>>7275996Your conception of "production" is pretty limited. Go read Ulysses then tell me it's not challenging, or marathon a film series and tell me it's not exhausting. Interpreting a work critically and aesthetically isn't an act of simple consumption, it requires concentration, reflection, different competences and time to do correctly. If you want to say something about what you've experienced that is yet another level, and how is that different from producing exactly? Would you say wine tasters or journalists don't work?
Sure, people don't need to put their thoughts out; but people don't live in a vacuum, and do reach for other people to see what they think of something. And even if they don't, by simply "consuming" on and on they will generate their own tastes by comparison of different works, meaning they will naturally become more critical and their enjoyment will be less and less passive. Just look around you, do people here passively consume things, or do they discuss, analyze, select, take sides? Right now I'm doing exactly that, how am I not "working"? I'm clearly making an effort and testing myself, just like I did when I marathoned an anime series a day for a whole week; it wasn't something simple, it required to select what I wanted to watch, set a schedule, then stop myself from doing anything else otherwise I wouldn't make it on time. And then how am I even sure I got everything correctly? How is this different from other forms of "work"? Say, would you call performance and sport a kind of production? Because then everyone back at /v/ is "producing" just by playing videogames (provided they do play them); where do you think things like "git gud" come from? Ever tried speedrunning or playing online competitively?
Yes, what you call production is often more intensive than what you call production, but that doesn't make them inherently different. Being a good watcher, a good judge, is as much of a skill as, and is in fact required to create, any other forms of art. Also, you conflate a NEET with someone who necessarily needn't produce, but that isn't the case at all; a NEET just doesn't have an official occupation.
I think you're widely underestimating the work that can go into some acts of consumption, and it really seems like a false dichotomy that you're setting up if you ask me. You assign value purely through effort, but effort is purely subjective, one can always try harder at doing anything.
