Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Amber should stick to writing - this book review / screed is solid.

As it functions now, a hashtag campaign is largely an exercise in liberal networking. It offers in-group recognition, the illusion of power, the potential for moral absolution, and sometimes, conveniently enough, professional advantages for the enterprising white-collar progressive. For the more earnest social justice advocate — who probably works at a “job” rather than a “career” — Twitter allows them to participate in “the conversation,” where they can bear witness to suffering among like-minded people, even if it results in little more than a collective, therapeutic wailing into the privately owned digital void. If the authors’ political goals are largely PR campaigns, therapy, and consciousness raising for a more merciful middle class, it’s fair to say that Twitter has been wildly successful.

Only a few paragraphs of #HashtagActivism refer to the potentially nefarious machinations of Twitter — and they are all buried in the book’s afterword. In a publication about politics on social media, fewer than six pages are dedicated solely to the politics of social media. Net neutrality, surveillance, censorship, trolls, misinformation campaigns, and bots all appear to be minor concerns in the otherwise auspicious estimation of Twitter as a powerful and positive force. The authors do, however, appear to be concerned about Russiagate.

This paranoid insularity and PMC subculturalism can only exacerbate atomization and political obscurantism, even more than the New Left ever could. Yet there is a resistance to any consideration of its weaknesses, and a failure to even to address its potential detriments. Much of this stems from a fetish for novelty that has flourished since the cultural turn pronounced the death of dusty old class politics. Social media’s newness is taken as evidence of its potential, even when its own partisans write a book explicitly chronicling its 100 percent failure rate. At the heart of this denial is an ideology of will; this has to work, because it’s all that we have left — all the while, its greatest advocates sing its praises amid an unbroken record of defeat.

https://catalyst-journal.com/vol4/no2/the-poisoned-chalice-of-hashtag-activism

They're very good at selling movies that otherwise sound terrible.

The Richard Jewell ep really is driving home how the majority of modern media critics are either too craven or too stupid to actually do their jobs anymore

yeah I actually stopped listening partway through cause I decided to actually watch it, which is impressive because I hate every latter-day Clint movie I've seen

the long TrueAnon interview w/ Mike Davis is some really heavy shit. Do not listen if you can't handle a heavy dose of (totally reasonable) pessimism.

(also spookily well-timed as I'd started in on Old Gods, New Enigmas that same morning)

yeah that was a heavy listen

what the FUCK is Johnny Knoxville doing on this DSA fundraiser endorsing @Bradshaw2020!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/ozGtdtPl4y

— Henry Druschel (@henrydruschel) October 5, 2020

Putting the dirtbag in dirtbag left.

good for him

Pretty fun episode but what on earth was amber going for with her “lol libs think the virus transmits through the air” thing?

do not feed the amber

Gets hard for me to listen to an Amber episode anymore

eh her “bad takes” still I still really appreciate when she does stuff like deep dives on Kim Klacik etc.

ok that one got away from me—

her “bad takes” still make me consider things in ways I hadn’t

As for the libs and Covid I need to relisten bc it sounded like there was some talking past each other and she got in the weeds with her original point.

she said something about how liberals thought covid was an airborne toxic event, which is pretty imaginative on her part

yeah I wasn’t following her riff at all there but I feel fairly confident she understands (as well as any non-insane layperson) that CV-19 can spread through airborne transmission

I mean you can feel confident about that but she said what she said

anyway she doesn’t need me to cape for her. I dig her most of the time and I’m sure it’s not easy being on a pod with preternaturally good bullshitters like Felix or Matt

I mean you can feel confident about that but she said what she said

It felt like she was reaching really hard to do a both sides thing.

I didn't listen to that, but tbf the virus on one hand does techinically transmit "through the air" -- however not in the way that most people might assume without more info. It's not like you just get into an elevator someone positive rode in and get COVID, or get it from a passing jogger -- at least such transmission is extremely unlikely. Most transmission is still from prolonged (and especially maskless) exposure, it's just that it can occur in spaces where people are more than 6 feet apart if there's poor ventilation.

I didn't even notice Amber on transmission, was busy rolling my eyes at her arguments about this buying him sympathy votes (and rapidly backtracking).

Would not have expected Matt to be putting out by far the most Chapo content.

listened to the Antifada pod (never heard it before, no idea if it’s gen Good or Bad) w him on Q and it’s pretty great. love a good rant and his often chemically influenced musings on Cushblogs, but Prof Cushbomb mode best imo

Jamie Peck is cool but I've never found the Antifada pod listenable.

the dude who hosts seems like an idiot and was always taking Ls on twitter when I used to use it

yeah it's only worth listening when there's a smart guest

good to know. Looks like the second half is behind the Patreon paywall and I shan’t be doing that. I’ll wait til it’s available by other means

the cushvlog audio feed is the best ever (or at least most reliable/consistent) content to come out of the entire dirtbag left imo

lol Jamie Peck on Majority Report is like one of those conservatives on the View or whatever. She has to start every thought with, "Well, as a Marxist I..."

the long TrueAnon interview w/ Mike Davis is some really heavy shit. Do not listen if you can't handle a heavy dose of (totally reasonable) pessimism.

― the typo doer (Simon H.), Sunday, October 4, 2020 5:58 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This has inspired me to listen to my first ever spoken word podcast (I'm kind of a pessimism stan). It was mostly very interesting and informative, but as someone with a background in enviro sci, some of it did verge on the alarmist, eg comparing the destructive power of wild fires with nuclear attacks. It was kind of clear to me that this is the perspective of a historian dabbling in ecology, the grounding in the evidence could have been stronger.

Personally I'm more curious about the socialist analysis though, I'd be interested if anyone here wants to riff on that a bit more, with a particular focus on how we can take immediate and effective steps to get there from here.

how we can take immediate and effective steps to get there from here

this is the question everyone is pulling their hair out trying to answer. the orthodox marxist answer (held by Davis and others, including me) is "form a workers' party/movement and wield the collective power of labor". but what that looks like / how it functions / how can it even *begin* to be formed in hyper-alienated, hyper-atomized 2020 is a general area of inquiry that seems to have as many distinct answers as there are people asking it.

Viborg, you might really like the Regrettable Century, done by a group of “revolutionary pessimists.” I’ve had them on my show before, too

https://podtail.com/da/podcast/the-regrettable-century/

I feel like there’s a lay pipe/ lay cable joek at the beginning of The Boys that’s instructive here

oops

wrong thread

#onethread

The old forms of the left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that talks about the need to organize a dialectical pessimism and develop a Marxist salvage project capable of putting up a good fight as the world burns around us. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we've cultivated one and would like to share it with you.

oh wow this sounds extremely up my alley

Can't believe you people spent 24 hours making fun of @Harlan and nobody posted the Boss Baby picture. pic.twitter.com/pmw7U6EIew

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) October 9, 2020

Dark World Will Menaker

— MF ZOOM (@chemtrailblazer) October 9, 2020

Brutal... but accurate.

Q likely being run by father-and-son pornographers is one of those things that just makes too much sense

psyched about the ep title referencing a moderately known dischord band of my college years

I actually saw them live in a college basement, in fact

ep is p good so far. In the past I've felt a little like they didn't take weaponized conspiracy theory seriously enough -- sort of viewing it as just part of the great psychedelic american parade of crazies and not recognizing their deliberate political uses and the danger of that. Seems like they get a bit more into that here.

chrus is a better moderator/host than Will lol

chrus? really, autocorrect?

Was not surprised to hear liz, brace and the guy from the blowback podcast rep for the BBC mini-series versions of the Le Carré books

Producer Chris was a college radio DJ and has an obsession for the early 00s NYC scene, so he knows far more about music than the rest of them put together, except maybe Amber

I hope they review the new D'Souza joint

Viborg, you might really like the Regrettable Century, done by a group of “revolutionary pessimists.” I’ve had them on my show before, too

https://podtail.com/da/podcast/the-regrettable-century/

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Thursday, October 8, 2020 11:37 PM

Thanks! I've got it bookmarked for when I have a nice chunk of time set aside to digest some of their fare. Gotta ration out my podcast consumption dontcha know.

Thanks also to Simon H for the thoughts (and I should really check in here more often, regrets). It seems to me that any significant revolutionary movement at this point would have to weave the three strands of economic justice, social justice, and environmental justice; rarely have I seen them woven effectively, but then I'm just a big pessimist.

Can I ask if any of y'all are on Twitter, or if you can recommend any accounts particularly worth following? (Not sure if this is a faux pas.)