Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

I haven't taken issue with anything any of the main dry folk have said save Felix.

I have no idea what this Nagle stuff is about.

Lmao so angela nagle is a Spiked writer who done played everyone- most spectacularly Mr Chapo, although perhaps there's a slight excuse with them being American and not picking up on some British Isles nuances.

My favourite bit is when she sneers at young women who claim to have ptsd despite not having been in a war- gee, I can't think of any highly traumatic experience frequently suffered by young women, drawing a complete blank here, they must just be hysterical hypochondriacs.

Angela nagl, basically

― The Adventures Of Whiteman (Bananaman Begins), Wednesday, August 23, 2017 11:25 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

angela nagle has had one piece published in spiked as far as i can tell from a quick google.

i take issue with a few of the arguments people have said she makes including the one you mention (I haven't read the book), but she does seem to know a lot about the alt-right and I've enjoyed some things she written about them. also while her "tumblr sjws precipitated the alt-right" thesis is on the face of it a bit of an objectionable and victim blaming argument, the alt-right is a reactionary movement which absolutely feeds on identity politics and dances around it gleefully like a maypole flinging their feces at it. you only need to see how many column inches on breitbart are wasted on "university bans yoga class because of appropriation" or the amount of pepe twitter bios that poke fun at pronoun preferences to see how central trolling and excoriating the "unmanly, decadent, derange, sjws" is to their identity and weltanschauung and sense of identity.

(my pet-theory for the rise of the alt-right is that the realm of the political is necessarily antagonistic and involves identifying with a group and being against an enemy. the move towards consensus in the political class on issues such as the economy and international affairs has led to the feeling that the two major parties are two sides of the same coin - however inaccurate that may be - which has lead to that necessary antagonism, group identification, and enemy formation leeching out in the form of white identity politics)

yeah jim^ that seems so much more otm & explains both phenomena

I don't think Nagle is "victim-blaming" in her book - she's pretty even-handed about some of the hysteria within that community. I also don't think she equates both sides or condemns tumblr as if they're as bad as the alt-right.

could also argue that with a lack of religion in peoples lives this kind of shit replaces the moralizing group think antagonizing that ol' time religion used to provide an outlet for

oh man, yes, that's a whole other fascinating topic... the religious impulse remains in us even in the absence of God/organized religion... & the way that void is filled is just endlessly fascinating to me...

btw can anyone offer a brief explanation of that fucking corncob & donut thing? even after listening to the latest premium ep, I still don't completely understand it, other than being psyched that Neera Tanden got owned on twitter.

corncob is a drill tweet

"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob

— wint (@dril) November 11, 2011

the intersection between left twitter and weird twitter means that when some left twitter dirtbag is dragging some centrist lib and their target is getting mad they will make reference to that tweet.

Hilaryman Al Giordano stated that the reference to corncob was an allusion to sticking a corncob up someone's ass and so was homophobic and violent language. left twitter lost their shit at this and found it funnier than hell. people started to put corncob emojis in their display names etc.

the donut thing was unrelated but sort of the lib equivalent of the corncob thing https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/our-revolution-has-a-problem-with-the-dictatorial-arrogant?utm_term=.uuNgzBdPM#.hgwybz7Vg

wow that is awesome

https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/d338qj/corncob-donut-binch-a-guide-to-weird-leftist-internet-slang

The targeting of Angela Nagle was something I took as a continuation of the shit Mark Fisher got years back when he first wrote about how shitty Tumblrati types could get, esp since both Nagle & Fisher are published by the same company, and Angela explicitly talks about her work as trying to continue on Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" essay.

Totally.

I wonder what Matt's ILM user name is

Being a poptimist is tough. You gotta figure out which songs written by middle-aged Scandinavian men are EVERYTHING and which ones are TRASH

— Matt Christman (@cushbomb) August 25, 2017

he and matthew perpetua could be brothers

meanwhile, felix has earned the wrath of the nofap community

Hey @ByYourLogic, how dare you tarnish the reputation of the NoFap community!https://t.co/il0BMvkVg9 pic.twitter.com/S60NhiEVwq

— Ryan Smith (@RyanSmithWriter) August 24, 2017

nofap guy sounds really wound up

I like Felix's obit for Rich Piana

http://deadspin.com/rich-piana-lived-as-big-as-he-was-1798428768

how does nagle stack up to the gabriella coleman book?

This was quite good on Nagle:

Taking a break from misery on the internet by reading about misery on the internet. pic.twitter.com/HAu14UThJe

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) August 23, 2017

That touches on Fisher as well - I see Ash as someone who got a lot out Fisher but I don't think cares v much for Vampire Castle.

That is a good thread, thanks.

Nice to see analysis/criticism that doesn't just boil down to accusations of finger-pointing. I do think the book suffers from its skimpiness and rushed feel - Nagle seems to have spent a long time in the 4chan tranches so it's too bad that the book feels like it was cobbled together so quickly.

that is very good and makes me not want to read the book tbh

keep judith butler's name out your mouth nagle!

zzz theory beefs

pfft whatevs flopson!

seems 2 me a talented theorist can always make one of those critiques so i discount them basically to zero. i imagine the interesting part of nagle is source material not the theory anyways

How do you interrogate 'source material'?

Of course theory doesn't have a stranglehold on it but its on zero books, its going to have theory. And non-existent editing.

i read the gabriella coleman book about Anonymous and her attempts to theorize the fascinating source material (a decade-long ethnography of Anonymous IRC chat rooms) just killed it for me. not saying zero theory is optimal or even possible, but when you've done interesting anthropological investigation it should for the most part speak for itself (imo)

Understand. It can often -- probably most of the time -- fall flat. But Ash doesn't do a ton of theory - I think this is one of twitter's strengths where that stuff can move about in more concentrated form.

https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/d338qj/corncob-donut-binch-a-guide-to-weird-leftist-internet-slang

― gbx, Thursday, 24 August 2017 21:25 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ahaha, I'd forgotten about the 'milkshake duck' tweet. So good.

I read that url just now and was like 'wtf does donut bitch have to do with the leftist twittersphere'

[Perhaps more apt for the alt-right thread, but as the conversation seems on it seems to have drifted here] I had a quick read of the Kindle version of Kill All Normies today, more than anything just to get myself back into the habit of reading and responding to political writing of greater length than a forum post.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to have had this kind of response, but - having gone into it partly looking just for a summary of things which are obv. important to know about but that I don't particularly want to have to dredge through the sewer-of-the-human-mind parts of the web to encounter first-hand, I was surprised by how much of the stuff described I was already super-familiar with (ILX discussions probably a big reason for this).

(On a minor note, the Harambe stuff, which I had no idea of the scale of previously, raised a chuckle tbh).

(5 levels of MGTOW also fun).

I would say that overall I'm inclined to give the book a sympathetic reading because I'm favourable to the 2 main argumentative thrusts as I took them to be, i.e. (1) critique of transgression as being inherently positive & politically progressive, regardless of the specifics of what is being transgressed and to what end & (2) trying to work towards a way of doing politics that's broader than just a 'culture wars' approach, where everyone is stuck in this tit-for-tat of defining themselves negatively against how they perceive their opponents to be.

It IS a very condensed work though - and I get that this is part of the Zero Books format, that the books are often intended as 'primers', snappy introductions to subject areas that people can pick up & read quickly & without a lot of background knowledge.
But I think a lot of the responses saying that Nagle's unfair in her treatment of the online left (or parts thereof) are because in the sections on this in particular she's summarising by relying a lot on these broad shorthand phrases - 'identity politics', 'the liberal left', 'Tumblr-liberalism' etc - that are quite often contested in meaning and/or cover a wide range of political positions & approaches, and there's maybe not enough time spent on pinning down what exactly does she mean by those terms, what political currents under those headings does she find particularly objectionable & why, are their any currents she thinks worth saving, etc.

how does nagle stack up to the gabriella coleman book?

― flopson, Friday, August 25, 2017 1:48 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kind of a tangential response but i'm going to be extremely suspicious of anyone who treated "weave" with kid gloves (crabapple, some of the new inquiry people) forever

sry it's been 2 years since i read Hacker, Hoaxer... was weave one of colemans sources? i definitely felt that she excused some of their behaviour more than necessary

like i said idk. the 'stateless hacker' types are all sus to me frankly

I died at the description of Kasparov as "the brain genius of the horse game" in the Joe Prince ep

did we all see assange crying for the race scientists getting their youtube click money taken away

good ep, does Joe Prince always sound that... uh... peppy?

no I only saw the awful "black power" vs "white power" one he took down xp

twitter not verifying assange was petty. why not at this point.

prob just to fuck w him

turns out DSA Veterans is the best DSA account

We did but it turns out the military is pretty fashy too and instead of fighting Nazis you just do imperialism 🙄 https://t.co/loK3Y8hQUa

— DSA Veterans 🌹 (@DSAVeterans) August 29, 2017

Felix B interview in ChiReader

In a lot of places in Chicago, the fix is in. There are a lot of factors beyond our control. It seems like Rahm Emanuel became mayor without anyone voting. The mayor and City Council constantly kowtow to building developers. Rahm and Obama are part of our political DNA, but I think Chicago's true political character is defined by its people—and that's radical in many ways.

I think about last year when Trump tried to do a rally in Chicago and thousands and thousands of young people scared the shit out of him and kept him out. I remember national liberals and centrists responded by scolding the protesters saying, "This is exactly what Trump wants!" I thought that was so condescending. These people came out and risked it all to embarrass this guy who was demonizing them in every way. He wanted to deport them and take away their fucking health care and institute austerity in every part of their lives. I thought it showed the true character of the people who live here.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chapo-trap-house-interview-felix-biederman-dirtbag-left-podcast/Content?oid=29354373

Respect to Amber for not being mad that her stripper step-sister uses her name on stage.

that was a fun episode, they've been on a good run recently

also amber was married? themoreyouknow.jpg

Rahm and Obama are part of our political DNA, but I think Chicago's true political character is defined by its people—and that's radical in many ways. I think about last year when Trump tried to do a rally in Chicago and thousands and thousands of young people scared the shit out of him and kept him out... I thought it showed the true character of the people who live here.

The saddest aspect of this politics is its insistence that "the people" truly share their ideology -- but this is a failing the chapo crew shares with mainstream liberalism, mainstream Republicanism, Trumpism, third-wayism, etc. so they can hardly be uniquely faulted for it.