Alux: A Dystopian Self Help Channel 

"giving people $1100 a month didn't improve their lives, it just made them happier" what the actual fuck lmao

Rich people never buy frivolous things like clothes, haircuts, and televisions. They simply buy mansions, yachts, porsches, etc. the essentials

"The only noticable result is the money made them more happy, but nothing else" This sentence is bone chilling. I can't describe it. It's horrifying. Holy shit.

not gonna lie, alux has the most evil vibe of any conservative channel/content. like, they take a look at the problems with capitalism, understand that there is exploitation, and say “this is a good thing”

Ever notice all rich people have the same basic haircut

genuinely can't believe how cartoonish this is hahaha. like the chill corporate music, clean graphic design, upbeat narrative tone all just to legit go "why r u so poor lmao. try not being poor next time loser"

Im a Political Economy student and I wrote a 10 page paper studying the Finland UBI study and the Ontario, Canada UBI study - in favour of UBI. The people who got UBI in Canada showed A) improved mental health and also B) improved physical health. People reported that now that they had a small amount of disposable income, they were able to buy healthier foods or do things like take their families swimming (getting exercise). The experiments were definitely a success.

love that this channel simultaneously calls poor people lazy and stupid, while also calling poor people stupid for working so hard. But also the rich got where they were through hard work.

“All the money did was make them H A P P Y” what more ghoulish thing could you say? She sounded like she was physically uncomfortable with the concept of poor people being happy

Alux is right on one thing. The rich don't protest or boycott. They lobby and monopolize.

this is the first time I have ever heard the idea that multiple pregnancies is "lazy." the idea that one of the most physically, financially, and mentally strenuous things a human body and mind can even do is somehow lazy and when I heard that I laughed out loud for real. wtf kinda drugs is this woman on

My mother is poor. When we first moved into our old trailer home, it was 500 dollars. we had to wash out of a bucket. My mother is the best person in the world. She is neither lazy, nor stupid. I love her to death and I am so thankful she raised me to be self aware of the 16 years she put into raising me.

Impressive that she managed to make "predatory loan sharks" something the poor are responsible for

That "lottery child" thing is so disgustingly hateful that I actually can't comprehend it.

Something about the "lottery baby" idea seemed somewhat foreign to me, so I looked into who owned the Alux site. Turns out it is owned by full time Romanian luxury blogger Emil Anton. He sells $250 entrepreneurship courses and $40 hoodies saying "future billionaire". So it's likely all a grift lol.

This is hilarious: Alux: "Hey poor people, don't waste your money on buying stuff! Don't watch sports unless you own a sports team or you're an athlete!" People: "Ok, we won't" Rich people: "Hey, why are we not making any profit anymore? Nobody is buying our stuff or watching our sports teams play!"

Notice how in the clip about poor people "wasting" their money on beautification they showed only women to represent "poor people with complicated hair" and only men to represent "rich people with simple hair." Like, they're observing an entirely different trend than the one that they say their describing. Rich women get their hair done too, and poor men also tend to have simpler hair. What even was that argument?

"All UBI did was make people happier." Okay, so let's do it. Sounds a LOT better than most Government policies.

Happy to see GladOs pursuing her video essay career. Watch out Joel!

A CEO works 4000 times faster than a normal working poor human. They have superhuman speed and 700 IQ, and of course have psychic powers

I’m convinced Alux is actually leftist satire buried under 500 layers of irony

It's an interesting and very telling language choice that it's "rich *people*" and "*the* poor" The dehumanisation of poor people by referring to them as a collective horde, directly contrasted against the humanised rich is the thesis statement of the channel

The main problem with the channel seems like they're focusing that the end goal for any person is to be rich. Not leaving a legacy, raising a family, feeling loved and loving others, charity and contributions to society, being with friends, or even just feeling happy.

“Money only solves money problems” A few seconds earlier “They gave everyone $1000 and all it did was produce happiness. No economic effect.”

"Everybody felt happier, but nothing important happened," my favorite normal sentence that is completely normal. No problems I can imagine with that sentence.

Man, this video has really inspired me to: -Shower 23 seconds a day -Invest 45k in crypto -Evade taxes (the government halts the grind) -Work out 140 hours a week -Stop wasting money on food for my toddlers (Mooching is beta, they should get a job) -start a new business every week See you broke bitches in a year, when I'm a Billionaire 😎

The phenomenon of a Lottery Child does exist but it's typically among people in extreme poverty (living below a dollar a day.) It makes a lot more sense for families whose resources are so limited that they can only afford to send one kid to school and where the safety net is non-existent so if they get too old to work without having a kid to provide for them, they'll just die. Neither of those conditions apply in countries with free/mandatory schooling and financial assistance for the elderly. So either they think all people in any level of poverty are the same or they're saying that people are dying of hunger because they're just too lazy to get a job. Interesting take!

"Have you ever noticed how those who are bad with money can never seem to keep hold of it?" Yes. That is the definition of being bad with money

On point 4: I saw a pretty fitting thing earlier today. It said: "When middle-class people pamper themselves, we call it "self-care". When the poor do it to ease their suffering, we call it irresponsible."

Well if those cobalt mining kids would just stop getting their nails done…

My boss once said: "Once you start making a certain amount of money, enough to be considered 'rich', you're outlook on everything changes. You look at poor people and just tell them to 'stop being poor'. Why do you think i hate my district manager?" That's coming from the guy who works 50+ hours a week to keep our store from falling apart at the seams constantly.

9:06 the fact that they dismiss “being happy” over productivity and fulfilling goals is honestly kinda sad. Imagine living a life where the only thing that matters are the checklists of work and achievements to accomplish.

Their entire message is: "don't protest, don't complain, just work." The worst part is some people don't realize how dystopian this shit is.

The Alux stuff almost sounds like someone fed a bunch of hyper-capitalist propaganda and buzzwords into a machine-learning algorithm and just made videos using what it spat out.

That happiness thing was hilarious. “Pff all they got was stupid happiness, you don’t need happiness, the only fuel you need to continue living is the desperate unlikely hope you strike it rich”

24:50 My therapist actually clarified that escapism is healthy in moderation. It's not a bad thing! It's a part of stress reduction.

The whole "poor people spend their money on their hair" thing seems like it's probably targeted towards black women but either way, a poor person has to spend more effort to look *not poor* so people like whoever wrote these lists might not decide they "deserve" to not know where their next meal is coming from. No one asks the rich guy if he really needs that third yacht.

"The rich don't protest", while Jeff Bezos, the richest of them all, is screaming at and suing NASA for giving a contract to a company that does something instead of Blue Origin.

"Stop taking out payday loans and do something valuable with your life, like open a payday loan shop."

ALUX: "A million dollars a year isn't a lot of money." Me: "Oh, really? Can I have a million dollars a year, then?" ALUX: "Oh, absolutely not. I refuse not for _my_ sake, you see, but for _yours!_ It's not a lot of money, of course, but if I just _gave_ it to you, you wouldn't learn how to solve your own problems. You're more empowered when you have to struggle! :D" Me: "Robot lady, there is literally no problem in my life that wouldn't be instantly solved by a $1M/year free income."

Millionaires: "Stop spending money on stupid shit!" Workers: "Ok, I'll stop consuming your stupid tech gadgets" Millionaire: "NO WAIT NOT LIKE THAT"

They sound like mr burns “Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed”

For the "Being poor is expensive" portion, I'm not sure if they had it in their video, but if you open up a bank account, you're likely going to have some monthly fee. The fee is either reduced or removed so long as your balance remains above a certain amount. For example, not keeping a balance of $100.00 or more means that you'd have to pay $7 a month for that account. So, if you're already struggling to maintain a balance over $100, you're then essentially penalized for being poor.

It's super gross that Alux warped some actual good household finance advice into a cruel bludgeon to beat down a class of people they find repulsive

This sounds like a content farm. They don't actually have a position, they are just slapping stuff together to pump out videos people will click on.

If you just replace “poor people” with “black people” I think you’ll understand how Alux is connecting lottery kids to welfare and protests to poverty. It’s all about the bits they don’t say. As a black person, all of these arguments sounded very familiar to me.

Honestly this feels like the kind of sleep tape that Patrick Bateman listened to every night as a teenager

the angry tone she used when talking about poor people making installment payments on a tv or whatever was so unsettling that shit made me feel like she was gonna come kill me

What’s so strikingly horrific about Alux is that most conservative media like this pretends not to hate poor people. Alux is very brazen and open about their distaste for the poor. It’s kinda hard to listen to. It almost makes me wonder how this lady can stomach recording some of this.

This has to be satire, right? "Alux" literally means "without light". Someone made a parody channel about an advice channel in a horrible dystopian nightmare world?

Rich people: Poor people need to stop buying play stations. The economy tanks Rich people: why aren't poor people buying things!

I think one thing no one ever talks about, is that non-neuro-typicalness can aide being poor. Someone who has ADHD may have financial issues, and possibly always will? Also, being rich is not what she makes out, the ‘Nouveau Riche’, can be crass, showy and haemorrhage money, and some 2nd gen. ‘NRs’, can follow suit. And with the Insta thing, lots of rich people waste money, or even just burn it!

I love the argument that rich people don’t buy frivolous things while showing helicopters flying to yachts- these are just pleasure items- the example of frivolity.

"Money flees the hands that don't work for it" sounds like something a villain from a Charles Dickens book would say.

"Nobody watch sports because you don't own the team" is just the wildest take I've ever heard...the misunderstanding of entertainment and economy is just baffling-

“Most people in the US end up in debt before they are old enough to drink” Hmm, I wonder why all these people are so poor? It’s not like there are institutions that young adults are told they have to go to or else their life won’t amount to anything. It must be because they’re having so many lottery babies.

The extremely violent classism that seeps off of the “lottery baby” concept makes me sick to my stomach

"They were happier, but nothing else." Pretty sure that's constitutionally awesome. Right up there with life and liberty.

the poverty chains bit just reminded me of the "family, religion, friendship, these are the three demons you must slay to succeed in business" speech from Mr Burns. The first one is literally the same point lmaooooo

I have never wanted to slap a person harder in my entire life than whoever is behind Alux.

It feels like their philosophy can basically be summed up by a quote from John Oliver: "I recognise the game is stacked against me, which is why it's gonna be so sweet when I win this thing!"

Alux: "here are the "chains" you have to break to become rich." >Begins listing off random things that you can't control. Ah, the classic solution to poverty: just be born rich!

as a kid i remember every other saturday going to the payday loan store and waiting in the car while my mom went in. this was so prevalent for so long that it was a normal errand. my sisters and i actually looked forward to it because it was one of the very rare instances where we got to go out and spend time with our mom. she worked so much - it had to have been at LEAST 70 hours a week. and this was my entire childhood. in '98 my dad was a union plumber in chicago and got injured on the job and it ruined his ability to work. my little sister just turned 2. my parents never got any government assistance, not even my dad being basically disabled to work in manual labor where his skills were. my mom did have to go to food banks occasionally when things got really dire. there were many many winters when we had to choose between paying electricity or gas. cold showers in chicago winters are fucking rough. i just really hate when rich people speak about poor people so horribly and quite frankly in such a disgusting manner. i'm glad i grew up dirt poor - i feel it creates a much better moral compass than many many wealthy people have. granted, i wish my family didn't struggle so hard and that we could have lived a bit more comfortably. but i hate to imagine the type of person my sisters or myself would be if we had grown up with riches and wealth.

My folk etymology for "Alux" is Greek "a-" (not) + Latin "lux" (light, bright), ie, "not bright"

"The only noticeable result was they were happier" Yeah we can't have that.

It's like seeing that the system is exploitative, inhumane and awful, but then deciding that the real injustice is that YOU don't personally get to do the exploiting

Every time they mention poor people buying frivolous things that they don't need I just imagine Jeff Bezos flying around in a spaceship

You ever notice how the King never protests? It's always the peasants protesting things! Conclusion: the King is rich because he doesn't protest. Wow...

when they said "the only result of the ubi study was that the money made the people more happy" i legitimately broke out laughing. i think your ideology might be broken guys please get it checked out

Alux just unironically did the "That just sounds like slavery with extra steps" bit from Rick and Morty.

Wow. Big Joel is an epic champion, who always manages to leave me satisfied, yet hungry for more

"Making money is no secret: you get a job or sell a product or service." For a channel that touts itself as one that gives advice to future billionaires, Alux sure doesn't seem to understand how billionaires actually become billionaires.

"Ever notice how people who are bad with money can't keep it?" That's a *tautology.* That's literally what "bad with money" *means.* It means not keeping track of it or spending it unwisely. Of course, this kind of tautological thinking about the poor is all over the place in anti-poor circles-jerks.

I love the "people worked hard all week, and reward themselves" line combined with the "poor people hate to work" sentiment A+, excellent cognitive dissonance!

dear god, the tone of the Alux lady makes me really anxious, like a really angry parent/teacher.

Funny how they said rich people make tv/movies when in reality, most of the people working in the industry are working class free lancers making just enough to get by, you know, like the rest of us

Poor people protest, the rich would never sully their hands with such a thing. Lobbying is the noble way to pursue your interests And the great thing is, unlike protesting, you never have to lobby for other people's interests, because you don't care about them

Joel, you missed something. When they say that the people in Finland don’t have their lives together, they assume that you only have your life together if you have a job. I believe that’s what they were hinting at.

I once watched Alux for them to say, "Don't be stupid and waste money on entertainment and video games" and in another video say, "You can't even buy this painting of two solid colors for five million." And I'm like, ah, yes. Alux truly knows how to spend money wisely.

When they said “money flees the hands that don’t earn it” i laughed out loud. TIL money chooses its owner, like the One Ring

This channel also seems to assume that the end goal is to be rich, when in fact most people don't actually want to be rich, they want to be able to peruse their hobbies and interests without worrying about having food and shelter, and it just so happens that being rich is the only way to do that under capitalism.

Alux talks about poor pepole like there isnt a section of poor pepole that were war veterans and got screwed over by their country.

I knew a teacher who played these videos for the class when there was no work to do. It infuriated me.

The philosophy of Alux says that only the rich can enjoy anything. If you’re poor you can’t look nice, play video games, experience any pleasure whatsoever.

The part about beauty purchases is so baffling. The entire cosmetic surgery industry thrives on rich people pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into their appearance. Not to mention personal trainers, boutique cosmetics, fancy home gym equipment, etc. These are all luxury industries. The sheer dissonance of claiming that rich people are unconcerned with their appearance is overwhelming.

The Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness, as described by Terry Pratchett, posits that when a rich person goes to the store to buy some new boots, they have some options: They can buy cheap boots that will last one year or they can buy expensive boots that will last ten years. It's cheaper long-term to buy the nice boots than to replace your boots every year, so the rich person will buy the nice boots. When a poor person goes to the store to buy boots, their options are somewhat different: They can buy the cheap boots, (and then have to buy new boots next year) or they can buy the expensive boots (and not have money for food.) It's so much harder to save money when you're poor.

Alux: being poor is a choice I'm so pro capitalism I never have fun Also alux: capitalism is fundamentally broken, working hard gives no benefit, debt is slavery and poor people stay poor because they pay more for basic goods and services

The beauty stuff has an extra "rubs me the wrong way" when workplace grooming standards are a time-honoured way to keep or throw poor people out of lucrative industries. Not looking poor is actually a material factor in your ability to stop being poor, the way we have this world set up right now. Of course people put effort and money into it!

"The only noticeable impact of UBI was that it made Finnish people happy". I thought that was the fucking point of making money.

Many many rich people are rich because of an elder in their family. & many of them go bankrupt anyway. I think what’s truly important is trying your best to survive & if possible being comfortable. I find that learning from how the poor in the past lived helps a lot. Especially learning how to repurpose scraps of fabric, cooking cheap meals especially food from The Great Depression, & making your cleaning products, using pedometer salt rather than fabric softener, etc.

The craziest part about Alux is the the reader sounds SO HAPPY to dunk on the poor like she gets hard off of insulting poor people

I love the 'Only Poor People are Really Into Sports' as if most teams aren't some billionare's box of toys/status symbol.

Rich people: “money flees the hands that don’t earn it” Also rich "people": • trust fund kids • jobs through nepotism • generational wealth • gaining their wealth thru asset appreciation instead of labor • bank bailouts • big business subsidies

this is quite possibly the most dystopian channel ive ever seen on youtube, i feel like this is something they'd play 24/7 in a dystopian megacity on all the billboards

That is some of the most greedy, pseudo-religious, disturbing, and evil stuff I’ve ever heard come out of a channel. For all of the “you can make it too” talk they forget to talk about the most important thing, getting rich rarely means being a good person getting there. Most often to have maximized success means throwing others under the bus and backstabbing perceived threats or being born into that wealth.

“Money doesn’t like people who don’t work for money” oh so that’s why my landlord “can’t afford” to fix what’s broken, because he doesn’t do any work and leeches off his tenants?

It is so easy to disprove the “if you only saved more, you would be a billionaire”. Let’s assume an engineer, that makes 150k a year. We can agree, that they can be called “well-paid” (for a salary worker). Let’s assume, they don’t eat, sleep or shit, but works 24h a day, so he now makes 450k a year. They don’t have any needs, so they save *all* the money they make. They need more than 2 thousand years to became a billionaire this way.

I love how these hacks list websites as the sources of their stolen images, and not the actual creators of the images like they're supposed to. Pinterest didn't create any of these images. Instagram didn't create any of these images.

god, in an alternate reality this could have been an awesome origin point for some sort of ARG or a satire on all of these "motivational" people you see on social media, honestly a missed opportunity for some brilliant trolling.

I went to the haircutman and told him to give me a shitty haircut in the name of austerity. I had hardly noticed the rustling in the distance before money--so much money--came voraciously rushing into my open arms, fleeing from their previous owner who had just committed the moneycrime of fairly paying a skilled worker for performing an essential grooming task at artisanal level.