deal with that? My answer for the last two or three years was to show empathy and compassion. Not necessarily validate right-wing beliefs that I don’t agree with, but focus on human beings rather than ideas. Because one of the problems with the internet is that is commodifies everything. Owning libs or owning fascist is an activity you can do without ever having to face the consequences of it. It’s something you can do to feel good and not necessarily to help make the world a better place.
I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it if it remained on the internet and it didn’t galvanize people in their beliefs, leading to real world overflow ranging from mass shootings to whatever the fuck happened in the Capitol last week. The world is getting worse. We’re kind of all at fault and we refuse to see it. As great as I think my response is, it’s not really a productive one. I’m not a militant person by nature, but this starts feeling like I’m not doing my part.
Enter the (Not so) Big Joel
I’ve discovered Big Joel by accident, which is the way I discover most meaningful things on YouTube. I was binge-watching Mark Manson videos while having breakfast and stumbled upon the Jordan Peterson essay linked above. It gave me somewhat of a revelation. Here was someone who understood exactly who Jordan Peterson was and what he was doing, acknowledged the validity of certain ideas, but mostly called him out on the toxic ones. It seemed like a productive way to talk about the guy.
To be fair, it’s probably Big Joel’s most nuanced video but Peterson is his subject who is most deserving of nuance. If I responded to this video so much, it’s because I’ve read Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules to Life : An Antidote to Chaos and it really broke my heart. Because it’s obvious that he’s someone who once greatly helped other people and somehow along the way sold his soul in order to become an important social figure. Aside from the dreaded chapter 11 of 12 Rules to Life where Peterson rolls out his ideas on how women should not whine because they have no contributed to anything in culture before 1950 and other bullshit like that… well, it’s a pretty great self-help book.
I would go as fas as saying Jordan Peterson helped me more than many authors did. His ideas on how meaning is created through sacrifice helped me to stay on course with my writing. Hell, it might be one of the reason why I’m writing this peace. I am putting the time and effort that I could put to entertain or educate myself in order to communicate an idea. So, I was impressed with Joel’s understanding that Peterson is not a one-dimensional fascists like many other who exist today and because of that, I was including to trust him from the get-go.
The toxic culture of being always right
If anything stood out of my obsessive binge-watching of Big Joel channel is the “culture wars” we’re currently living through are not always about the issues being discussed. While he mostly investigates conservatives, I know it is sometimes true for left-leaning people as well. It’s not about changing the world. It’s about being right and having your values immediately validated by the dopamine rush of finding a plausible justification for them or sometimes simple through other people’s likes and comments.
The “culture wars” are heading into a wall and the way Big Joel suggests we break through that wall is to calmly discuss the issues at stake with the most intellectual honesty possible. But there’s one important caveat: it has to be through video argument because direct arguments right now are undermined by anger, condescension and dishonesty from both sides.
What did I do after watching Big Joel’s video on Jordan Peterson? I went back to Peterson’s lectures on the topics of psychology, social change and social justice. Big Joel prompted me to want to hear both sides of the argument, because his video essay was eloquent, compassionate and rooted in common sense. He might be some kind of East Coast elitist prick. There is very little information about him online. But it’s not how he comes off at all. He comes off like someone who is trying to tackle difficult issues and problematic characters in a calm cool-headed way. He comes off like someone who is genuinely trying to make the world a better place by giving an informed input on complicated issues.
That is why I decided to give money to Big Joel’s Patreon. Because I’m not a militant person, but he is and I believe in the way he wants to change things. Judging from the performance of his YouTube videos, it works really well, too. I want him to keep going that for as long as he feels inspired to do so and not worrying about money is a great way to let inspiration wash over you. He does make more money with it that I do in my day job, but it’s different. He does something that I wouldn’t be able to do anyway.
If that means zigging, when I was about to zag to the liquor store once a year, so be it. I’m contributing for 3.50$CAN a month, which translates to 42$CAN a year. The price of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. My body (and my soul) could do with one less every year. I decided to invest it in someone who helps changing the way people think, which is an important issue to me. Finn McKenty was right. We should contribute to as many Patreons as possible, but we should do it for reasons that we understand and believe in.
I’m voting with my money and so should you.
* this essay was originally published on medium. You can follow me there too. *
