Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Cosby star tweet is so stupid & unfunny & another instance of them showing exactly who they are: unsocialized nerds that spend/spent too much time online & on Weird Twitter. they're friends with the Cum Town guys, who, you know, say what you will, but they're comedians, they have their thing & they stick to it. Chapo is both a vanguard political podcast that has had demonstrable effects on leftist & DSA interest in the USA but also they're Weird Twitter nerds that lack social graces & try to be funny & fail often. This is going to be a perpetual conversation as long as the show is on.

xp that's fair

also btw i'm not defending Chapo guy with that last sentence, I find it incredibly frustrating bc DJP's point is inarguable. this shit turns people off

I've been, the "pizza" and "beer" are good, and they have "ping pong," as advertised. Never seen a "show" there.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:20 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My brother "played a show" there earlier this summer; it's a fantastic venue.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:20 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

anyone that lives in the mid-atlantic area & was into music or in a band knew about Comet Ping Pong bc of their shows, or bc they played there. it's a sick venue

real sick

the only funny thing about the twitter fuckup is that Felix wasn't involved

Stav: Is there a liberal pizza chain?

Nick: Comet Ping Pong Pizza.

Adam: That’s not a chain.

Nick: Well, there’s chains in the basement.

— Cumtown Podcast (@cumtownpodcast) December 29, 2016

ok lol

I don't know where the line is for humor about atrocities of the well-known (not that that tweet is funny). Would this be roundly condemned by libs today?

http://www.rokemneedlearts.com/carsindepth/wordpressblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/vwkennedyad.jpg

Everyone has their own line. I mean yeah I find that Volkswagen ad hilarious, also the Cum Town quote, which is from nearly a year ago when the story was still ongoing. But Chapo keeps Comet Ping Pong in their regular rotation of running gags & promoted that fan-made poster with the restaurant's logo on it. I just think it's stupid. also Whiney idk where u live but imagine a sick music venue in yr town got accused of the stuff CPP did, yeah ha ha ha it was funny for a bit but a guy fucking shot the place up

difference obviously is Cum Town isn't representing anyone but themselves. Chapo is obv different... they're gonna keep hobbling themselves with boneheaded moves & statements & unforced errors like this bc they keep trying to be edgy & funny like their actual comedian friends & falling flat on their faces.

Outside of Amber's work off the 'cast, who is Chapo representing?

it's especially bad timing as their recent stretch of episodes were probably their most broadly palatable ever

"Chapo is the new Daily Show now that they've got a brown guy doing The Daily Show" has been my unkind takeaway.

the hosts of chapo trap house are also the leadership of the dsa, weird but true

@whiney - the surging leftist & DSA movement in the USA like I said above. they're trying to pull a Jon Stewart cop-out by saying it's a comedy show, which imo it primarily isn't- I think it was Simon who linked to that reddit post from a guy that was completely apolitical in a small town, found Chapo, and then six months later he's organizing his own local chapter of the DSA & getting members.

the hosts of chapo trap house are also the leadership of the dsa, weird but true

― mh, Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:55 PM (fifty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nick Mullen is President of the DSA dont get it twisted

Hmmm, "Their actual intentions" vs 'What once Reddit guy says," who should I trust?

"Chapo is the new Daily Show now that they've got a brown guy doing The Daily Show" has been my unkind takeaway.

not so much unkind as a reduction of political differences

"Chapo is the new Daily Show now that they've got a brown guy doing The Daily Show" has been my unkind takeaway.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP)

fair takeaway but I really don't think this is the case: it's a generational thing, they are this moment's Daily Show, they're only comparable in that they're both comedy/political shows mostly consumed by young people. the difference is in their politics which are decidedly more leftist than the Daily Show ever was.

Good liberals need to force themselves to sit through the painfully unfunny new Daily Show

Hmmm, "Their actual intentions" vs 'What once Reddit guy says," who should I trust?

― sic And Mordy’s worst fans don’t deserve sic And Mordy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:59 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Their intentions don't exist in a vacuum, they have a power & influence beyond a typical podcast, and to occlude or brush off that power is disingenuous.

ok jeet

Yeah we talked about the differences upthread, but I think the key ones are (1) legitimate political/philosophical differences and (2) Chapo does seem to actually push people toward organizing in a way that the Daily Show did not. But yeah there's going to be some crossover, Naomi Klein has gone on Colbert, there are certain Trump idiocies that would be fodder for both shows, etc.

also Whiney we've been through this upthread, it's not just one guy. the show has exposed a lot of people to leftist ideas & actual activism & participation, moreso than the Daily Show ever did.

If Chapo is filling any void, btw, it's the one left by Gawker

hey i like jeet but again you're brushing off something important, seemingly.. just for the lols. & yeah i agree absence of Gawker helped them

Josh Androsky was terrible on the DSA live show too, he might be the one real Berniebro cliche in the wild.

i mean I can't even begin to peel back all of their layers of irony to get at what the word "libs" is supposed to be signifying there, especially next to "statue"

However tone deaf it may be, this is pretty clearly them role-playing the angry right-wing Twitter/Facebook poster.

I probably mentioned this before but what always helped explain the Chapo (continual) fuckups is that, yeah, they were on the right place at the right time, but they were sure as fuck not ready yet.

It’s like your band’s first release going multi-platinum, or a baby comic with like 3-5 mins of good material getting their own sitcom/movie deal. Sid Eudy was a promising rookie pro-wrestler who got elevated to Main Eventer Status as “Sid Justice”(Vicious) and stopped learning or listening because he felt he didn’t need to anymore.

It reminds me of something Michael Stipe mentioned a long time ago, that he was glad that REM’s success was as (relatively) slow as it was, b/c had they hit their 90s peak in 1982, it would have destroyed them.

The live shows(and attempts at pre-scripted material) reveal this weakness; they were well-practiced and good at riffing, providing historical context, or leftist theory(in Matt/Amber’s case). Most podcasts that blew up were from folks who had already developed an act or practiced in other contexts; Comedy BangBang was a show either live on on the radio for a long time. The CT guys have been stand-ups for several years. Adomian has been a live performer for a decade. These folks weren’t.

None of them had a background in performance or college radio or anything like that. Brendan keeps recording shows straight to his laptop instead of a proper recorder and has lost multiple episodes because of crashes. Matt never ever learned to speak into his mic properly. They belatedly put out a website and never have done anything with it.

The failson thing is a joke and yet it isn’t. How long do you keep up the Replacements-type “ain’t it funny how we self-sabotage” before the joke gets old?

And yet it’s still a massively successful show making a million dollars a year and they got a book deal. So there’s no reason to change or learn(for a while).

sid vicious as cautionary tale is a first for me, but I get it =D

Yeah, the Cosby thing would have just been a "rethink this" moment on weird twitter soon forgotten but now they are the reified archetype of the bernie bro or whatever, and I agree they're not quite ready for that role.

the show has gotten gradually slicker and more streamlined over time but they (obviously) have a lot of room to improve still, on several fronts

However tone deaf it may be, this is pretty clearly them role-playing the angry right-wing Twitter/Facebook poster.

Agreed. Of course, when intense irony is the only weapon you got handy, you gotta wield it deftly, esp when there’s an army of people chomping at the bit to willfully misinterpret it.

sid vicious as cautionary tale is a first for me, but I get it =D

My history is obviously mainly informed(warped?) by Scott Keith and a lot of internet wrestling bloggers from ‘99-01 or so.

But yeah, you get the idea. There’s a necessary period built-in where you need to learn your craft, and leapfrogging that has consequences.

One of the amusing bits is when you get criticism from folks who have barely, if ever, actually heard the show.

You get aggro bro/jock accusations tossed at a group who freaked(and were rightly mocked) out on the air when their absent co-host’s cat relieved itself on the floor during an episode, or who have recorded a several hour session trying to work their own refs into a Call of Cthulhu game.

The entire (and CONSTANT on this thread) "these clowns aren't ready for primetime" argument really hinges on having to believe "podcasting" is some kind of art, which **huge fuckin jerkoff motion**

wow I can't believe these guys aren't better at a ten-year-old form called – can you believe it's fucking called this "podcasting" – whose Sgt Peppers is Marc Maron being sad to Louis CK. for two hours

There are two different issues - podcasting in itself and being a public figure. They're excellent at the former, despite technical ineptitude, while being terrible at the latter.

As to the "art" of podcasting, pretty sure you raised a question months ago about starting from the beginning - which is more similar to one's response to TV/books than a radio show, so...

"excellent" is a bit of a stretch

So which of these dudes is gonna turn out to be a serial abuser?

That's all I think about about this show. I've never listened to it.

So which of these dudes is gonna turn out to be a serial abuser?

― .oO (silby), Thursday, October 12, 2017 7:01 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have been thinking about this too

Ugh the live ep is painful, I can't even make it to Adomian.

thx for the contribution silby

we've already established that the most problematic leftbro is taibbi

kingfish post is so OTM

Whiney: Thousands of people listen to this show every week. They have 20,000+ premium subscribers. The free episodes regularly get 80 - 100,000+ listens. Anderson Cooper averaged 425k viewers in the first quarter of 2017. Chris Hayes had 325k. They're not shouting into a void or a choir of weird twitter people. Besides, incompetence is not a virtue. it's not endearing, it's fucking stupid & annoying and like kingfish said, pretty much every podcast at their level has their shit figured out technically. It's not hard. As far as the importance or "artistic value" of podcasts, I think you're missing the point. Many, many millions more people listen to Joe Rogan and Marc Maron than most cable news hosts now.

holding the attention of a headphone listening audience for an hour of "informal chit chat" is a craft just like doing standup is a craft. Which is why they bomb live. They are not performers.

If only these guys could have the quality of what JOE ROGAN does for a living.

you sound like comic book guy