Havin' Fun!

hi I'm slime for brains this video is about having fun people like me feel like we're not entitled to leisure time I mean we still take it I have over 600 hours in The Binding of Isaac rebirth but it just makes us miserable the job market is getting worse and it's getting harder and harder for any of us to pay off our debts let alone save for retirement and that hour you spent playing Red Dead Redemption - you could have been learning a new skill or working out or meditating but you didn't you took time for yourself time that didn't even belong to you why would you do that the excuse we've come up with is self-care a neologism that likens anything we do for pleasure or that gives us any amount of satisfaction to work just like childcare or elder care the work of self-care is largely invisible to the person not performing it so you better you better respect the elbow grease I'm putting into myself I'm doing self-care it's legit and I find that sickening not the people who are demanding space for themselves that's actually good as hell I mean more so the expectation that such a thing must be justified anything which brings us pleasure anything which makes us happy all of that is unproductive and so you better have a damn good reason for why you're doing it the idea that we have to have a good reason for doing anything that's not productive has some pretty dark implications for the people that can't be productive for whatever reason I think that's a perverse way of looking at human activity and I think it only serves to benefit the people who are in power because they're the people you're expected to produce for they're the gatekeepers of what activity is and is not considered productive and therefore justifiable spending all your time and posting on Twitter what a waste of time you're just cracking jokes and enjoying yourself what you should be doing it's posting on Twitter as a brand manager for RVs because market research suggests that humanizes their brand that is productive it demonstrates development of brand awareness and online reputation deliberate planning and goal-setting content management search engine optimization and generation of inbound traffic trying to write the Great American Novel don't waste your time do you have any idea how few people make it in the publishing industry writing ad copy for Pfizer now that's marketable that shows that you write clear attractive copy with a distinctive voice interpret copywriting briefs to understand project require elaborate with designers PR and other professionals on large and small scale marketing product high-quality research and interviews edit and proofread copy as needs search engine optimization principles to maximize copies reach going to college well I hope you don't think you're gonna study history or philosophy or literature or any sort of liberal art because you're not gonna get a job that way why you going to college just to understand the world better give me a break no you should go into a stem field and that way you pretty much guaranteed a high paying job and if enough of you get stem jobs then that means employers can start reducing wages because they don't have to worry about attracting qualified applicants anymore so that's good everything we do in our daily lives is measured against its utility to capital even the stuff we do for fun look at social media for example it's supposed to be is to connect people to help them socialize that's the value proposition of social media you engage with it and in turn it connects it to your friends and family members and loved ones and prospective employers and you can all just sit around and post memes and be a great time for one and all but data suggests that social media use is actually making us more lonely and more depressed and lowering our self-esteem which kind of makes sense when you think about it because you're not really connecting with other people when you use social media connecting with the idealized version of people that they present to you the carefully manicured profile that makes them seem cooler and more attractive and more interesting than they actually are and that's not a statement of judgment either everybody does that I mean who doesn't untag themselves in photos where they look bad who doesn't just post when they do something interesting who doesn't want to make themselves seem more interesting online and when we're not doing so great when we're struggling we don't talk about that on social media if it's embarrassing or taboo the only time we talk about our struggles and social media is when it can be used as a story of perseverance that shows our strength and resolve and that means that if you're struggling and you don't have the same perseverance and resolve that other people do makes you feel kind of worse doesn't it so every day we're comparing ourselves to these idealized versions of other people and every day we feel like we're falling short but there's not much we can do about it I mean we can't really change the culture of social media you gonna stick your neck out when potential employers are gonna get bad information about you and they google your name why do you think I don't use my real name fart syllabic toilet I'm proud of Who I am and it's all something we choose to do nobody is forcing you to use social media at least no one individually is but if you didn't you'd be missing out on all sorts of news and social situations and prospective employment nobody is forcing you to curate your profile to make yourself seem cooler but isn't that kind of how you want to be seen so bit by bit these platforms that were sold to us as a way to connect with people and socialize and have fun become marketing tools that we use to sell ourselves to everyone else and then they find little ways to make us compete for virtualized currency like followers or retweets hey by the way don't forget to Like and subscribe and also visit my patreon at patreon.com slash slot slam if you're on the $10 tier aisle the other day My partner and I were looking for something to do on a Saturday morning and we came across this blog tio article about an adult playground which we thought sounded dope once we realized it wasn't a sex thing and what we were hoping for was like slides and jungle gyms and all that stuff but like adult-sized and without any kids around so that we could do all this stuff that we did as kids when we would play on playgrounds then when we googled it we found out it's actually just an art installation of cool-looking rooms so that you can take photos of yourself in cool rooms to put on Instagram market research suggests that Millennials aren't looking for products they're looking for experiences our play has become work but our work will never ever become play the things you do for money are expected to be grueling challenging miserable if your job isn't those things then you're just not trying hard enough you should be pushing yourself above and beyond you got to be like a sharp baby if you stop swimming you die capitalism requires endless growth that means that it isn't enough for you to just succeed you've got to succeed more and if you manage to do that then you've got to succeed more and so on and forever and then you die I don't know if you can hear that alarm that's my laundry I'll be right back in David Graeber book jobs he talks about how jobs that are of obvious utility to other people are usually paid less I couldn't be bothered to look through my kindle copy of that book to find the exact quotation so here is a quote from the essay the book was based on in our society there seems a general rule that the more obviously one's work benefits other people the less one is likely to be paid for it again an objective measure is hard to find but one easy way to get a sense is to ask what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear say would you like about nurses garbage collectors or mechanics it's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke the results would be immediate and catastrophic a world without teachers or dock workers would soon be in trouble and even one with that science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place debatable it's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs lobbyists PR researchers actuaries telemarketers bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish it's as though they are being told but you get to teach children or make cars you get to have real jobs and on top of that you have the nerve to also expect a middle-class pensions and health care if like they say do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life and if you never work a day in your life you'll you'll never get paid to work then to really work is to suffer that which does not cause us to suffer or sacrifice something is therefore not real work oh and by the way that means nobody's ever allowed to complain about their job which is pretty convenient for the people that make all the money from the jobs wouldn't you say I make youtube videos for a living is that a real job I mean I put full-time hours into it and that worked pretty hard but I bet to some of you the answer is it pretty clear no that's that's not a job that's a hobby and it isn't like I don't produce something I make videos then people pay me for those videos and they take that money and I pay my rent I gotta tell you I've been doing my taxes this month and boy it sure feels like a job to both me and the Canadian Revenue Agency but to some people the idea that what I'm doing is a job would piss them off what is wrong with our society what kind of moral rot has set in that people are just making videos for YouTube instead of going out there and getting a real job well I've had like 20 real jobs in my life and I got to tell you not a single one of them mattered nothing would have changed had any of them not been performed nobody ever asked if it made sense that I got paid to work at Starbucks but I don't think there's any more utility and pouring overpriced coffee for people than there is in making silly YouTube videos the only difference is that nobody would choose to pour coffee for huge lineups of people at Starbucks if they weren't getting paid to do it so the thing that actually made it a real job was that I didn't enjoy it so then if to work means to suffer that means it's in our employers best interests to make sure that we're suffering as much as possible ever had a boss tell you to stop socializing at work because you're talking to a co-worker even though you're performing your duties adequately ever been given pointless busy work to fill up your time that did not need to be performed simply because we're not paying you to sit around god damn it how often has your boss told you to give a hundred and ten percent an explicit command to overexert yourself well surely we can all just be comfortable with the idea that I will give 100 percent of my effort Derek and that sucks I think we should have more fun not just in our leisure but in our work - I think the capitalist mantra of increasing productivity has made us all think of work as the opposite of play fun as the opposite of responsibility when you have fun when you play when you make a concerted effort to enjoy yourself not for any reason just because it brings you some measure of personal satisfaction you're spitting in the face of a system that demands you conform to the lifestyle that is most productive for it one where you sacrifice everything that makes life worth living on the hopes that you just become a little bit more useful to some rich dingdong who will never know your name enter kittens like me believe in a philosophy called prefigurative politics which means that your political actions should mirror your political goals so if us nerds want to create a world that is more fun and enjoyable that means it's kind of necessary for us to have more fun and for us to live more enjoyable lives in the here and now that means that we have to find ways to avoid the impulse to constantly be on our grind and instead goof off a little just goof off a little and maybe that sounds like I'm asking you to be cavalier with your livelihood easy for me to say right some privilege dingdong in the internet telling you to just goof off at work and risk getting fired maybe you're in a precarious situation and you can't afford to stop hustling even for a second and if that's the case by all means do whatever it takes to survive and thrive in this hell world I'm not going to tell you any different I don't know the right to tell you anything different you do you you know what you're doing you know it's best for you I'm not gonna tell you to put yourself in danger of destitution for my principles that would be if you'll pardon my french silly sauce that being said we have to find a way to win back our right to enjoy ourselves if we don't our enemies will always be able to dangle the possibility of an enjoyable life in front of us and some people will do whatever it takes together as socialists we need to present the enjoyable alternative to the drudgery of modern life not just lecture people about the boring philosophy of old dead white dudes and how much coats cost and that's why it kind of bothers me that the right gets to present us as the buzz kills the scolds the proves the people I just want to wave their finger in your face and tell you you can't do nothing fun anymore conservatism is the new punk rock I don't think so we on the Left we're the fun ones baby we don't care what drugs do you do we don't care who you have consensual sex with or if you don't have sex at all for that matter we don't expect you to comply with arbitrary and unfair social norms do what you want dye your hair wear mail leggings convince yourself that you're good at the bongo drums it all flies here on the Left make no mistake the left has the fun ideas feminism for example is more fun than patriarchy it is not fun for women to be trapped in domestic servitude it is not fun for them to have to do all of the cooking and cleaning it is not fun for them to be more likely to be murdered or assaulted now maybe you think that feminism is taking away your fun because you can't jack off to the characters in the new Mortal Kombat game and that's fair enough but consider that maybe women didn't like being represented by this or this and if you want you can go ahead and make your teddy Mortal Kombat game no one's gonna stop you but we're gonna be over here having fun with this one similarly racial equality is more fun than white supremacy it's difficult for people to have fun if they're slaves or colonized or subject to Jim Crow laws in some sort of theoretical racially equal society people of color could just do whatever they wanted to do just learn to whittle or solve Fermi's paradox or have clean drinking water in traditional hunting rights on their own goddamn land or get really into smoothies just whatever now maybe you think racial politics are ruining your fun in the new Mortal Kombat game Jax goes back in time and he gets rid of the transatlantic slave trade and lives in an afro futurist Society no sorry that's actually fun as health crybabies what's your problem why is everybody talking about Mortal Kombat I don't get it I know there's a new Mortal Kombat game I thought I was the only person on earth that cared about Mortal Kombat similarly workplace democracy is more fun than wage labor it is more fun to have more control over your workplace the things that your workplace produces than to be told what to do by some rich dingdong who takes the lion's share of the profits now maybe you're a big big-time capitalist and you own the means of production and and you think it's more fun to hold them privately but do you know what I think sounds like a lot more fun than that a big big time revolution baby so I think it will be a good idea to Center fun in our discourse to remind people that we're just we're just goofballs that are fun to be around fun to listen to maybe we could focus less on how much everything sucks because everybody knows sucks and everybody's sick of hearing about it maybe we could focus instead on the ways that we could make it better hey yo sucks right now but good news that means there's room for your life to get a whole lot better it's a pretty attractive message if we limit our activism or our communication to that which we consider productive to the exclusion of things that are merely fun for hem stringing ourselves we're giving in to capitalist logic about how work should be organized by their rules have you ever been to a protest they're fun I mean maybe they're not always happy maybe people aren't laughing all the time some protests are sad or angry but they still make it enter gauging entertaining and engaging with songs and chants and drum circles and people dress in costumes and people make their own signs and if they didn't do that it would be really boring and it would be that much harder to convince people to show up give up their free time and face the possibility of getting arrested and the people that we want to reach have a lot of on their plate right now we need to show them that the effort required to bring our ideas to fruition is worth their time and also that not only will they enjoy the results of the process they'll enjoy the process itself that way even if we don't succeed at least you had fun along the way and I think that might be a more compelling way to attract attention then join us or your bad and maybe not everything can be fun but we have to have enough fun that it makes the not fun stuff feel bearable because if we don't everybody's going to be too tired and sad to help so in the spirit of fun I will now have to demonstrate what fun looks like oh that hurt my nose I hurt my nose dabbing so that sucked hey I hope you liked the video if you did go ahead and there's a little button you can press that signifies that and that way YouTube will know that you liked it and that would be great for me also you can subscribe to this channel where I will post more videos probably one a week that's what I'm trying to do and that's what I've been doing lately hey also well I got your attention there's also patreon.com slash thoughts line where you can give me money and that way I will continue to be able to afford the things I need for living also you go ahead and if you want you can jangle the little bell icon and that'll alert you and I am online for live streams which I do every Thursday at 8 p.m. and also when new videos come out but it's kind of it's kind of a lot to ask I kind of got a lot of calls to action right now and I could kind of understand then maybe you maybe it's kind of overwhelming so don't feel bad if you know you can go eat feel free to rewind the video and listen to them again make my cat's hate this thing they've they they hate it so much and I don't blame them because it's loud and annoying you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 94,996

Rating: 4.9606624 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: BnsGKHC2dX4

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

There are "woke" companies that offer people to have fun at work (e.g. ping pong, yoga break etc.), and encourage socialization (sometimes making it practically mandatory, like team building exercises or parties). It's obviously still bad, because these things either end up compelling employees to spend more time at work, or force them to work without pay.

If you don't participate in the fun activities at work, or socialize, that actually hurts the productivity of the company, and the company doesn't like that. No one's paying you to go drinking with your team, but if you don't go, you're the asshole, and missing out on "networking opportunities" hurts your career.

Tricking their workers into thinking their job is fun essentially allows capitalists to privatize more of their workers time, and get away with paying them less.

[u/ApocaLiz]

I'm really enjoying Thought Slime's videos right now. Their videos are very to the point and I think they have a great sense of humour.

[u/Wumbo_Chumbo]

“The left aren’t the prudish ones”

I mostly agree but sometimes it does feel that we’re way to controlling on things, for instance what types of porn are considered problematic or not, likes that’s somehow something others should care about.