Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Communists hate shopping
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Communists hate women

I haven’t listened to Chapo for years but I thought Matt’s take on the current situation, from the 8th, was good.

ive just seen it happen enough exactly as described, its a way of shutting down challenges to shared assumptions way too often by maligning the underlying intent of the person doing the challenging. its a shortcut to not dealing w the questions raised, bc it immediately undermines the motives of the person raising them, might a well be an accusation of "virtue signaling"

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:21 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a thing basically everyone does imo

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:24 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

at times i guess but there are also arguments where its clear one side is ignoring arguments to impugn motives and the other side is simply...making arguments. Some arguments should be ignored & some should be engaged w but it's always interesting which ideas are considered off the table

I haven’t listened to Chapo for years but I thought Matt’s take on the current situation, from the 8th, was good.

this whole situation has made clear he's the only chapo capable of generating any kind of perspective on these events instead of just riffing on pre-existing media. I don't always agree w/ him but I've enjoyed his updates a lot on the whole.

So what happened to Virgil Texas? I noticed he hadn’t been on the show or twitter for months and found this:

Ooh. I welcome this change. pic.twitter.com/fFmQetr5ks

— larks tongues in aspies (@htmlmencken) April 11, 2020

I got the impression he was getting burned out on the whole enterprise and possibly had some family things to address

some may think he disappeared after Bernie left the race, but he also disappeared around the time flavored juul pods were banned which may be more significant

They refused to let him do another Call of Cthulhu RPG repisode

Matt said he’s fine, they still talk.

I figure it was burnout with the campaign ending then quarantine hitting all at once did him in for a while

he's back, folks

Checking this thread obv

I appreciated the breakdown of White Fragility even if it could have been done in, charitably, 1/3 of the time

I listened to part of it and got the idea very quickly. I also kind of wished they could be a little less in full takedown mode, because I think there is a grain of an idea in there that's worth salvaging.

Like, underneath all the author's bullshit, I think the concept of white fragility may be of some use in describing something real.

There are some fleeting moments of acknowledgement, but I don't think they're wrong to focus on the negative when it's the literal #1 bestseller of the moment and probably guiding a lot of thinking

wait, where is virgil back?

he's on the latest ep about the white fragility book

I keeping hearing “white fragility” to the tune of “White Minority.”

There are some fleeting moments of acknowledgement, but I don't think they're wrong to focus on the negative when it's the literal #1 bestseller of the moment and probably guiding a lot of thinking

Looking at this book as an example of the white HR-culture corporate diversity grift is fine, imo. They are not well positioned to talk about workplace bias / culture training more broadly, though, and that's the direction it headed in.

yeah there are sometimes moments when they talk about workplace stuff and it comes off like the "it feels like a bag of sand" scene from 40 year old virgin

yeah I mean they have all presumably worked conventional jobs but....not recently lol

I've been in offices plenty. HR talk is still wildly alienating. I haven't had to engage much with all that, thankfully.

there was a couple of things I can't remember, just comments where I was like o rly? not a huge deal and seemed like the book is kind of a grift

Amber & Matt on the Jacobin show tonight
https://youtu.be/qcuj7SWlgg4

In my last job, after our diversity training, a guyanese coworker said to me "I'm really glad they do this, we didn't have anything like this in my country and the bosses could basically get away with anything." Since then I've rolled my eyes a little bit less at these sorts of things. Although the last one I attended had a section called "Has 'Me Too' Gone 'Too Far'?" which I thought was a little bit off.

Also, that's just a general comment on workplace trainings, not on her schtick

So the Chapo subreddit got shit down for some reason?

Because of the Chapo-to-fash pipeline IIRC

Brendan’s Iraq podcast is pretty good, even though I’ve tried to erase 2001-2004 from my memory completely.

Matt mentioned they're gonna try to get Perlstein on when he does the rounds for his new book

Absolutely loved the first (or I guess free intro?) ep of that. Then totally forgot about it. Need to pick back up.

I’ve started now that it’s not behind the Stitcher paywall.

the chapos must be overjoyed about the demise of the subreddit

Street Fight product placement in the news pic.twitter.com/8oGQK7VF4j

— Bяyan (@MurderBryan) July 1, 2020

You never see anyone in a Chapo shirt getting arrested.

https://imgur.com/Qd5Xy9u

their hatred of their fans, who directly supply them with their livelihood, is consistently one of their better bits

Did they get rid of it because they needed a somewhat high profile 'left' subreddit to go alongside the binning of the donald subreddit?

That's the narrative reason, but tbh they'd been flirting with a ban for ages because Reddit doesn't differentiate btwn "killing slaveowners is/was good" and white supremacist shit

Yeah, seems like a pretty easy one to bin off. But it does leave you wondering what would they have done if there wasn't such an obvious choice

Twitter addicts feeling superior to anyone else is the ultimate bit.

even in reddit’s free speech days edgy-left subreddits got banned v quickly unlike the nazi/MRA/paedophile ones

that said cth sub also had a lot of bigoted roganesque dickheads alongside the anarchists/marxists/tankies trying to “radicalise” them so idk

How did the chapo reddit get like that? (or was it from the beginning)

reddit

Far be it for me to suggest Left is talking shit but general opinion is that it was the most trans-friendly space on reddit, which seems to be rather not-Rogany.

at least the most trans-friendly space on reddit not explicitly created for that purpose, AFAICT

Will scored an interview with Wallace Shawn? nice!

I'm pretty much okay if they just go ahead and fully transition into a podcast about watching expanded basic cable TV shows

a big part of why the reddit admins hated the chapo subreddit especially was because the community loved to harass right-wing subreddits etc. which is one of the biggest no-nos on reddit

I only saw them ask reactionaries who posted there to send dick pics. “Show hog” IIRC.

nobody on the actual podcast ever liked or interacted with the subreddit, I think? that was the vibe