Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

never think that the 'kids are okay'. fatal mistake

Is there are a furor or have you just wound up in a dark corner of Twitter?

I don’t really know much about these ppl or their personal lives or finances but I get the vibe that most are socdem/radlib at heart. but hey I guess that’s better than a bunch of 35 year old Reaganite psychopaths (which, let’s be real, has been pretty much everyone Dems included for my entire life) making every single cultural product and running every facet of our lives

nb I’m also a “rich” socdem so maybe I’m not to be listened to

if “the kids” have a healthy mistrust of corporations and billionaires that their idiotic parents never seemed to manage then that’s… something?

Their finances are pretty public, they take in 1.9 million a year on Patreon and that's not counting live events, books, other podcast they are doing

i'm not sure they even exist politically when bernie isn't running, they seem to abandon any sort of passion for socialist organizing in favor of movie reviews and reacting to dumb twitter shit. they're entertainers making content for their audience and their audience doesn't mind if they just do that all the time.

if i'm being extra cynical, their corner of "left" twitter has been dominated by glib doomers who stopped believing a better world was possible and i guess they'd rather appeal to the cool kids than the DSA dorks

neither the chapo guys nor the jacobin guy are that rich. if you’re gonna catch cooties from successful leftist media people becoming “capitalists” you should raise the threshold imo. based on the number m@tt gave above the chapo guys each make about as much as a mid-career physician

anyways i always thought part of the appeal of chapo was the relatability of the dirtbag louche persona, a podcast by the haranguing bores who quote tweet them disapprovingly or some earnest leftist organizer would be bad

They should stick to doing movie recaps with Gangsta Boo and reading series anyway, they're actually good at that. They're pretty bad when it's time for an interview that should go to one of the aforementioned earnest leftist organizers.

The lesson of the Daily Show should be to not mistake your funny show for serious political action but I don't foresee them doing a Rally to Restore Sanity.

it's not about capitalist cooties it just becomes increasingly apparent that some people have different interests than the bulk of whatever movements they attach themselves to to build their brands

and that they can constitute part of the "elite capture" of these movements

m@tt gave above the chapo guys each make about as much as a mid-career physician

So...rich

Also they literally work probably like 6 hours a week

but how many lives do they save

I was about to start a post with “I’m about as pro-union as it gets, but”

then stopped myself and laughed a little

lefties moving onto the newest controversy - Hasan Piker buying a house

I doubt any of these people, who afaict generally have “good” politics, make even a thiertieth of what a Rachel Maddow (who has very bad politics) or a Thomas Friedman (atrocious) make.

It sucks, but certainly isn’t surprising that people who are critical of empire, natsec buffoonery, and capitalism (even the ridiculous “woke” versions of each that are very in vogue rn) will never ever get a megaphone on cable news or the op ed page of the Times or Post. Possibly the demand really isn’t there and these niche audiences have topped out. But I really dngaf if these slackers make some $$$.

and honestly I’d bet the Citations Needed or QAA guys work harder than any of the on-air talent at MSNBC

lol yeah maybe(?) that Hassan dudes makes real money. which, fucking lol. and good. wgaf.

*Hasan dude

because owning capital obviously changes people's political never mind fuck it

Wait does owning 50% of my condo (which is my only home) make me a capitalist. shit.

aiui, it depends how you want to define it. A narrow definition would say no: you're only a capitalist if you purchase someone else's labor power in order to accrue surplus value. However, you could also define "capital" as any commodity you purchase that increases in value, which generally does apply to property such as condos, in which case yes: you are a capitalist in the sense that you are an owner of capital.

a more interesting question is how your interests might differ from those who own nothing, those who own 100%, those who own multiple condos, etc

capitalist isn't (necessarily) an insult in this case, it's not "this makes you a bad person" it's just that (relations to) material things like this are more politically relevant than what political label you identify with, what aesthetic you find most appealing, etc

i don't mean to be overly deterministic here, people don't always follow what their interests should be according to some theory, but it's not irrelevant

xp - If there's one thing the last 18 months should put an end to, it's the idea that most people act according to their interests.

I don't even think it's bad they make money. Or that homeownership means you should be beheaded or whatever. I just think that it's not a coincidence if they slip out of left politics into sort quippy fucking around nihilism a lot of the times it's because most of the shit they are talking about only matters in theory to them, they are wealthy and generally get to do whatever the fuck they want to do with their time. so i'm not saying they don't believe in things but a lot of those things don't seriously impact them on a day to day basis.

(also for flopson - the average american household income is $61,000 a year)

That's the median, right? The mean seems to be* at least 10 grand higher.

*after 2 minutes on wikipedia lol

dunno actually seems like a distinction w/o a difference in the context of this convo

I think there are times when it’s worth debating how these left-wing principles should apply to specific small movements - like, the thing with Morales’s mayoral campaign imploding over their staff trying to unionize, which brought up the legitimate point of, what is this potential union going to do for a campaign that hasn’t even gotten through the primary, and will exist for 6 months at best? Should the practical concerns about winning an election in the first place be subservient to the principle that unions should be supported at all costs?

I think the Current Affairs takes are more reflective of Nathan J Robinson being a fundamentally ridiculous person and some people deciding that “actually the little fancylad is right” is a funny take to have.

Hasan being a large house and actually filling it with people is good, hopefully they’ll all take turns running the stream so he doesn’t go insane as the leftist schoolbus driver/camp counselor/Brand from the Goonies for thousands of Gen Zed kids for 16 hours a day.

Good interview with Matt that covers both Hell of Presidents-type history but also talking about how they do view the show as entertainment

https://soundcloud.com/upstreampodcast/matt-christman-of-chapo-trap-house-in-conversation

capitalist isn't (necessarily) an insult in this case, it's not "this makes you a bad person" it's just that (relations to) material things like this are more politically relevant than what political label you identify with, what aesthetic you find most appealing, etc

Acting according to your relations to material things when you know this damages a majority of ppl p much does make you a bad person tho?

i mean maybe but my point wasn't supposed to be a moral one, i was trying to avoid that kind of thing

pretty much anyone who is part of the global north could be accused of this though, to varying degrees. are they/we all bad people? i don't know but i also don't find it a very interesting or useful question here. the moral angle feels like a different thing than the structural/material one to me

Introducing Cool Zone Media - chronicling the collapse as it happens in order to build a brighter future pic.twitter.com/8gd3D8vuqx

— coolzonemedia (@coolzonemedia) August 16, 2021

The cool zone has hit its shark jump moment.

I’ve liked a fair amount of Behind the Bastards but Cool Zone Media, a subsidiary of IHeartRadio, is a bit much.

The new daily series “It Could Happen Here” will focus on climate change and picks up where Evans’ fast-paced, terrifying and fascinating 10-episode weekly podcast by the same name left off

may be stretching himself a bit thin here

The Twitch stream fundraiser for the Texas Equal Access Fund is over $18k now

Not bad at all. How long has it been going?

24 hours I think

Thank you to everyone who tuned in, hung out, and donated! $24,019.11 (haven’t counted up bits and sound drops yet, too busy/tired) was raised for @TEAFund! Just an incredible showing and as always, so proud of our community for helping out great organizations, love you all mwah!

— ChapoFYM (@ChapoFYM) September 12, 2021

plugging these chapo prints by my friend simon

Lithographs of both of the pieces we commissioned from @simonroyart are now available to purchase

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/QiZ0PZazo4 pic.twitter.com/i8NvS5PDBo

— Will 🦥 Menaker (@willmenaker) September 14, 2021

Is the new premium episode considered Blago-House? or Jovich-House?

Deep Dish Conversation

had this on... felt like they've been wrapping it up for the past hour... there's another hour to go!!

Did Felix ask him about his feelings on Chief Keef

Blago says the increasingly violent and despondent tenor of the hiphop he was hearing in prison made him just want to stay there.

i went into the bootleg feed for this one. it's pretty intersting so far!

man re the latest QAA…
every so often I have to remind myself that the whole weird Moonie/Wash Times)/GOP three-way went down and its always made me lol, but in a way it really did portend some of the darkest developments of the last few years

(also wonder if maybe there should be a separate thread for lefty pods & extended universe, etc that doesn’t have the Chapo stink on it?)

let's just rename this one Chapo Stank House