Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

So virgil texas never addressed the accusations, even privately to briahna joy gray. Seems bad. The pod is better with just her anyway though.

i was wondering about that the other day, it's weirdly hard to find information about it

It seems like there was something there, otherwise he would have denied it. But that is still speculative I guess.

This is the only thing I've seen:

Late night status update on @BadFaithPod pic.twitter.com/nRKNEBN04z

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 28, 2021

is there a name for the kind of writing you always get in these situations, this bland tone which i assume is supposed to be read as fair and empathetic without taking sides, it's everywhere these days

that's called having media training

Brie Joy Gray was a lawyer a few years ago, so yeah

You can read between the lines here though.

Given the anonymity of the accusation, it would have been easy for Virgil to deny it if it was false. Bri could have also said that unless some evidence comes to light, even corroborating details, she can’t assume it is true.

The fact is that Virgil has not denied this. And he seemingly hasn’t even made the case to Bri that it is untrue. Sooooooooooo

Seeing Joy use the phrase "I want to avoid weighing in irresponsibly" seemingly with a straight face is...something.

That announcement is very "new notes apology about to drop".

Can someone explain to me what the podcast name “Pod About List” means?

the (loose) format of the show is that they discuss some list they found on the internet each ep

i only listened to a few eps (not a very regular podcast listener) and they didn't always adhere to the format

Then, I guess the question is about the wordplay (?) that makes it that and not “Pod About Lists”

oh yeah i dunno

there's no wordplay, they're just doing dumb guy syntax i think

(i've listened to a lot of eps and as far as i can tell that's the idea. i mean each episode is one podcast about one list so it kinda makes sense if you put it like that)

Lol

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/02/the-post-dirtbag-left

(Listening to “Know Your Enemy” can feel like visiting a semi-reclusive friend whose apartment is crammed with out-of-print books, but who always keeps a stash of good bourbon on hand.)

I have enjoyed episodes of this podcast and might resemble that description to an extent but Jesus Christ. (Also the ‘but’ implies that the bourbon makes up for having to be around all those books?)

Not a hard description to resemble, now that you point it out. Not really sure what semi-reclusive means, but I feel like it probably describes a lot of people these days.

The right wing reading series at the end of the most recent Chapo was too stupid to even be amusing.

Did make me wonder if there’s a reactionary improv crew that just yes ands from the premise of “I identify as an attack helicopter.”

Ahmari’s mind must just be a carnival of bullshit. these type of guys really have reverted to 8 year olds camping in the backyard, trying to scare themselves and their friends with just the dumbest most nonsensical ghost stories

re: NYer article I don’t know understand why anyone would want to subject themselves to a “conversation not a debate” with Ross Douthat instead of listening to 15 minutes of what type of guys different apes are.

Have never listened to either pod, but Know Your Enemy sounds less insufferable to me. Marantz's description of Chapo's "blanket fatalism" is precisely what irritates me about some ILXors' posts.

whenever i've listen to chapo, i've always been amazed at how half-assed it sounds. sometimes matt christman has some good insights, but they're just kind of peppered into a conversation that is mostly just smug and dumb.

true anon is better because brace and liz are more likable, but their format has its issues too. the jfk series has really interesting elements but the whole was way less than the sum of its parts. it was disorganized. and again, you have the same thing where the hosts are dug into their "fatalistic" premises about the shadowy hand of the cia or whatever

I like both shows a lot. One partic good episode is when Matt Sitman from KYE came on CHT to talk about JD Vance. They really got to the heart of his bullshit way before any of the credulous NPR/ NYT liberals who were convinced he’d penned some sort of Rosetta Stone for the MAGA rubes (while flattering their own prejudices) could.

And holy shit were they right. Watching him just make an absolute clown of himself on Twitter and cable news over the last few months has been gratifying.

QAA is the best lefty pod going rn imo, polished but not too slick, good balance of humor and actual research, affable hosts, etc

that sounds like good content. jd vance is trash -- just another iteration of the myth of the "deserving poor' that has always greased the wheels of the american right wing

Yeah co-sign on QAA

what is qaa?

oh not just the rightwing

xpost

(unless you count mainstream American Democrats “right wing”, which hey, fair)

yeah, well that is why npr et al likes him. it's a version of reagan's "welfare queens" that works to demonize the *republican* base rather than the democratic one and that also -- since it attacks white people -- isn't racist. but it's the same move, justifying an unequal status quo by demonizing the people at the bottom.

i think it's still right wing in the old school sense. to enjoy this type of argument, the idea that it's your own fault if you don't claw your way up the corporate ladder, you need to be invested in the system as it is. you have to want to legitimize it.

QAA is often very good (the episode about the evolution of 4chan and the context of QAnon’s gestation there is fantastic and made the whole thing make a lot more sense to me) but there are times when I think “why do I need to know about the mind palaces of these particular delusional freaks?” And I generally can’t stand the ‘creative’ bits.

why are leftist podcasters so fascinated by conspiracy theories?

you should investigate

because they can tell you q lot about the specific ways in which society is decaying, also sometimes the particulars are amusing or horrifyibg

didn't do that on purpose, or did i

I do recommend everybody check out This Is Revolution on pod/YT, if you haven’t yet. They have a great balance of solid talk and humor and a lot of foreign affairs coverage. They’ve been helping to cover the gap left by Michael Brooks’ passing.

because they can tell you q lot about the specific ways in which society is decaying, also sometimes the particulars are amusing or horrifyibg

― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Tuesday, July 27, 2021 3:31 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

totally agree about the amusing horrifying part, but that’s not unique to the left. yet there seems to be something uniquely fascinating about them to left podcasters with at least two dedicated podcasts (QAA, trueanon) and lots of content on Chapo and others

i’m not as convinced q tells us much about society. the theories have been pretty much the same for decades (even if details change) and have been around in roughly the same proportion for a long time (at least as far as we can tell since measuring is hard):

There are no major comprehensive, longitudinal studies on Americans' attitudes toward conspiracy theories, mostly because it was not rigorously measured until about 10 to 20 years ago.

However, researchers have done a considerate amount of work in recent years in an attempt to understand this apparent phenomenon.

Political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent reviewed over 120 years of letters to the editor, from 1890 to 2010, for both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

In over 100,000 letters, this review showed absolutely no change in the amount of conspiracy theory belief over time. In fact, the percent of letters about conspiracy theories actually declined from the late 1800s to the 1960s and has remained steady since then.

While these researchers looked at data only up until 2010, current polling has not shown any uptick in conspiracy theory belief since then.

(source: https://www.livescience.com/are-conspiracy-theory-beliefs-rising.html)

there is definitely a widespread *perception* that conspiracy theories are increasing in popularity. but it’s still not clear to me why the response among leftists was an increase in demand for content about it

TrueAnon isn’t about “debunking” these theories. They try to find the grain of truth from which the Baroque labyrinth of lies spring. So like the earliest episodes were all about Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged ties to the CIA and Mossad—a connection the hosts believe is real.

So like, adrenochrome theories aren’t part of these podcasts, but the idea that the CIA murked Kennedy because he stood in the way of their plans is definitely in play—in fact they assume that this is true.

So like, adrenochrome theories aren’t part of these podcasts, but the idea that the CIA murked Kennedy because he stood in the way of their plans is definitely in play—in fact they assume that this is true.

Brace and Liz say the mob and CIA were symbiotic

TrueAnon are also interested in why conspiracies are marginalized to the extent that they are, given the things we know are true (COINTELPRO, MKUltra) or things that have absolutely happened in the open and just forgotten by most people (like the MOVE bombing).

True

i skip most trueanons but the elon musk stuff has been good, to me anyway, because on one hand i am interested in the background of financial scams but on the other hand i don't want to spend time looking up elon musk information on my own because i have better things to do (so i tell myself). the episodes have definitely been way too long though.

I stopped looking at the TA feed after I killed off my Patreon subs - pretty pointless to get ep 1 on Musk or JFK and not the followups.