A certain behavior has been pissing me off lately, and I think it’s something society would benefit from criticizing. On YouTube, I regularly watch a number of “reaction” content creators. I’m using that term very broadly to mean anyone who comments on a variety of topics and acquires viewers through their personality, insightfulness, or something in-between. Many do this while livestreaming themselves to a public audience, reading about and reacting to things in real-time.

Often, the streamer’s chat will suggest a topic, the streamer will search for it, click on an article for more information, and…

“Hi! The full article is available for paid subscribers only. Enter your blah blah below and for only $blah a month, you can blah blah blah.”

It’s paywalled. Goddamn it. I’ve been there. You’ve been there. We’ve all been there. It sucks, and it’s annoying. At this point, you can leave and try to find a source with no paywall, circumvent the filter through some exploit, or god forbid, pay for the content and service that came at the cost of someone’s labor and web hosting expenses.

People don’t take the third option. Most importantly, people who can take the third option.

The specific incident and content creator that inspired me to write this article is YouTuber penguinz0, AKA MoistCr1TiKaL, AKA Moist, AKA Cr1TiKaL, AKA Charlie, AKA mute your microphone when you burp, you absolute toad. I mostly like his content. He’s really funny, generally on the right side of issues, and probably a net-positive cultural force, even if I think he leaves some of his influence regarding major topics on the table. I’m not a hate-watcher, nor is this article meant to “take him down,” as if I even could.

In fact, I’ve been watching his videos since before he even showed his face, which means I’m a real fan. Regardless, if this article encourages a collective reaction of, “hey, maybe we should hold people more accountable for perpetuating this harmful attitude,” I’ll consider it a success.

Now, to the incident in question:

For those unable to watch the embedded video, a description: at 7:45 minutes in, a livestream clip shows Cr1TiKaL, AKA Critikal, trying to find information online about a lawsuit involving the video game company Valve. The first article shown in the video comes from The Verge. I’m not personally familiar with The Verge, even if I recognize their name. My following speculations have no relation to the publication of this deliberation. I don’t hold The Verge in any regard. Hell, I barely even hold the ’90s alt rock band The Verve in any regard. A Storm in Heaven and “Bittersweet Symphony” are cool, granted.

Predictably, the article quickly displays a typical subscriber box demanding a $5 per month subscription for access to the full article, alongside other benefits. Now, I’ll acknowledge that $5 a month is especially high; from my experience, at least. To be fair, The Verge is legacy media, so the idea is that you’re paying a premium for above-average quality. They may or may not deserve that distinction. Like I said, I don’t regularly read ’em, so I can’t tell you how they compare to similar digital rags. Also, you’re getting ad-free podcasts and stuff as part of your subscription, so the totality of content is meant to reflect more value than just the article you’re accessing.

Critikal remarks, “since when does Verge not let you read articles without paying? Okay, last time I go on Verge.” Critikal clicks away and ends up reading a non-paywalled article on TheGamer. Again, I have no opinion on them. I scanned the article hoping that it sourced the Verge article, as that would’ve been really funny, but since it’s reporting on public legal filings, there wouldn’t have even been a reason for them to do that. Damn.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s all I wanted you to see.

Most people will probably react with, “so what?” before maybe extending other defenses towards Critikal, some of which I’ll get to. The reason this clip made me personally, particularly upset isn’t just the clip, but rather the general sentiment it expresses that’s shared between many people. You can think of it as the straw that broke the camel’s back. If I were a lawyer arguing my case in court, like the kind Valve is probably commiserating with right now, I might have dozens of examples of various streamers similarly, reflexively dismissing paywalled articles. But like, come on. Do I really need to convince you that people don’t like paywalls? And that some of those people would inevitably be wealthy? And that some of those people became wealthy from filming themselves reacting to others’ art?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with not wanting to pay paywall… payments. You aren’t entitled to buy everything you look at in a store, either. Same principle. What I take issue with is the attitude some people have with paywalls. When you see a product or service being sold in other contexts, like a store, you’re never offended by the basic concept of them asking for money. You might take issue with the value and consider something overpriced, but nobody scoffs and thinks, “they’re charging money for this!? It should be free!”

If Critikal ends up reading this article, here’s a good bit: “now, hold on, there. Whenever I’m unfortunate enough to eat Burger King, I am appalled that they’re not paying me for it. I think that’s a load of horseradish.” By the way, if you think BK’s chicken tenders suck, you’re so wrong. Insult the rest of their menu, for all I care. But I had to resist not making this entire article about that subject.

More seriously, Critikal’s comment of “last time I go on Verge” logically concludes that, to Critikal (and others like him), it’s impossible that The Verge could ever produce written content that’s worth their subscription cost. And why not? If quality is the issue, its writing staff could change at any time to hire those of perceived greater skill. But, no. That’s never mentioned, nor is the price tag—I noticed that one myself. Paying is simply beyond consideration, because the mere act of requesting that article writers be paid is a nonnegotiable dealbreaker. What other reason is there?

Paywalls for writing are treated differently. People widely hold writing in such little regard that even suggesting it warrants payment is met with scorn, subconsciously or otherwise. There’s no logical reason for this, as writing literally takes time and labor, which is otherwise society’s justification for requesting money for goods and services. But decades-long, largely conservative-led propagandistic rhetoric has conditioned people to devalue writers, as higher literacy rates correlate with people who vote left of the political spectrum. Leftist ideas favor regulating corporate power, so naturally there’s an enormous investment from the ruling class to keep people uneducated.

It’s a strategy that has been remarkably successful, made evident by the unself-aware, contradictory thinking of those who’ve been conditioned. Critikal—and again, not just him—is aghast at the thought of paying a text publication for its product, yet in other videos will express support for the SAG-AFTRA writers’ strike, or celebrate the writing of his favorite media in industries perpetually belittling the creators who make their art good in the first place. Brothers, sisters, and blisters: it’s all the same shit. No matter where the battle takes place, the fundamental issue is between workers insisting what they do is worth money, and those paying them wanting to pay as little as physically possible. In this microcosm, someone like Critikal finds himself in the opposite position, and their perspective from that side is telling.

Script writers are lucky in the sense they at least have some people supporting them, as their medium abstracts the extent of writing’s involvement. People widely underestimate how much any human activity relies on effective communication. The cultural, politically-driven devaluing of writing is inversely proportional to just how essential of a skill writing is. The very first part of fulfilling one’s needs is being able to communicate them, which is something people increasingly suck total ass at doing. That’s no surprise, as they’re growing up in a culture that continues to shit all over writing and reading skills.

For anyone from my generation, and potentially those outside of it, remember how mocked the idea of earning a liberal arts degree was (is)? The concept you might pursue knowledge out of passion instead of potential income was unthinkable. There’s always been a false belief that “everyone has those skills.” Meanwhile, every week, a story goes viral of a company’s stock dropping millions of dollars because some dumbass completely fucked up their messaging, accidentally (?) made a racist social media post, and so on. Not such a cheap skill, then, is it? But those accidents are always reacted to like they’re natural disasters, and not the result of companies lacking a specific competency.

You think people vibe-coding the digital infrastructure that holds up global civilization is going to lead to catastrophic outcomes? You’re probably correct, but it’s going to be even worse if people aren’t even capable of properly phrasing what they want from AI.

When this all inevitably comes crumbling down, I worry that people will think the problem was no one knowing how to code. No, the problem was—and at this rate will continue to be—no one being able to fucking read a textbook on how to code.

The real problem facing developed nations right now is so much deeper, and at its core, anti-intellectual. And it starts with people like Critikal, with his massive, impressionable audience, not reinforcing the idea that writing is low value.

If Critikal had said nothing and clicked off that Verge article, I wouldn’t have had much of a reaction. This article definitely wouldn’t have been written—at least not right now. It was his audacious tone that got to me. The $5 The Verge is asking for might seem like a lot to me or the average person reading this article, but that amount is fucking nothing to Critikal, and we all know that.

As a reaction-based content creator, his platform is built off the backs of others’ creations, and an extremely high percentage of those started with text, whether on paper or a Word document. The genesis of nearly everything he reacts to is built off a fundamental skill he’s deigned as literally worthless. More like hypocritikal. And you’re telling me that incredible joke isn’t worth a single cent? Sure, the punchline’s been used before, probably. But what about my setup? Besides, do you think every piece of art you enjoy loses a claim to monetary value if it can be argued to be derivative? Of course you don’t. Don’t lie to me, and don’t lie to yourself.

Yeah, I mean… just… fuck off, really? This perspective people have towards online publications’ paywalls is hypocritical, anti-intellectual, anti-artist bullshit. I’m tired of looking the other way when the same people pretend to be critics of their own brand of disdain in superficially-different contexts. Be morally consistent and stop treating writers like second-class artists whenever they aren’t fortunate enough to ride on the coattails of more culturally-legitimized artistic mediums like video games, movies, and TV shows.

In a time of unprecedented wealth inequality, particularly in the sense that money has low liquidity, i.e., it doesn’t circulate, this does all burn a bit. When I don’t pay paywall fees, it’s not necessarily because I don’t think the value is fair. It’s because I can’t. I often don’t even know when my next paycheck will be. Did you know that to even have my articles appear in search results for more than one exact key phrase, I have to pay?

Yet, if people capable of subscribing to my Patreon or otherwise donating did so, I would be able to circulate some of that money back towards the paywalls I’ve had to neglect, elevating the wealth of my entire industry. That will never happen if my visitors are culturally conditioned to not even consider paying for my writing.

Once more, I don’t have anything fundamentally against people who don’t pay to get past every paywall, or even those who find it annoying. If you’ve ever had empathy for the existence of paywalls, then virtually none of my criticisms are directed at you. Comparatively, I don’t have any beef with people occasionally pirating media, either. Morally, of course—I don’t determine the legality. But I would never condone a world where no one pays for a video game, where no one pays for a movie, where no one pays for a book simply because the prospective buyer can. That’d invariably lead to a world with less of those things. It would be a worse world.

But out of any potential customer, I think it’s kind of fucking sucks to see a millionaire entertainer mocking the idea of flicking a dime into a panhandler’s bag. If that millionaire even glanced over at them, maybe they’d realize that panhandler was the same guy who served them their breakfast that morning. Maybe that beggar even just shined their shoes. But if they had noticed, would they have even cared?

I don’t want to hear from them or you as to whether they would feel differently—I want them to prove it. Actions, not words. Leave the words to me. That’s what I’m paid for… sometimes.