Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan (fka All Gas No Brakes)

antivaxxers in the lot bummed me out but they seem to hate phish for it too so they can fuck off of this planet!

I thought this one was pretty good, had some funny moments. Curious that of all his videos this is the first one iirc where lots of people seem to know who he is.

The Lance Bangs appearance was the first time I felt second-hand embarrassment against Andrew. The questions about Kurt Cobain and Dave Growl just made me cringe for Lance Bang's sake, having to respond to someone who was implicitly conflating Cobain with music royalty/authority.

All up, still love it though. My favourite Channel 5 highlight is how much middle aged suburban men like to light it up

I thought that Cobain thing was funny because he followed it up with the Dave Grohl thing, implicitly making fun of Dave Grohl.

I didn't pick it up that way but eh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY07XkagdnQ

Fave comment: "Andrew finally interviewed someone who can actually rap and offers him the stage. Perhaps this was the Channel 5 plan all along."

it does feel a bit snake eats its own tail for him to start producing white rappers

Leaving the Q Shaman prison interview for someone with a stronger stomach.

kinda feel the same

it was somewhat interesting, frustrating because i feel like if he'd found the right people far earlier he could maybe, maybe have ended up a left winger. all the drugs probably didn't help. andrew is good at pointing out that some of the things he speaks about are real, but most of it is insane

I watched like 15 secs of this and there's some sort of relationship to whiteness that has really bloomed on this show that seems really strange to me that I haven't really paid enough attention to to care to explain, but even stranger is the fandom around it of people needing to have a journalist to cheer on, or to recognize that they're following real journalism, "finally a real journalist" "this is true american journalism" not a big deal but it prompts a xi jingpingy response from me

Forget it Bongo, it's stan town.

Shaman clip is unwatchable/unlistenable. While it is kind of fun to just flit around and click on it at random spots just to hear a few out of context snips of his babble, the interview ain't exactly moving any mountains.

I thought it was a good video all up, albeit with a chunk of dead air. I don’t really put “moving mountains” as my criteria for what makes good media. Throwing a spotlight on the psychology of a mainstream conspiracy theorist does tick my criteria tho.

Don’t know whether I like the Callaghan method (let crazy people just talk) or Theroux method (let crazy people just talk but then present their craziness to their face after they are relatively comfortable) more.

moving mountains was just me making a Shaman joke.

Lol. Bummed Andrew didn’t let him keep talking about opening up a church when he was out of jail too.

My favourite part was when he said proof of the millennia old baby eating conspiracy is that john podesta looks like the linkin park singer, barabara bush looks like aleister crowley and angela merkel looks like hitler.

I couldn't watch all of it either but I was intrigued enough to click around a bit. My takeaway from it is that maybe some people are just predisposed to conspiracy brain and that America does an awful lot to push those sorts of people over the edge. The fact that Trump was able to win over these people - despite them generally hating Republican politicians as well - is the real frustrating part.

andrew's stuff is generally funny but treats its subjects with a degree of humanity and this asshole is not funny and deserves no such respect

i take it you still haven't watched it?

At one point he mutes himself because he can’t stop cracking up

The bit I watched, it was so batshit I thought it would have been funny if he just "conducted" the interview/listened to the rant while he was going about his regular business: walking down the street, eating at McDonald's, riding the bus, watching TV ...

i haven't watched it, now

*no

Finally starting this, he's a sentient Joe Rogan episode

In every way, starting with health and wellness woo into tripping balls to meet god and finally into being a fascist simp

Not as cringy as I expected, saved by not really having the Shaman on screen

a fun one

gadaba!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy9x09iCATA

Holy shit, when they're interviewing the twins at the same time.

That ep is funny enough that I paused it 1/3rd of the way through, because I want to give it my full attention. May even start it over again from the beginning.

Some of this felt mean spirited in a way he usually isn't, the kid at 8:39 specifically seems like an awkward person going about his day, idk.

Do like how it pivots from the freak show of the first half into more seriouish interactions with the Memphis rap artist

wkiw guy at 23:17

what really? i think we're all pulling for Nate Dogg. his gap year is gonna be nuts

Nate Dogg was the best. He was chill.

I watched this ep with my wife, and at the end she still had no idea what the focus of the convention even was. It was like a peek at a parallel dimension. Hilariously, when it was over, she went up to our teens and asked if they had ever heard of "Asspizza." They looked at her like she was insane. A lot of the people in the clip, they reminded of the protagonist of "Red Rocket," boasting of having, like, 1000 followers on Porn Hub or whatever, like a) that means anything to 99.9% of people or b) like that means anything at all, period.

So much was very much like: "See these shoes? I designed these butt-ugly shoes when I was 19. Now I'm 20 and I'm *still* wearing them. It's not about the clout, it's about fashion, the design, keeping it real shoes with faces on them, yo. Hit me up on Instagram, I'll get you a mad discount!"

I liked when he asked Asspizza if he was mad when people ripped him off, and he shrugs and just says "I mean, I'm an *influencer* ... "

I have no idea what this whole thing was about. Parallel dimension OTM.

i was gonna get a t-shirt from the merch drop but i am not paying 40 bucks for a t-shirt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifzHd_f0l8

4 minutes in. skeptical seeing the title and run time, but as always, this is great.

With all the love in the world for these characters

hoff twins = stunted at sugar-high 12yo but good
Chet = stunted at moody 14yo, but not good

it took me a whole Andrew Callaghan to realise the attraction of reality TV. Going to go watch the Kardashians with my wife tonight cause this is GREAT

my reaction watching most of these vids has always been "damn this is pretty predatory and/or racist" and then I turn it off

Can understand predatory (isn't that sadly essential to journalism?), but what makes you find it and/or racist?

yeah that's a weird call

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKcJrBRVZn4

Teaser: early in the video (which I've barely watched so far) Andrew says once his passport arrives in the mail he wants to go to Ukraine.

I'm about halfway through and I think this one is one of his better ones. Not necessarily funny, more ... sad. Def paints a picture of this particular fucked up time and place.

yeah, i liked it a lot - less lurid or exploitative and frankly also less reactionary edgelordy

"i called him sperming effingher, because his name is sherman effingher"

Finally finished it. It's all just so sad, these forgotten/forgettable people and dropouts from society alike, all primed for manipulation and exploitation. Assuming certain parties, both domestic and international, are indeed pumping them full of misinformation, they're simultaneously fully receptive but also ill-prepared to do much with that information beyond acting out. They're not organized, they're not strategic, they're just a mish-mash of conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists, ostensible libertarians, fascists and other fringes being agitated and pointed in different directions, willy-nilly. I don't know what lesson Russia (for example) learned from 2016, that this loosely affiliated block can be controlled or that control is less productive an objective than just leaving them perpetually out of control, roving agents of chaos. Sometimes they might shift the results of an election. Other times they might just drive around the beltway like jackasses.

Andrew says once his passport arrives in the mail he wants to go to Ukraine.

This sounds like a terrible idea.

like as per sean's characterization of some of his content as lurid and exploitative....dropping himself into a war zone that, as far as I know, he has zero cultural context for??

I dunno, I doubt it will actually happen, but given his greatest talent seems to be just listening it could possibly work out. Just providing another platform for people to be heard. Of course, war correspondents are very different from local news. Maybe Andrew set himself apart by interviewing people outside burning convenience stores in Minneapolis, mocking local news crews for covering from a safe distance, but that kind of access is a war correspondent's bread and butter. They're made of tougher stuff. They're not wearing helmets for decoration. So if he did go I assume he would just stick to man on the street interviews, away from the shooting.

channel 5's interview technique will work fine in Ukraine - "just talking to people," hearing them out, giving space to characters

but their lack of context means whatever edit they put together is likely to be credulous and/or cynical, and to fetishize whatever they find. best case scenario, they do enough homework to represent different perspectives and we get a sense of a variety of POVs that we don't often see. but weirdo-seeking american kids videotaping random ukrainians doesn't seem like it's going to transmit many insights.

I don't know, with a name like Andrew Callaghan I assume he at least has some Ukrainian roots.