Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

haha i missed him interviewing david hayter

it should be noted that at least one of them (matt) is explicitly anti-gamer, so they've got the whole ideological spectrum covered

Felix interviewing David Hayter was on the Scumbag podcast, the show he does/did with Ed Zitron, iirc

It was a pretty dull segment tbh, Hayter might be the only lib Felix has ever been nice to lol

Just to back up here, the whole thing with the way people are currently doing the "YAAAAAAS" criticism is that when I've seen it come from a person of color, it has been an unambiguous criticism, but when I've seen it come from white people, particularly white men, it looks exactly like the behavior it purports to be criticizing, only with a side-helping of scorn directed toward the target of the "YAAAAAAS" (the most recent iteration of this I've seen was a recent Facebook post from a former ILXor that tried to mix posting a critique of Kamala Harris with a "yaaaaas queen" jab at white female liberals that just looked to me and several other people like he was making fun of Kamala Harris, which of course was part of the subtext of his critique but not in his conscious intent; as I said to him, "Your intent was to mock white appropriation of black culture by... performing white appropriation of black culture? I'm sure you can see how intent can get lost here?")

This has little to nothing to do with the Chapo guys but if you guys are going to talk about that line of criticism, you should know the knife is cutting both ways.

kinda surprised at how tame this is for all the "dirtbag" marketing talk its not really any more profane than most podcasts.

I think it's more a connotation akin to "vulgar," of lesser class and common folk rather than high-falutin' professionals and intellectuals

Yes, for the real dirtbagness you need to head to Cum Town, which I do not personally recommend

found the link to the interview - thanks!

https://soundcloud.com/user-884696369/the-scumbag-podcast-episode-19-metal-gear-squalid-with-david-hayter

ill have to listen to this later. yeah MGS2 came out in 2001 pre-9/11 and was really prescient in so many ways of the New Media and 21st century politics. i can think of movies and books i've finished and went back to the real world stunned from having had a transformative experience, MGS2 is the only game that has ever done that for me.

Dammit, I can't find the Mg2 joke on twitter someone made with that CNN panel screengrab of all greying white guys

snake... have you ever heard of 'les enfants terribles?' pic.twitter.com/zzWO78WPfL

— ▀▀▀▀▀▀ (@immolations) August 11, 2017

That's it, thankee

kinda think of "dirtbag left" in this context as more of an ethos. which means the Street Fight boys might fit the bill better than CTH or CumTown, even though they're actually very sweet and not really vulgar at all.

unless you're a cop. in which case fuck you, bud.

I like the street fight guys v much despite the fact that they're anarchists and I find their show interminable

cum town is the worst name of anything ever. sure that's the point but

yeah the shows for me are very hit-or-miss

I almost admire them for it because it has almost certainly cost them thousands of dollars in mortified would-be subscribers xp

lol evvvine

i do love listening to a podcast wo being interrupted for painfully drawn out commercials performed half-heartedly

The latest Dollop was getting into Maron territory - 10 minutes of commercials. Fuck that.

Y'know you can just skip ahead

I don't mind it with them because none of their eps are behind a subscription wall

found the link to the interview - thanks!

https://soundcloud.com/user-884696369/the-scumbag-podcast-episode-19-metal-gear-squalid-with-david-hayter🕸

ill have to listen to this later. yeah MGS2 came out in 2001 pre-9/11 and was really prescient in so many ways of the New Media and 21st century politics. i can think of movies and books i've finished and went back to the real world stunned from having had a transformative experience, MGS2 is the only game that has ever done that for me.

Otm but MGS2 came out in November 2001 - they had to change the ending, originally the... metal gear? or something.... crashed into lower Manhattan and I believe the Statue of Liberty.

i know - which makes it even crazier!

yeah it is wild, of a piece with the bit in Hypernormalisation about the abundance of disaster movies in the 90s where NYC is destroyed/fucked up.

MGS2 had a main enemy that was basically the Internet as a self-aware AI and it talked about the future of information, how there would be a "Flood of Information" too great for humans to deal with, how we would be inundated with half-truths, rumors, slander, "trivial information accumulating every second... never fading, always accessible", a world of "untested truths" and "junk data... slowing down social progress", a future where "everyone withdraws into their own gated community, afraid of a larger forum".

the AI felt a moral obligation to filter out that bad noise, to filter our data for us, to in effect censor us. during this whole time the soundtrack is doing weird spooky sweeping synths to make it clear: this is a supremely creepy solution to the problem of too much information.

he predicted all of that in 2001, a year before Friendster came out. i think i first played this in 2013 or 2014 or something and it has only gotten more and more true as time goes on. admittedly it's all stock cyberpunk or science fiction dystopian satire but that's part of MGS2's as action movies (hence having the composer from The Rock).

lol this is the "Patriot speech" by the AI:

http://i.imgur.com/jswxMum.jpg

I wish I could experience video games again without having to sink 20-30 hours into them. Actually I think MGS1 & 2 are the only ones I'd want to revisit for the cutscenes alone. I haven't played them in over a decade but yeah they were remarkably prescient, and I'm grateful to Hideo Kojima for making them. MGS2 was where I first heard the word "meme."

The libertarian senator end boss from Metal Gear Rising is also worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEM5hW6BMJA

I still need to play that game. I got distracted by Platinum's other releases

I stopped playing video games a long time ago, was MGS4 good? what about MGS5 - didn't Kojima step aside for that one?

(I liked MGS3 fine but after being blown away by Sons of Liberty and fixated on that cliffhanger ending with the Patriots, I really wasn't in the mood for some goofy prequel romp. Trying to find & kill the super old sniper dude was cool.)

Snake Eater really felt like fucking Tarantino jacked the series for a game. SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE EAAAAAATERRRRRRRRR!!!

whoa holy shit this is exactly what i wanted... posting for posterity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5AunfmI8bs

Snake Eater might be the best James Bond game but worst Metal Gear. I love 5, some of the best moment to moment gameplay ever but the story was kinda left unfinished. Kojima was in charge but was alienated from the team by konami in the months before release.

but MGS4 was good?

Never played 4, just watched all the cutscenes on youtube. Been a while but it does a better job than you'd think possible of tying up the loose ends of 2 and 3.

tight, maybe ill watch the cutscenes, though i need to catch up...

Still astonished by how audacious Kojima was with replacing Snake with Raiden for the majority of MGS2. and this is after we had 2 or 3 months to play the demo disc that came with Zone of the Enders! (that's another great one I'm just remembering...) as a 9 year old I was really pissed off and confused when Snake wasn't showing back up, but the game & story were so compelling and interesting that I quickly forgot about all that...

Who was that Josh guy on the live Chicago show? Fucking terrible, forcing his hack stand up jokes about LA into a context where they made no sense, and he just kept doing it.

pretty sure he posts here dude

I didn't even make it thru to that, their live shows are unbearable for me. they're not that funny and they suck on stage.

xp lmao

Other than that guy this live show ep was waaaaaaaay better than before.

I thought Josh Androsky was funny enough, but the part where he gleefully bragged about wishing violence on "a TERF" on twitter was a little disturbing.

https://vimeo.com/228966654

Video of the live show with the Street Fight guys.

Will's oddly-shaped head is as distracting as ever.

Got my tshirt today, happy birthday to me

i'm afraid i've got a mild case of Menaker head :(

Xp yeah generally their live shows are weak imo. It really brings out the difference between podcasting and actually performing for an audience, suddenly it becomes painfully apparent that they are doing bits and they just come off as amateur Stand ups. Felix's bit about cubs fans was excellent though.

vs. the Street Fight Guys who are not very good on the regular show but seem to thrive in live appearances

Yeah, the Street Fight guys have had their show for about six years, and actually done stand up for a while, too

lol Matt C wearing a big sloppy New Glarus Spotted Cow t shirt is too perfect

A true Wisconsin boy

Spotted in Birmingham, cc @CHAPOTRAPHOUSE pic.twitter.com/BvIOq66vxY

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 13, 2017