Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Never visiting uk probably crucial to maintaining an interest in its culture politics and society tbh

Wait, he said he lived there for 6 months, didn't he?

He briefly mentions being in NI this episode.

it struck me as the type of masturbatory nerd fantasy that they eviscerate other people for constantly. i'm surprised that Matt has never been to the UK.

It's a running joke - not a funny one - how is that similar to the "Hillary is Dumbledore" shit they make fun of?

they're both not funny

it's amazing to me that Matt can go off on these incredible & engaging monologues about leftism and existentialism, and then reverts to idiotic jokes about Tesco. it's just fucking 7/11 with a different name. whenever they do British accents or make fun of British stuff they sound like the typical and contemptible "LOL bacon" people that they love eviscerating themselves.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, June 13, 2017 11:53 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^this

tho i was wondering about this -- a friend of mine who is also otherwise very thoughtful, makes fun of HP, is a chapo listener, etc, will occasionally go into "bad accent lord von swaddlebottom" type humor and it occurred to that if want to do some jokes about the UK (or the southern US or wherever) and part of doing the joke properly is getting the accent right, and you can't do that, then better to just go straight into cartoon comedy mode

"better" = easiest

as someone who has never been to the UK and may never go I find overblown comedy UK accents and names funny, obviously ymmv

i'll admit that as a kid this place was a consistent lol factory

https://goo.gl/maps/Tqyyc8HjHUB2

whenever i see a sign for clitheroe on the motorway i always think "CLIT HERO"

and jimmy clitheroe obv

OI MATES LISTEN TO THESE CHAPO WAPPOS INNIT MORE SPOTTED DICK

always happy to hear from Nagle, who has been hitting the 'cast circuit pretty hard. A friend picked up Kill all Normies, looking forward to getting my grubby paws on it.

Yeah, it's a good book. More SomethingAwful mentions in it than I would have expected, which on reflection isn't surprising.

sheesh, this GCC episode giving a high level view of the current state of Qatar/Saudi politics and how our current presidential administration is even less clued into reality than the average American is making me go O_O

I'll try to finish it up later, but it took a half hour to even mention how the US interacts and they haven't touched on al Jazeera yet and jeez

I confess I had a hard time following that.

these guys kind of suck and are not funny

I'm lazy and vox dot com explainers are horrible so I make do with chapo interviews ;_;

idk maybe they dont suck. but there is something very smug and self-congratulatory about them that is off-putting

they're nerds who finally got some people to like them

it's a bombastic speaking style but idk it sounds more like they're trying to be enigmatic ad&d dungeon masters than actually full of themselves

like a lot more drama club than debate club

I think they would freely admit/embrace that distinction.

Also this is a general purpose new left media thread now so counter-suggestions are encouraged

oddly enough, the venn diagram of drama and debate clubs has an overlap where Ted Cruz lives

r'lyeh?

yeah after i started listening to cum town my tolerance for Will and Felix in particular really plummeted, now i just find them obnoxious and unfunny. I still like the other three.

i just can't bear to listen to something called 'cum town' with a logo font of jizz, sorry

yeah it sucks... i label the ones i download "Mullen, Halkias, and Friedland" w/ pictures of a castle so it looks like a prog rock band. seriously if you like Chapo you'll probably like Cum Town, too. but if you hate Stern ymmv

I tried with CT but I just can't. Too aimless for me.

speaking of venn diagrams, I'm a fan of this one

https://scontent-dft4-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18268656_10213093279586099_937333125103132937_n.jpg?oh=e08142d005df83f7299a9e28b2fa8e7d&oe=59CD4BAE

Can there be a podcast that is just Amber interviewing people? The guests on here are often interesting, and I've enjoyed Frost's writing for quite some time, but Felix, Matt, and the other one just seem like morons.

Clearly there is one group that is obviously too right-thinking to belong on any type of Venn diagram. A group of people who are so smart and ideologically pure that anyone who disagrees with them for any reason must be an incoherent, pedantic coward

Seriously, I agree with like 95% of what the chapo hosts say, but the smugness and sanctimony is staggering

otm and also they're nerds and nerds are generally insufferable and have fucked up speech patterns

Although I gotta repeat what I said upthread about Matt: he often goes in deep and is usually pretty insightful and passionate and well spoken. I got tired of Felix's limited comedic abilities and Will's smugness is suffocating. Matt has his moments of weird out of place dorkisms but he's imo the most consistently insightful one on the show.

Can there be a podcast that is just Amber interviewing people? The guests on here are often interesting, and I've enjoyed Frost's writing for quite some time, but Felix, Matt, and the other one just seem like morons.

Amber does have another podcast w/ Sam Kriss, linked upthread

Also for people who find the dry boys annoying, I recommend either Katie Halper's show or the new podcast by Josh Androsky. I like what I've heard of Street Fight but it is a little niche/local for me.

mostly just Felix and Will. and not all the time. but like I said - Cum Town totally flipped my lid and exposed a lot of Chapo's weaknesses.

I love Amber but can't stand Sam Kriss, purple prose & annoying to listen to.

"Cum Town"

i know...

it's too bad that Brendan isn't a regular, he seems averse to developing a shtick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFr_zhZjDrE

feel like the "morons" thing comes partially from an aspect of the dramatic voices (or everyday voices) used that don't code as commentator-type or Ivy League-type
it's not that the people speaking couldn't frame everything couched in political analysis rhetoric, it's a colloquial podcast. I mean, I think the repeated joke about only relating to politics through metal gear is bad, but it's real -- kojima is like the oliver stone of a video game idealizing generation and framing things counter to this weird conspiratorial/fictional framework is speaking to people who want to be interested in reality but came to political shit via the outside channels. if they're routed into dsa instead of jerking off on stage at the libertarian convention it's good

I appreciate the lack of journalist phrase book and pronunciation. The gulf state episode where the guy who has lived in Qatar pronouncing it well, and the chapo man doing American standard slaughtering of it was grating to my pedant ears but good

if they're routed into dsa instead of jerking off on stage at the libertarian convention it's good

Larry website stopped doing it a while ago but I must have seen at least 50 screencaps of new DSA member applications that cited Chapo specifically as an inspiration for joining

yeah I heavily sigh at that point but, hey, at least it's not people joining racist healthcare libertarians

this whole dsa realness thing is a weird trip. I've had friends who have been employed by the catholic worker groups, been union members who worked with people who repped for the socialist worker groups, but it catching on as an internet politics nerd twitter/podcast thing is still weird to me

I have no idea what "racist healthcare libertarians" means and...I'm not sure I want to know

I think healthcare was a weird autocorrect, but I am sticking with it

oh wait, no, I meant people who think nationalizing healthcare instead of leaning on this weird insurance model is bad because they're racist and would rather see poor and/or minority people die in emergency rooms than have a sensical healthcare system

I was thinking about it again the other day, when reading tweets about "these could be preexisting conditions!" The thing is, if healthcare is actually insurance oriented, then it makes absolutely no sense to cover people who can't or won't pay in. Because insurance is a liability thing, you are usually required to have a certain level if you own and drive a car, own a house or property, or whatever. By its nature it has limitations because it is a business and a hedge -- nearly everyone will have some level of payout, but the idea is the ideal rate approaches (modest profit + admin costs+ costs of payout) across the system.

Health insurance is a fucking weird way of doing it because everyone has a body, and everyone's body will fail. Unless you own a mansion with huge asterisks in the real estate listing (giant redwoods hang over the house, it's on the edge of a cliff, it's on a fault line), amazingly few houses will fail in ways that exceed the paid-in amount for home insurance. And, new growth suburban horseshit aside, houses will last a damn long time and you will live in several different units of housing in your life. Not so for bodies.

to tie everything together, the healthcare eps w/ Tim Faust were great at untangling this subject, and I agree w/ everyone who's said that health care should be positioned as the pivotal fight for the american left. (DSA is doing a good job on this from what I can tell)