Online personas get paid in social currency, if not hard currency, but it's a status contest just the same

The anti-woke Left princess has detonated the vest again, responding to a Bernie supporter (and fellow anti-woke Leftist) who framed Liz Warren's campaign as originally leftist / socialist, but now marching to the center / re-entering the Earth's atmosphere:

"march to the centre" 😤

She's a capitalist to her bones who openly says she loves competition, a tripartite class hierarchy to encourage competition, and bankruptcy provisions are better than a welfare state safety net because they promote market competition.

There is no left https://t.co/0eXqySP8gP

— Aimee Terese (@aimeeterese) January 4, 2020

After he said he laughed upon reading a tweet about "him and his ilk," she said he'd be laughing all the way to the bank.

Laughing all the way to the bank. https://t.co/AECDKTEwRK

— Aimee Terese (@aimeeterese) January 4, 2020

That set off a cackling hysteria among the online personas about "getting paid to post" -- how risible! That was what really set them off -- Aimee suggesting that they benefit from framing political events in a certain way. "Where's the money in my bank account, then, galaxy brain genius?"

But Aimee means a "social currency" bank, not a hard currency bank. Because we don't have a handy literal phrase for non-monetary status contests, she used "bank" as a figure of speech.

Ironic deflection about "I don't get paid to post," coming from social media figures, obfuscates the nature of status contests among post-Boomer generations. See this foundational post on the generational structure of status competition, as well as a recent follow-up (also motivated by a perceptive Aimee Terese tweet).

Post-Boomers cannot compete in the niche of material wealth accumulation, since it is saturated with Boomers who will not leave the battle arena until they drop dead.

Gen X-ers moved on to the niche of lifestyle competition, but that has wealth requirements of its own -- just a lot lower than a house in a wealthy zip code, two homes, several new cars, etc.

Millennials don't even have the money for that, so it is competition over persona construction -- or personal brand building, social media points, leveling up your public-facing character / avatar, etc. Clicks, likes, followers, and perhaps some hard currency if you leverage those into a patreon.

That is what Aimee means when she says that a semi-popular social media persona is benefiting by framing Liz Warren's campaign as originally left-wing / socialist, and only now marching toward the center / re-entering the atmosphere. It excuses the SJW dupes who fell for her con job, as well as the professional Left who played her up as nearly-as-great-as Bernie for most of last year. Any persona giving such a take benefits by getting shitloads of clicks and other character-leveling-up points from those very same leftoid dupes -- who else would fave a whitewashing of Warren and the dupes who fell for her con-job?

Someone like Aimee, Shialabeefsteak, her podcast co-host Benjamin Studebaker, and the like, are not going to have their tweets and takes go as viral as the whitewashing take because nobody in the consumer base of social media -- left, right, or otherwise -- is demanding hard-nosed realist analysis, even if it's depressing. They want an emotional rush, and they will not reward online personas who do not give them what they want.

As material deprivation intensifies, count on the newer waves of status-strivers to deny that they're striving and competing for any kind of status or points, just because they're not getting paid in hard cash. Post-Boomers cannot get handsomely paid for anything, so they are re-locating to battle arenas that do not have upfront monetary costs to enter the fray and rise to the top of one's own pile of skulls.

On a related concluding note, this little spat also shows how hamstrung the Bernie "revolution" is in its attempt to take over the party elites, compared to the Trump "revolution" of 2016. As a non-progressive, I easily deciphered Liz Warren as a neoliberal con-jobber back in 2016 when she refused to endorse Bernie, then eagerly campaigned for neoliberalism incarnate, AKA Crooked Hillary. Way back then, I compared her role to that of Ted Cruz, the neolib / neocon who put on an act about being anti-Establishment in a bid to torpedo the true anti-Establishment campaign, Trump's.

The professional Right was almost entirely on the side of Cruz -- and those who were not, were at least sympathetic to him, saying he was just-about-as-great-as Trump but not exactly, etc. Just like the professional Left lining up behind Warren in 2020 -- even if they say they support Bernie, they're sympathetic to her, framing her as progressive / left / socialist but just not as much as Bernie, arguing for her and Bernie to sign a truce pact, bla bla bla.

However, the Trump supporters in 2016 were willing and eager to blow up not only Ted Cruz's campaign in that particular year, but his whole image and persona -- even if it meant alienating a large share of the conservative movement base, and whole swaths of GOP territory (the Great Plains). That full-frontal assault succeeded in the primary, and was crucial for Trump to win the general -- he was the anti-Ted Cruz, "not a true conservative" Republican, and voters were only too happy to choose him in historically blue states.

Bernie supporters in 2020 are unwilling and fearful to blow up Liz Warren's whole image and persona, especially if it would alienate large sections of the liberal / progressive movement base, and whole swaths of blue-no-matter-who territory (the Bos-Wash megalopolis). That is a sign that they will fail to win the primary, and even if their guy were chosen at the Convention (despite losing the primary), why he would fail in the general election -- Bernie will have been cornered into being another generic progressive representing the bi-coastal culturally liberal elites and their pet NGO projects.