Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Reminded how Jon Stewart also always felt compelled to jump back to "Hey look I'm just a comedian".

They should add Matt's "this podcast doesn't count as 'doing politics'" line to the start of every episode as a disclaimer to maybe forestall some of the thinkpiece deluge

This comes dangerously close to the late '00s Jon Stewart "I'm just a comedian," though - it needs to be clarified that podcasts and posting is not the end of politicking. Then they're no better than the libs who think resistance is buying from Starbucks because the CEO was going to be in Hillary's cabinet.

Which, to be fair, Matt at least has been heavily involved with his local DSA.

honestly the worst casualty of the left-liberal war has been amanda marcotte, who's become shockingly dishonest and disningenuous

imo Chu went bad from being extremely online to the extent it was his job, his hobby, and his only personal relationship (to the detriment of his marriage)

he had some amazingly bad takes, but if you looked at his twitter feed, he was coming up with a take on _every news item_ to the extent he tweets or retweets nearly constantly twenty hours per day. it's not the incredibly bad takes that are notable to me, it's the fact he churns out four or five takes per hour -- most are just mundane or irrelevant

marcotte is kind of the opposite, one incredibly hot take per column

xxxp yeah they're all involved with DSA organizing and marching

yeah mh i think that's right. twitter is bad for the ol' brain-o

that extremely lucrative career choice, professional socialist

I was much happier when I thought that Chapo Trap House was the name of some wacky new genre of music.

They're clearly carpetbaggers who jumped on the tweeting, podcasting and being socialists $$$ train.

― President Keyes, Wednesday, July 19, 2017 2:01 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Clearly. https://graphtreon.com/creator/chapotraphouse

jeet piece is v silly

you can’t really build a coalition of egalitarian politics by browbeating a key segment of that coalition.

the like 20 media idiots and failed technocrats being browbeaten on this comedy podcast are not a key segment of the democratic coalition nor do they have a record of delivering for anyone who is, and their continual hiding behind the skirts of the millions of nonwhites they allegedly represent yet could not actually inspire to vote for their candidate is getting pretty gross-- as is the notion, implicit in alt-center claims to represent whole classes the left does not, that only witebois want to go to the doctor, or to work

in style it is much closer to the vituperative, insulting, shock-jock tactics used not just by Twitter users with Pepe the Frog avatars, but Trump himself ... the Dirtbag Left has no use for civility, and instead wants to counter the alt-right’s mudslinging in kind. Their slogan could be, “When they go low, we go into the gutter.”

to any reasonable adults who may be slumming itt: next time you've decided to pass an afternoon pretending not to know what "neoliberal" means and you've already done the thing where your interlocutor described the history of the democratic party post-1972 but you were stricken briefly deaf, consider that a short definition might be "person who thinks calling ross douthat a dweeb is worse than fascism"

Wasn't the carpet kaiser a trumpist a few days back? Still wondering who it is. And no, it's not me.

Jeet Heer is right that the Democratic party, as a coalition party, is fundamentally different than GOP. You can say as much as you want that it's only 20 centrists that should be brought to heel, but it's not just 20 centrists that is going to wreck Bernie Sanders' chances once again in the south in 2020. And you can't win them over with dominance politics.

And you can't win them over with dominance politics.

you can win them over with simple full-throated support of single payer healthcare

Is there any evidence of that. At all?

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/

and yet that never translates into votes, because voters don't vote based on policy

or, at least, a majority of voters don't

also re: use of full-throated - Phrases I Never Want to Hear Uttered by Talking Heads/Press/Politicians Ever Again

noted. i think i used it a dozen times itt this morning. will retire...

BOOM!

how many opportunities have voters had to vote for single payer

shakey is otm. obamacare was "policy". "vote for me, then fill out a form and never pay to see the doctor again" is the sort of thing people base their votes on.

my arizona trumpist uncle (central casting) was on the phone to my dad the other day telling him we needed single payer. the plural of anecdote is... several million anecdotes

and yet that never translates into votes, because voters don't vote based on policy

Kinda a catch-22 here - people won't vote based on policy so leftist single-payer supporting podcasts can't say that will drive votes, but being brash meanies instead of focusing on policy...

anyway if the 2020 leftist candidate wants to do better in the south than bernie did they could always... campaign there, or at least not try to excuse their not campaigning there by implying they're all republicans down there anyway. maybe they'd learn lessons they could later apply to doing better in the midwest than hillary.

I thought this was pretty good. And the question is how Sanders, or anyone from the left-left win, can lure black women away from Terry McAuliffe and Kamala Harris.

http://www.theroot.com/bernie-sanders-black-women-problem-1796995081

Sanders and his supporters assumed that black voters would be easily drawn to his economic-justice policies. On paper, they were pretty impressive and should have had black women on the fence. Though, when challenged on how his policies would specifically help black people in prime-time moments, he faltered. Badly.

During a campaign stop at an economic forum in Minneapolis in February of 2016, a black American woman confronted Sanders on his inability to address anti-blackness and economics. The question focused on a garbage incinerator in the city causing health problems for local residents. Felicia Perry said that her son has asthma and the incinerator was making him sick.

Given that black children are twice as likely to suffer from asthma, it made perfect sense for her to ask the “political revolutionary” what his plans were to address environmental racism. In her question, she also took on what she felt was his refusal to address anti-blackness head on:

My black son. I know you’re scared to say black, I know you’re scared to say reparations. But it seems like every time we try to talk about black people and us getting something for the systematic reparations and the exploitation of our people, we have to include every other person of color. ... Can you please talk about specifically black people and reparations?

That was a perfect opportunity to display empathy for the specific plight of black mothers who have to raise children in unsafe areas plagued by environmental racism. But, in typical Sanders fashion, he got defensive and refused to take on her challenge that he lacks a racial analysis:

What I just indicated in my view is that when you have ... you and I may have disagreements because it’s not just black, it is Latino; there are areas of America, in poor rural areas, where it’s white.

That exchange pretty much convinced me that Sanders wasn’t ready for prime time. If you can’t tell a black woman raising a black kid with asthma how your policies will combat environmental racism, you can’t claim to be a political revolutionary.

The entire Chapo ""phenomenon"" reminds me of Hipster Runoff or Pitchfork Reviews Reviews, when someone made an entertaining comedy diversion that appealed to people who were passionate about a small insular subject (indie rock media, the pro wrestling of politics media) and are invested in the online conversation around it.

The problems, of course, came when media people confuse that for something in reality or a movement or some kind of zeitgeist thing and tried to prescribe "meaning" and "importance" to it. Like all these hand-wringing things about "they make $70k a month" or whatever is ridiculous because like Pewdiepie makes like $15 million a year and ILX isn't full of articles about "what does the era of screaming vloggers mean for [X]."

yeah, basically imo chapo does not merit thinkpieces

nobody on ilx wants to be pewdiepie, or is positive they could be

objects in the digital mirror may be further away/smaller than they appear

must go slower

I don't even know where that $70k puts Chapo in the spectrum of podcasts - surely that means Marc Maron and Joe Rogan are banking multiples of that, right?

maron and rogan sell adverts rather than receiving $5 per subscriber, so despite them being much more popular than chapo, i don't know how the income would compare

The difference between this and Hipster Runoff is that Chapo are involved in politics whether they say they are or not. And so that puts a higher burden of scrutiny on them than video game bloggers or people goofing on marketing hell. And since they're leading their own little movement of people, in politics, then yeah, why the hell wouldn't people examine them as they become more popular?

anecdotal but i went to some DSA meetings and first one after election in particular, most of the new people cited chapo. and most of those folk were pretty young, probably under 25

xpost I don't know--why aren't there a bunch of think pieces about TYT? They have a bigger audience than Chapo, probably rake in more money, share a love for Bernie and domination politics and do actual political organizing. But they're kind of dumb and not in Brooklyn so...

I've read plenty of shit on TYT, it's out there

yeah, basically imo chapo does not merit thinkpieces

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, July 19, 2017 3:23 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

And so that puts a higher burden of scrutiny on them than video game bloggers

hi this guy just got bounced from millions in partnership money for making a bunch of holocaust jokes

The difference between this and Hipster Runoff is that Chapo are involved in politics whether they say they are or not.

"Virgil Texas" is his name not the state he represents in congress

His pen name at least, I don't know if it's his real name

weirdly i've never met nor even read anyone who gives a shit about TYT. it's like the phantom audience. only rightwing youtubers are watching afaict.

Chapo Cult Temple

Bernie Sanders is the world cup and Chapo is major league soccer

Re: Americans attn spans

His pen name at least, I don't know if it's his real name

I was flipped out when I saw David Byrne's True Stories earlier this year.

ou can’t escape the game by pretending it isn’t happening, you can only lose it. Republicans recognize that the aim of politics is to crush the other guy; Barack Obama spent eight years refusing to recognize this. There’s nothing noble about being too polite to fight for dominance; it just mean that the people you’re supposed to fight for will continue to be the ones dominated.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/politics-is-a-contest-of-domination

re Sanders and his "black women problem", I gather this may not be as much of a thing as it once was

man... pic.twitter.com/MmCCUh0vOd

— Isaiah Breen (@isikbreen) July 19, 2017

whether favorability translates into votes is another question I suppose