But it feels extremely demeaning and ableist on a deeper look? I mean, I haven't watched it, I'm not subjecting myself to what I'm fairly certain is the same "capitalism caused adhd and also addiction is a moral failing" argument. But that's what I mean?
It doesn't veer into this. The video essay is really just boilerplate postmodern musing on late capitalism and how subjectivity is structured under capitalism through marketing etc.
Am I the only person who feels this way?
If you're like me you might want to just skim the comments. A lot of the stuff mentioned about the video's content really pissed me off. I really hope I'm not alone in this.
I didn't look into the comments tbh because it's invariably people engaging in philosophy 101 navel-gazing, either with the assumption that this sort of critique is a greenlight to reify their current preconceptions about the world or really facile "nothing is real" stuff, and both infuriate me to no end because with the examples of the former people think they've arrived as some mystical truth which is impenetrable to any sort of logic or critique and the latter is so mystified and detached from reality (and a product of a deep and unacknowledged position of privilege) that the people who buy into just revert to a sort of infinite regress that is unassailable.
It feels like I'm being judged for mentallt struggling with executive function but in a Leftist Way Actually (tm).
I am with you on this. I wrote a post quite a while ago arguing the position that saying "It's not you, it's capitalism" is inherently a reactionary take which reinforces an ableist perception of reality while denying the struggles of people with disability. The responses were mixed but, unsurprisingly, there was a decent amount of responses from people who were unwilling to listen to a disabled person speaking about their own experience of disability explaining why this sort of shallow anti-capitalist critique whitewashes the experiences of people with disability. I didn't get into the weeds on this for a number of reasons but it's frustrating to me because I'd say that most radicals would outright reject a message about white supremacy like "it's not racism, it's because of capitalism" because this parallels the kind of whitewashing of oppression and of the struggle that PoC face that I'm discussing with regards to disability, in the sense that racism very much existed prior to capitalism and that, quite obviously, the abolition of capitalism will not magically cause racism to suddenly evaporate.
Edit: Hm, I can't seem to find the post. I actually might have deleted it out of sheer frustration at the responses it garnered lol.