Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Chapo trap house is great. One of the few reliable sources of levity for me over the past year as things became increasingly bleak.

A lot of the show's detractors have clearly never even listened to an episode. They seem to get the idea that the show is some kind of left wing version of early 2000s hipster Vice "edgy" humor which is really not the case. It's a bunch of sarcastic dorks talking politics.

wow there really is no appealing way to describe it

lol you guys got me, I started listening to an episode and within minutes there was a joke about how one of them actually killed an abortion doctor... because he wasn't doing an abortion fast enough

no edgy comments here guys

i think they're equally sincere and sarcastic, that's the appeal for me. there isn't any other place to clown on pundits and twitter idiots like eichenwald, garland, douthat, shapiro, etc

there is... it's called.... twitter

someone recently said eichenwald was lib commenters favorite republican writer now, and I had no idea anyone took him seriously because i apparently follow no earnest liberal ppl and just get all the jokes about how he's horrible

I'm not deep into weird political twitter and Chapo is a nice digest

hope they can resist doing an entire episode about Josh Marshall of TPM (presumably) accidentally tweeting a pr0nhub link

they pretty much took care of that in the last 10 minutes of monday's episode

where there's already this insanely pathological sexual not-so-subtext to things and it deserves to be stated openly with appropriate language.

Yeah, their ability to cut thru the psychosexual/psychodrama that acts the primary animus of so many political figues(be they anti-trans bathroom warriors or pundits obsessed with divorce court) moreso than any actual ideology or political belief.

This really came to the fore when they attempted to interview Matthew Walther, a RW catholic writer from the Washington Free Beacon. They took a good shot at discussing the guy's POV before it all went to shit, and the guy started rapidly dissembling in real-time. The resulting audio was rejected as a premium show and just posted to YT.

Matt had a very funny blow up moment about 20 minutes in when it became clear the guy had no intention of actually defending what he claimed.

i think they're equally sincere and sarcastic

I agree with this; despite their rep they seem pretty earnest

That's the real trap, isn't it. When too much of your schtick relies on snark and attack without actually being *for* anything, you can fall down into complete hipster nihilism. Sorta the vibe I first remember encountering from reading too many Suck.com columns at once 20 years ago.

I'm listening to their episode about Hamilton/Kevin Williamson

Nothing better than people who think that they're better everyone calling other people "elites."

well i only call people I know are powerful AND worse than me elite. It's a select group.

*xp better than everyone, obviously

someone recently said eichenwald was lib commenters favorite republican writer now, and I had no idea anyone took him seriously because i apparently follow no earnest liberal ppl and just get all the jokes about how he's horrible

― mh 😏, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 3:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only confirmation i get that anyway takes the idiots they clown seriously is from occasionally checking in on ilx politics threads.

With some of the people they clown it almost doesn't matter whether anyone takes them seriously. I had never even heard of a lot of them, and that's part of the fun, just discovering these kooky B-list hacks who continue to exist somehow although no one reads them.

the ep where they introduce ron fournier is pretty great for that reason. the affection for kooks and oddballs hiding in plain sight.

Also everything "Nerdstrom Poindexter" has said in this thread is pretty much the opposite of what has actually happened on the show, p sure he has not listened to it.

The eps about the columnist who writes an annual column about his son are amazing.

Huh? I've pretty much directly quoted things. I've listened to most episodes. Again the aspects I've criticized don't comprise the whole of the show just mirror the sort of ridiculous orthodoxies of the leftist twitter world it's a byproduct of.

X-post

Haha yes Caleb!

YES, everyone missing the point which is LISTEN TO THESE GUYS CLOWN ON JEFF JACOBY'S CALEB ARTICLES

the Shapiro and Doubt-that bits had me laughing like a loon. these guys are ok by me even if they veer off into the whole "no really HRC and libby elites *should* be locked up" a little much. but that seems as much hyperbolic comedy device as visceral hate (which i have no doubt they harbor) idk

They revisited recently but in an earlier ep accounted of then described attending various GOP primary events. The Kasich stuff (then introduced by Montez Williams) is great. He's characterized as an emotional dad who wants to start a conversation in a hardware store and they talk about how that is his very specific demographic.

* in an earlier ep they deacribef...*Montel Williams (of course)

boring does not mean annoying

guys I think they've been reading this thread
https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-70-wills-disclaimer-1417

of course they have because we are IMPORTANT CRITICAL VOICES

Today's premium episode was good, and the strongest they've done since talking to Adam Curtis.

what do you guys think the M stands for duhhhh

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the one weird thing to me about the general leftist online community represented by chapo is that their support (that i share!) of bernie sanders has crossed over from "this person would have been a better choice than hillary clinton and represents a better way forward for the democratic party" to a sort of cultish reverence that i find to be like incompatible w/ the way they view pretty much every other politician. like dudes like @crushingbort on twitter (rightly) shit on pretty much every living politician and then genuinely like retweet bernie sanders statements. makes me trust them less.

i don't like bernie at all but can appreciate some of the reasons ppl rally around him.... i will say i really don't understand what ppl actually expect from bernie himself (especially at this point) other than basically memes?

to have an unexpected figurehead in a high chamber of government who illustrates the possible viability of the ideas they like? i don't see why that's hard

Bernie Sanders is a United States senator.

no shit

Heroes and drinking: bad ideas, but hey

was responding to

" i will say i really don't understand what ppl actually expect from bernie himself (especially at this point) other than basically memes?"

Bernie Sanders is a United States senator.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 8:09 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is he a particularly good one?

fuck sorry ok we don't have to do this

Don't we

Maybe you do
Maybe none of us really have choices

I've never heard one of their podcasts, so I can't address whatever acerbities they apparently deliver to their fan base, but I can figure out that, unless they move people to do something directed, organized, and politically effective, they are just entertainers who riff on politics, much as Jon Stewart was on the Daily Show. If so, then they are acting more like "fellow travelers" than bona fide socialist activists. Which is OK, but nothing to get excited about other than in a fanboy kind of way.

is he a particularly good one?

if we grade on a curve, he's easily in the top quintile, so, yes.

Which is OK, but nothing to get excited about other than in a fanboy kind of way.

Well, yeah. It's just a good podcast.

Which they explicitly say in today's show, even.

Here, click this; it's a tiny excerpt, just 2:22 long.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-70-wills-disclaimer-1417

Hah yeah I was gonna say

(Although i think they are wrong politics really is mostly voting - either by voters or legislatures)

Christman is an absolute master of the rant, even though he has occasionally repeated himself.

Agreed but he needs to work on his mic technique, he always sounds far away

didn't much like the last soundcloud ep but the new patreon one (#70, the one that clip's from), is v good as summation of their ideology and deal, if not unique+informative like their interviews can be. good time to jump on.

gonna have to change my life in 2017 because matt routinely yells into the mic on a ~24hr delay exactly the same shit i yell at my gf while driving (i swear after painstaking disclaimers to the effect of pls tell me to stfu whenever) and i guess he's getting $10k a month for it?