Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

I mean this (mostly) unironically: This is what democracy looks like.

meanwhile Labour have set up an internal whistleblower system, which y'know might be a good idea

Our local chapter is setting up a grievance system to handle matters like harassment.

A lot of this stuff really does feel like the growing pains of a shitload of people flooding into a group who are really earnest and fired-up yet seriously inexperienced and lacking in logistics or how to run a group

There was another local group had a meeting earlier this year which had like 200+ people show, and the leaders were clearly not prepared. They were doing ice-breakers and whole-group introductory exercises that were never meant for any gathering larger than like 10 members.

A lot of this stuff really does feel like the growing pains of a shitload of people flooding into a group who are really earnest and fired-up yet seriously inexperienced and lacking in logistics or how to run a group

otm, reminds me of Occupy, but it certainly seems to be going better than that fiasco

From what I have been hearing, at least, it is miles beyond Occupy, at least in NYC.

yeah there's a lot of improvements: more people across the country, new generations, enthusiasm & energy from ppl that supported Bernie & resent the DNC for fucking us all

The trick will be responding swiftly and definitively enough to fuckups like the ones we've seen in the last few weeks to ensure that they don't start to peel off members or scare off prospects. A mass socialist movement is needed too badly for these things to keep happening.

On a vaguely related tip, I just posted an episode talking with one of the guys at Zero Books about the pitfalls and advice for newly activated leftists. DSA splitting and losing members as they focused into specific platforms/goals over the evolution of the group was brought up, too.

I'm kind of skeptical of Zero Books of late. The original crew that started it bailed and started another organization, leaving their publisher (which is kind of varied and shady) to run Zero. There's some decent stuff, but editing and communication have kind of sucked. Whoever was running their twitter account a few months ago is kind of a dick.

If their twitter person is also their FB book, that’s probably the publisher, who hosts their podcast

he's always come across as transparently loving the approval he got from a crowd of gross enablers

otm

I liked some of Kriss' writing a lot (esp the weirder stuff) but tbh after that awful non-apology he wrote I don't plan to think about him ever again

I hated him from hearing him on podcasts but I put it down to my anglophobia, I read little of his writing and didn't follow him on twitter. Turns out I was right, go me.

btw this was discussed directly on the excellent latest ep of Delete Your Account

"this"

don't know what kind of snark you were going for but i meant the Kriss thing specifically

the excerpts I've seen from the report are mortifying. they're not even ready for the learning stage yet.

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Friday, October 20, 2017 3:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nice job staying on-message, I guess?

I mean this (mostly) unironically: This is what democracy looks like.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Friday, October 20, 2017 4:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

things i just learnt: bernard snowy is on uk time

does that mean you're over here? :D

nah, I guess I just never bothered to set my preferences correctly!

maybe the first act of the revolution will be to standardise world time

World time is standardized!

give us back our eleven days

Matt sounds like he's on coke/speed in recent episodes. huge contrast in energy between him and the rest of them in most recent ep

sound issues are severe on the latest one, Matt is super loud while I can barely hear Felix, and it was pretty aggravating when they decided to play Eric Garland's author video and laugh at it without piping the sound into the podcast.

OTOH the review of the Cobbler was very entertaining. Describing shitty movies is one of their strongsuits and they hadn't done it for a while.

it sounds like it was never mixed at all lol

http://dcist.com/2017/10/metro_dc_dsa_has_grown_by_500_percent.php

"Ad hoc structures had formed to deal with the explosive growth, but they didn't scale well," says Natarajan Subramanian, who joined after the election of the Democratic National Committee chair made him realize that the "party system was not suited to address my needs."

Jeff Stein, the Vox comrade (more or less), reports

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/10/24/16503462/dsa-women-cumtown-chapo

I've never listened to cum town and recently noticed the dude who does that podcast was the same dipshit who kept trying to do "funny rape jokes" on twitter a couple years ago

I haven't listened to CTH for probably a month, either. There's just something in there that's too close to the morning radio show aesthetic that's turning me off of it

good piece

cum town kinda feels like the podcast matt, will and felix might make if they were like 20% dumber

cum town seems like something listened to by people who have too much shame to go fully alt right

ha, true

I'd never really heard Howard Stern's show until the last couple months, after my satellite radio subscription changed, and it only took a couple weeks for me to circle through. Like wow, nice interviews, what's up with all the mocking of these socially and intellectually disabled hanger-ons, jesus this is really one note.

Some of the podcast diaspora is kind of like that, without the interviews, and just some guy joking about how the Trump sons are hideous mutants or w/e and recycling the same morning zoo race and sex cliches.

idk if it's alt-right as much as it's this very trad male banter aesthetic that's really falling out of acceptance, and people who are refusing to let go are drawn to the alt-right

missing the good old days when they could argue with their dad about whether Mancow or Bob and Tom have the better morning radio show while high-fiving each other

I'll be curious to see if CTH tweak their tone over time in the wake of Androskygate.

the cum town episodes i've heard have had plenty of edgelord-y joeks about a wide range of minorities, along with 'hilarious' chinese / hispanic accents and 'lol adam is gay' comments which seem straight from the cesspool of privileged irony which spawned the alt-right

it's hard to imagine sargon of akkad or some other shitlord of similar bent having much trouble sitting through an episode imo

CumTown is far too nihilistic to go alt-right, they're not politically invested in any of the bile. I think it's more comparable to Howard Stern. Also funnier imo, but I've been increasingly unable to listen to it as it just pushes things too far for me.

More generally though, I resent the idea that centrist media outlets like Vox think they are qualified to be writing about "misogyny on the left" and throwing together DSA, Chapo and CumTown in the same basket, one of which is an active political organization of 30,000 members that happens to have had a single chapter deal poorly with sexual harassment allegations, one of which is a political comedy podcast, and one of which is just a comedy podcast, not to mention the idea that this list is some kind of cross-section of "the socialist left" rather than a couple of corners of it. The article itself does a credible job trying to be fair-minded about it. But for some reason you never see articles about "misogyny in the center" or "misogyny in the democratic party" even though it exists at least equally there. "The socialist left" has to be constantly put on the defensive about sexism that exists at least equally everywhere else. Weinstein was a major democratic party fundraiser and Clinton supporter.

the entire thing that drove kids into the alt-right was that they wanted to be edgelords or w/e but identified people who were against that aesthetic ("sjws" or people that, idk, don't like racism and sexism) as on the left so they decided they're on the right!

I want to agree, but:

a) the left has to be extra sensitive to these issues for a wide variety of reasons, and

b) the DSA-LA meltdown points to what must be major flaws in DSA's design; they need to be thoroughly mended ASAP or there's going to be a whole lot more like it. I'm hoping that pieces like this one prompt ernest internal debate and change instead of just "lol centrists" abdication

xp

DSA of course must address it. OTOH, the article buries toward the end the fact that the DSA national steering committee is 50% female. Is that true of DNC leadership?

lumping in cum town with chapo is so disingenuous. there’s no political angle to cum town, it’s howard stern. i also don’t get why chapo attacks always highlight how much money they make.

because money should come with accountability?

it's the classic disingenuous 'how can you be socialist if you're rich' argument innit

Accountable for what? Delivering good content, getting good guests? Their fans pay them. There’s no network or station to complain to. There’s no way for them to get fired or taken ‘off the air’ so the money thing comes up every few weeks when a new controversy pops up.

w/o the money angle most people reading would be thinking "Who gives a fuck about some podcast?"

They're being paid 5 bucks a month to produce 2 podcasts a week, which they do. That's all the accountability they really need until or unless the listeners demand more of them.

Otm x2

It's a gauge of how many people are engaged in support and have a stake? It's *exactly* the point that they should have good content and guests, where "good" carries a level of social responsibility that balances with those listener/dollar numbers

If some guy with no family and no job is saying sexist shit on the sidewalk, individuals in the immediate area might have problems but as a society we're relatively safe. Ideally he has a responsibility to his peers not to be a dick, but the stakes are relatively low.

Having a well-supported, popular media platform has a different set of expectations.