Comment by gfxgirl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfxgirl | Hacker News Reader

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I want to ask a serious question, what's a reasonable response? Every youtube channel and nearly every podcast I listen that brings up climate change also has frivolous merch they push and commercials for wasteful things.

I know that at some level their merch and maybe the wasteful things are not a major sources of climate change but ... the attitude is. Each individual youtuber/podcaster is taking the attitude "My income is more important than the environment" which is basically the attitude almost everyone takes and arguably in the exact same category as fast fashion etc.

Do you really need a Kurzgesagt calendar/poster/plushy shipped across the world to you? Flash Forward Podcast is always advertising you should subscribe to have gourmet beers shipped to you on subscription. Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast shills for Bespoke Post to send you boxes of stuff you don't need every month. Isn't there some kind of disconnect between these shows telling us we should do more about climate change and then pushing exactly the kind of consumerism that brought us here?

It was sad to watch VOX try to justify traveling by plane 10-20 times a year.

IMO "My income is more important than the environment" is not the correct summary. The actual situation is this:

1) A youtuber needs a certain amount of income to be able to afford the time to create their content. 2) Selling merch works way better than asking for donations 3) The positive impact of having the informational videos far outweighs the negative impact of creating and shipping the merch.

You can of course criticize the viewers for (2) and if you think spreading information has a low impact, you can question (3).

So basically "my message is important so I'll burn the world to spread it but your message, probably not so don't copy me" .. Okay.

I mean you can make that same argument about almost anything "My 50k miles of air travel a year is important, yours isn't". "I need my giant house because I'm an influencer and invite lots of people over so I can convince them to save the environment". "If I don't look my best I'll never get the best opportunities which will make me rich and I can spend all my rich money on charity therefore I need all this fashion", etc...

Unfortunately, the way we've structured our economies and societies in the western world depend on continually greater consumption. It demands a constant upwards curve of resource consumption, otherwise it breaks down.

The first thought in most people's minds when they hear of a crisis is "what can I buy to help?", and many others go straight to "what can I sell?"

At the very least, they could sell something that is actually useful, instead of crap merch that serves no other purpose than to sit on a shelf for a while before being thrown in the trash.

Even better, start using Patreon to fund their media content directly, and offer non-physical bonuses for higher tiers, like early access and exclusive content.

It's hard to break out of the current consumerist paradigm, especially for the average content creator. But they should as least try to do the least possible damage within that paradigm, while advocating for a better way.

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