Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Agreed about that tax segment, both hype and actual substance of that, though I think it was probably way too dry to be characterized as in the universe of Beck, Infowars etc. I was really grateful when she did a fairly lengthy segment on Rep. Barbara Lee's amendment last week and not solely because the story itself was one of the few positive things of late.

I felt like a less-sensationalist version of the attention-seeking Twitter creeps/weirdos like Eric Garland

i'm a reg CT listener and it can definitely be hilarious but man some of the "ironic" gay stuff is just so "layered"? (gtfo of here) that i don't even get it any more. like at some point i'm p sure you just like to call things and people "gay" & "faggy". the ironic race & jewish stuff can veer that way, too, but maybe slightly less so?

excuse me there's ironic what

forgive me for not engaging with cum town and therefore criticizing it without having any contextual basis but iirc "ironic" use of "gay" and "faggy" is also known as homophobia

I don't think anyone (beyond the most tiresome of edgelords) would blame you or anyone else for finding that beyond the pale

More coverage:

http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-rise-of-the-internets-dirtbag-left/

ha, v unsurprising byline

I'd listen to CT if they just muted Stav's mic when he wasn't actually speaking. The West Coast eps with Nick and other friends went down far better. Too many of the regular eps remind me of the one time I tried listening to Ari Shaffir's show years ago and that dude had just some straight horrible personal opinions expressed on the worst way possible.

Lol a Stav-less CT is a bold, almost challopsy take but appreciated nonetheless. imo his cackle is essential to the show, but I understand

Nobody's cackle is essential to anything that's the podcast fallacy

http://www.flickfeast.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/p01hg78p.jpg

There are honourable exceptions

ha, v unsurprising byline

I am ignorant of his other works

the podcast fallacy

addamsfamilytheme.wav

Nobody's cackle is essential to anything that's the podcast fallacy

https://s3.amazonaws.com/pq-imgs/images/quizzes/Different-Strokes.-4714.jpg

Don't really know what point Frederick is trying to make itt but fwiw I also disagree that if someone *were* to shoot Chait and say "Chapo made me do it" that this would change anything about the situation, people do this kinda shit and claim all sorts of motivations. Gun accessibility + poor mental health system, as mentioned upthread, is p much all there is to it.

I'd apply that reasoning to most right wing shock jocks as well, except when we get into the territory of someone like Alex Jones, whose entire shtick is feeding paranoia, warning of a coming conflict and never breaks kayfabe (unless he's in court)...that's a bit murkier. But I don't think either Russia conspiracy shit or Chapo flippancy is really comparable to that.

CTH/dirtbags mentioned in this rather flimsy MYT Mag piece as well

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/magazine/hated-by-the-right-mocked-by-the-left-who-wants-to-be-liberal-anymore.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur

Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders.

gee I wonder why that is

maybe they should read the "hipster as pejorative" thread

Amber's my favorite Chapo so the latest episode is a nice change of pace but once again why do they bother even bringing a guest on?

I assume the guests don't mind and were mostly going to hang with them anyway but it's weird to have someone interject every ten minutes on a podcast where they're the featured guest.

It's a weird dynamic, obviously I think the guests are thrilled bc it's great exposure, but the talking over guests thing is a huge blind spot probably caused by their inexperience in broadcasting before CTH. Then again, they've been doing it for almost a year and a half now - they need to figure that out.

do they pay guests?

I doubt it seriously. Podcasts as an industry do not pay guests yet, do they

they make so much money though

i suppose like most radio shows don't, although this is a fairly fledgling medium

I liked the guest because I thought she worked well in the first half. Yet, she didn't get a chance to contribute much in the second half, sorta what happened when her brother Leyawn was on

well the episode was clearly demarcated into two halves. they even asked her if she wanted to stick around for the ask Amber portion iirc.
that said, there have been eps where the guest gets rolled over by the rapid fire snarking.

What talk shows pay guests? Most of their guests are either freelance columnists or people promoting their books - a Chapo appearance by someone writing for the Baffler or the Outline or wherever is huge. I know I've bought lots of books by people they've had on.

Late night tv chat paid appearance fees to guests

will does the right thing and prompts their guest specifically a few times. not much else you can do imho

Don't really know what point Frederick is trying to make itt but fwiw I also disagree that if someone *were* to shoot Chait and say "Chapo made me do it" that this would change anything about the situation, people do this kinda shit and claim all sorts of motivations. Gun accessibility + poor mental health system, as mentioned upthread, is p much all there is to it.

I'd apply that reasoning to most right wing shock jocks as well, except when we get into the territory of someone like Alex Jones, whose entire shtick is feeding paranoia, warning of a coming conflict and never breaks kayfabe (unless he's in court)...that's a bit murkier. But I don't think either Russia conspiracy shit or Chapo flippancy is really comparable to that.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:36 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of ppl were saying this back when ppl shot those congressmen & it struck me as a very partisan argument. either these ideas deserve some credit for the actions of their followers or they dont, but liberals being inconsistent on this is lazy

deej, I understand that it seems convenient to have my side be blameless and the other side to blame but I do think you need to have some nuance: people whose public persona is obviously kidding and people whose public persona is dead serious cannot be put on the same level.

fwiw I think there are plenty of conservative pundits whose shtick is snarky hyperbole directed at the left too, and they shouldn't be blamed for their followers either.

but Alex Jones strikes me as different because, even though he may claim it's performance art and plenty of ppl obviously tune in for the lolz, within the world the show establishes there is no ambiguity whatsoever that his followers are under attack from very sinister forces and that violent, armed resistance is a legitimate way to fight that. That provides a stronger moral responsibility than if it was just zings, and if we had a high profile leftist radio DJ stridently calling for armed insurrection against the US govt (and yes I know these ppl exist but not w/ Jones' standing), I'd say the same for them.

obviously as a leftist I'm more likely to take right-wing snark seriously than left wing snark, being the target of it and all, but I don't think there's much room for interpretation with someone like Alex Jones

iow: the ideas totally deserve credit for the actions of their followers but you can't divorce that from tone and context

Women /minorities: "LOL cool story. You will bow down to our proclivities, or your lily white cult can gtfo of our party. Have a good day!" pic.twitter.com/jWQatShCU8

— Dude Kembro 🌈 (@HillaryWasRight) July 13, 2017

do we really need to pile on some random guy

they're all at it

Imagine being a wealthy white guy and telling this to poor minorities who vote for Democrats pic.twitter.com/QFy141R94p

— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) July 13, 2017

Eh, clean shot. The "persecution" cries over this very much amount to "we want to have it both ways".

"all"

are chapo people crying 'persecuction'?? not sure i follow

Menaker's tweet thread from earlier today certainly reads that way. Actually most of the angry fan responses to the Johnson tweet as well.

Like what? I see things like:

The thing that drives Chapo haters--at least on the Democratic-Liberal side--the most insane is that they can't get us fired from anywhere

These people have been doing the job of Democratic party base management for various media companies, non profits and think tanks for years

Their job was to act as gatekeepers for what is progressive & liberal on behalf of a political and donor class hostile to left wing politics

The popularity of Bernie and the success of Corbyn, especially among the young, is deeply frightening, alienating to them

So the first one, if you really pushed it? But it's about how they aren't punishable in the way that someone writing for the Times or even The Nation would be. The rest are a political assessment.

assuming the quote is out of context/poorly conveyed, (in context of episode they were talking about clinton party hacks), going after an out-of-context quote in bad faith is basically what the chapo folk do constantly, and is what everyone on twitter does constantly

Twitter is a fucking cesspool that should be ignored in general, though - the responses to that Johnson tweet represent the tiny minority of Democrats who wouldn't vote for Bernie for reasons entirely separate from politics. They should be ignored. They don't represent liberalism and barely represent the Democratic Party - they're sports fans who've adopted internal party politics the way some people adopt the Giants vs. the Dodgers.

Which is probably true of "left twitter" in many cases, too, but the only part of that I follow are the Chapo hosts who articulate actual political reasons for why they disliked Hillary and the direction of the Democrats under Clinton/Obama.

podcast dudes demanding anyone "bend the knee" deserve mockery imo. i wish people who hate these guys would try ridicule instead of feigned moral outrage. or just ignore them altogether, they're popular but they're not really that popular

otoh a lot of these people would probably fail and it’d end in a classic “nerd tries to out-quip bully and gets totally humiliated” situation, probably ignoring CTH is the best option for people who don't like it

why did that twitter user above equate "women/minorities" with centrists and the democratic establishment? i mean, i know why but it's a completely disingenuous assessment to put women and minorities on the one side and "socialists" on the other.

it's mostly centrists trying to frame things this way but chapo has played into it by relishing their "dirtbag-ness." dragging out these stupid intra-left fights is good for clicks and listens and whatever.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/opinion/millennial-labor-movement.html

here is a good article by a black woman about the need to re-center labor in our political discussions. she talks about how her family was hurt by the evisceration of collective bargaining and the decline of midwestern manufacturing, processes overseen and supported by democrats. she didn't need to disparage other causes to make her case!

the bernie bro/brocialist nonsense was a slur and the worst thing anyone who cares about economic justice can do is embody it