Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

i first saw it when i was ten. it was my friend's birthday and we snuck in

i knew something was wrong with it but i also loved it as an action spectacle which is the effect every verhoeven movie i saw way too young had on me (i watched robocop and total recall a lot as a kid)

I didn't pick up on the satire in the least when I was 12.

I remember a review in my local paper calling it "Melrose Place in deep space," so I'm not sure they did either.

I appreciate ST so much that I ill-advisedly watched the sequels out of boredom

sorry i didnt mean to derail (blame Chapo)

looks like they finally had Contrapoints on, for real this time

I was sort of hoping they'd do a B*n Sh*p*r* reading series and have her chime in or something, but this was a fine overview of her work and cast of characters. I hope it brings her a new raft of fans.

So far this ep is good, I like that they're letting the guest speak and asking thoughtful questions and it's not just another wankfest of them yelling about how stupid everything is.

is that the contrapoints ep? i haven't listened to this in forever but if the contrapoints ep is good i'd prob listen to that one.

Yeah that one. The territory is a little well-worn (incel psychology, Jordan Peterson etc.) but I like her approach to it which I think strikes the right balance of empathy and critique.

For the exact opposite approach but getting at some of the same conclusions, the Cumtown where Nick spends most of the episode reading the Small Penis Problems subreddit is hilarious.

Natalie's approach of avoiding simple mockery is probably the only way I'd still be interested in hearing about incels. Ben Shapiro is still ripe for a more aggressive approach.

You can find some vestiges of her previous channel, Nykytyne2, still on Youtube, some of it going back 10 years. It's quite interesting how far she's come.

Her incels video is pretty incredible. It's also her first to break a million views, which is a really impressive feat for a lefty youtuber.

Nick is pretty cruel on them but gets at the same underlying point about the way that these people self-reinforce their misery to the point that they actually consider it offensive to suggest that anything could possibly ever get better for them or that anything could possibly be within their power to change.

the wonderful thing about the contrapoints video is that by linking her own experiences with self-loathing to incel's she creates empathy and understanding and reveals something true about the universal condition. not that she points out that sometimes ppl become addicted to their own misery which is easy to toss off as a pat judgement.

yeah she goes into that on the ep too, it's refreshing. If there's any possibility of "deprogramming" an incel, there has to be empathy involved.

Weirdly when she talked about the morbid curiosity that causes her to read the horrible things people write about her, I was reminded of my own tendency to go down rabbit holes watching insane antisemitic propaganda videos

someone should start a Contrapoints / lefty-youtubers thread but it shouldn't be me cause I've started too many politics threads lol

yeah that would be good, I'm enjoying this episode but also don't know anything about contrapoints or how natalie wynn is potentially problematic (sorry to reference second thoughts thread)

http://www.youtube.com/contrapoints

The top 3 videos are great, especially the incels one.

Also her 2-parter on capitalism is a great primer for anyone who wants an intro to Marxist theory but hates jargon

Alpha Males is a really funny earlier one. It's where she goes after The Golden One.

Check out her talk at the 2018 XOXO Fest, too

Oh hey, look who just got profiled in the New Yorker.

Yeah I'd be up for a LeftTube thread. Especially because I need more recommendations beyond ContraPoints and LinsdayEllis - I've heard good things abou hbomberguy but can't really bring myself to click on someone who uses formulations like "x is terrible and here's why", regardless of what the x is (well, maybe if it's capitalism).

aye, that'd definitely be good

thread of youtubers whomst are not terrible

The degree to which YouTube pushes toxic right wing bullshit on me (I'm assuming some combination of having watched the Joe Rogan podcast where Leia Remini recounted her whole Scientology experience and my demographics), but even when I reject suggestions saying they are offensive I get similar things or even other offerings by the same dude back in my suggestions

Yeah, if you watch anything remotely political their horrible shite algorithm pushes the most noxious garbage possible. I think part of the problem is also that the right-wing nonsense outnumbers the lefty stuff 100 to 1 cause it gets cranked out effortlessly and artlessly at a much higher clip.

it's almost like youtube is a horrible cesspool and their algorithm is tuned specifically, whether by accident or by design, to promote hateful content

or what simon said, i guess

i watch a lot of cooking and canning videos so i've been sunk into a rabbithole of weird christian prepper videos, i don't even mind

Two different acquaintances of mine from my grad program are now right-wing Youtubers. I watch their stuff sometimes while depressed on the internet and think, well, at least I'm not doing that.

it's a good grift!

The thing is it's not even that good a grift unless you get popular enough to have a crowdfunding following on the side, their monetization scheme has been garbage for years

or you get hired by toilet paper usa or some equally fraudulent dark-money ghouls

Yeah I mean I don't remember the numbers from my old game journalism job but it's really not shit for money until you are doing really big numbers, like even as hard as it would be to get say 5k ppl to watch a video that's not gonna get you much

I've had terrible right wing recommendations in my youtube for ages too, the algorithm seems to think "hmm, this person watched a video on feminism, surely they will also appreciate this video of some dude DESTROYING feminism". It's started to happen to me on facebook too, I got a targeted ad for a Jordan Peterson speaking engagement! I laughed and laughed.

If I click on anything that's not music related I go into my YT history and delete it immediately, it's the only way to avoid fascist recs that I've found.

i watch a lot of cooking and canning videos so i've been sunk into a rabbithole of weird christian prepper videos, i don't even mind

BREAKING NEWS: mahmoud ahmadinejad has followed virgil back, an rare honour he now shares with just 33 public figures including ralph nader, danny glover and uhhh david duke

https://preview.redd.it/hy2ssja88oz11.jpg?width=601&auto=webp&s=e98d808d214ef59cf59983e565333366c0b6a02f

impressive, but I'll be more impressed if he manages to hang in there for even another month

i want to believe

I don't really know what any of this stuff is but I saw some Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski stuff, seems pretty good but who knows these days

saw some young turks too that was annoying had to turn it off

Yeah, the Young Turks stuff is mostly bad from what I've seen and Cenk Uygur has had a lot of bad takes

latest CTH is their funniest in a long time, the dinar scam story is pretty much custom designed for them

ok this Cenk is terrible! like, actually dim?

"Young Turk" is a bit troubling to start with, when the expression will forever be linked with 20th century Armenian Genocide.

I remember when Cenk had a show on MSNBC and he was no contest the most annoying and off-putting news anchor I've ever seen.

Cenk did an AMA on Reddit and even though 99% of the questions were about his college writings about the Armenian genocide he refuses to address the subject, leaving his Armenian co-host to defend him in social media

the first part of Jon Bois and Felix's MMA documentary is up. always awkward to me to hear Felix do Serious Voice but it looks neat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oNB6tlSZ2A&feature=youtu.be

i've worked a little with cenk and even behind the camera he really is an all-surface inch-deep blowhard