What's with all these awful Youtubers being popular?

I didn’t dig in too deep into it, but this whole… shill cryptocurrencies… get people to live in a communal house… gaslighting… etc thing.

Dude’s wikipedia page is also heavily curated (though there’s some typos there). Reminds me of other NPD people I’ve met that did very similar things.

That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. I remember he made a thing, like back when I was in highschool about world of warcraft. I don’t remember much other than he and his “bitch and boyfriend” went into his yard and like… pretended to do quests?

It was dumb and even at that age I saw some pretty obvious misogyny.

I think I saw a post about him cheating at hearthstone years later.

Now I see this, he’s made a scam (cryptocurrency) apparently and is doing some other BS. I don’t get how he passes anyone’s sniff test. Like the first time I saw him I thought he was a nut who just reveled in having stuff other people didn’t have (he was nuts about how much wow gold he had)

He’s, to me, a very long and deep sigh, personified.

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Your take is pretty much equivalent to mine.

If you’ve got a nominal amount of skepticism and are culturally adjusted to be aware for these people, perhaps by having encountered them in school when they’re still pretty harmless, they shouldn’t be a threat. Kinda gets into why I jest a bit about the internet being a mistake. It gives these people the ability to cast a much larger net, and a particularly direct one with youtube and twitch. I kinda feel like we’re a little bit lucky that most of these people don’t succeed at it and kinda get caught in each other’s gravitational pulls.

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None so blind as those that don’t want to see. One of the most popular podcasts on the internet right now is aimed squarely at progressives, where the hosts are caught up in one scandal or another seemingly every other week, where they’re acting like bigoted assholes, misogynistic shitheels, or just generally in a manner you’d normally see out of the alt-right, and yet, people still defend them as good progressive socialists.

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Is this that ‘chapo trap house’ that I hear talked about here and nowhere else? Is that what the deal is? I’ve not cared enough to look it up but is there any way to tell how popular any arbitrary podcast is?

If they have a Patreon account, you can see how popular they are among people who want to donate money per month. You could probably use this to see how large the overall audience is compared to:

Geeknights - 77 patrons - $227 per month
Chapo Trap House - 22,090 patrons - $98,650 per month

That number looked high to me, but it turns out Chapo Trap House is the top podcast on all of Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/explore/podcasts

Thor damn! Well whatever they’re doing they’re making lots of money doing it. I hope they’re not as bad as Churba thinks they are. That would be very sad.

I got bad news on that front, mate. Just the brief hit-and-run of stuff that I can remember, but not bothering with links because as you’re about to see it would take forever:

Click for Large wall of text listing everything I remember

Mocking a rape victim about her rape(And refusing to apologize to anyone but their own subreddit when called out, and then lying about the person they mocked, and on another occasion, a joke about Bill Cosby that resulted in a DSA-LA steering comittee member stepping down), making pretty regular jokes about sexual assault, pretty much constant ablest language and jokes(They were, for a time, particularly fond of calling people “Retards”, for example, and often use autism as an accusatory slur), they mock fat people, Joking about how if they lived in the Black communities of Philidelphia they’d want to get blown up too(in reference to the MOVE bombings that killed 11 and left 250 people homeless) as well as joking about starving black children(with the added implication that Black parents are bad parents).

Don’t worry, still more.

One member of the team regularly referring to women as “Dimes”, they regularly throw out “Ironic” bigotry as if it’s not still just bigotry, they talk about how Identity politics, Feminism, and other social justice topics are just a “Distraction” from class issues, they categorically reject feminism as a useful movement or method of analysis/critique(including, for example, suggesting the hate-filled mysoginistic backlash to Ghostbusters was actually the fault of the cast and the girl-power-centric marketing), they’re closely connected with CumTown(who are notorious harassers, who also pal around with Nazis).

Ready for more? Deep breath, we’re going back in.

Regularly attacking people with mental health issues(for example, Amber taking Sady Doyle’s article about her hospital stay due to bipolar depression, and using it to dismiss Sady’s criticism of her, by outright lying to people, saying Sady was having a “Relapse” and therefore couldn’t be trusted. Or Felix mocking a bipolar writer, making fun of him for taking lithium, and asking how often he needed to get lithium injections in the neck to be allowed on twitter), they regularly use homophobic language, they are regularly grossly anti-semetic.

Don’t worry, starting to scrape the bottom of the memory barrel now.

They pal around with harcore TERF and quasi-alt-right shit Angela Nagle, as well as continuing to pal around with or spotlighting sexual abusers/harassers like Sam Kriss, Matt Tabibi, Jordan Chariton, when asked about the possibility of transcriptions of their podcast for leftists with hearing disabilities by the DSA Disability section, they refused and made jokes about it, they accused all disabled leftists of being wreckers and cops while tacitly suggesting they should be pushed out of the movement, they went hard after a Black DSA elected rep for not calling out racism politely enough(because the person he was calling out was a friend of Chapo host Amber), and finally, their name is at best edgy toeing right at the line of racism, at worst, just racist.

And that’s just what I remember off the top of my head, and not including the side-stuff that involves them tangentially, like how their fans have an enormous reputation for gamergate-level harassment which they do nothing to dissuade, and could even be seen as tacitly encouraging(and as I mentioned in another thread, that includes one occasion where some chapo turds tried to SWAT me), or the fact that Richard Spencer and a curious number of other alt-right fucksticks are fans of theirs, or the fact that their hardcore fans named their fan group after the Grey Wolves, a Turkish ultranationalist terrorist group slash death squad.

As to Luke’s point about popularity - their download figures are private, but estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. They have more people following just the twitter account for the podcast itself than there are DSA members total, and their listenership, while unpublished, is also almost certainly greater than total DSA membership. They are undeniably the most popular left-wing political podcast in existence, definitely the most popular progressive podcast on the internet. I’m almost certain they’re the most popular political podcast, period.

Edit - Added a fold. Also, yay, remembered how to use the fold tags in discourse.

Well that’s just depressing, I was thinking “aw hell they can’t be that bad, I should listen to a random episode and asses for myself”, but as the list went on it just got to be too much. I have very little patience for shit like that and It’s likely not worth the trouble for something I’d listen to for 5 minutes and turn off in disgust. I guess I have to echo Adam’s point, how on earth does anyone consider them progressive?

There have been people from Chapo on other podcasts I listen to twice; I know what their deal is, but I don’t really know firsthand. My experience from these appearances is 50% reasonable discussion and 50% setting off moderate “that guy” alarms, which is kind of like eating food that is 50% poop.

In answer to your first question - well, there’s a whole mess of possible answers to that. Because they know that if they say the right things, people will let it pass. Because they know there’s more money to be made that way, than the relatively saturated market of right-wing wingnut welfare. Because they’re bougie privileged white people who are blind to their own issues. Roll a dice, take your pick, or make one of your own.

Well, that’s easy. Why do you think they were the example? Like I said, none so blind as those that don’t want to see.

To be fair, that’s not just episodes. That’s a combination of episodes, their twitter presences, things that have happened with them in their participating with the DSA, etc. Sure, I’m grouping them together under their show name while also pulling in their actions outside of the show, but it’s not like shitty people stop being shitty when you add or remove a microphone.

Further side note - kinda nice to actually talk about this stuff again, rather than keeping quiet to save having Gomez show up and stan for them, for not wanting to cause trouble and drama for folk. Honestly, I don’t give a shit if he does anymore, motherfucker can gargle my whole ass while I shit razors. I don’t take shit from people who cape for assholes like that, and I regret talking myself into avoiding the issue.

Pardon my ignorance on this subject, and maybe it’s because I’m just old, but what do you all watch on YouTube that you’re coming into contact with all these shitty people? I have no idea who they are, I have no idea what shows they host, or the topics they talk about. I feel like you’re all talking in a foreign language and I’m just completely oblivious.

Maybe it’s because I can’t watch YouTube at work, or because other than Facebook, I don’t use social media at all, but literally the only things I watch on YouTube are boardgame instructional videos, movie trailers, and one guy (Quill18) play videogames that I will probably never buy myself, but look fun. My concept of YouTube is that it’s a place to go to watch cute but mindless animal videos and stupid teenagers doing stupid teenager stuff, but apparently I’m wrong?

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Honestly? Youtube algos just kinda suck. They have no interest in context or content, which means that on a lot of topics, watching one video can clog your recommendations and suggestions with awful shit. There’s literally plugins that allow you to block channels on youtube just to stop it happening.

Say you watch, I dunno, a feminist video about the gender pay gap. It’s just as likely(if not more so, due to the sheer number of internet shoutymen making videos about it) to recommend you a bunch of videos from internet shoutymen talking about how the Gender pay gap is all just a made up conspiracy by the evil SJWs, because it just sucks at determining intent, content, and context.

There’s also some of us that follow groups, people, circles, etc that are more likely to call out shitty people for being shitty, and spread the word around, so we’re more likely to see what’s up with different people. For example, I don’t watch Logan Paul or PewDiePie, but I know they’re both cockbags, because enough people I trust have talked about and presented evidence of him behaving like cockbags.

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I have heard of Logan Paul and PewDiePie, but only because Polygon has done quite a number of articles about various controversies involving them. From reading Polygon’s articles, I don’t understand their appeal at all.

I think we both have to join the too old club on that one, mate. I just don’t think we’re the target audience.

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I think there’s a need for Chapo to exist because it does serve as a major crux against the legions of Alt-Right/Propagandist shitheads who live off Youtube and have hundreds of thousands to millions of followers. The kind of people who were found in Alexandre Bissonette’s twitter feed who have very disturbing amounts of influence. Chapo partially is there for people to laugh and/or openly critique them without being overwhelmed by Trumpian trolls.

At the same time Chapo as this new “Dirtbag Left” is a very toxic environment that is designed to make leftists to absolutely hate against Democrats. And I think it follows a similar rule in that South Park kind of way where they don’t seem to care about how offensive they are to people and they treat things like “Yeah, Republicans are evil, BUT OH DAMN DID JOY REID PISS ME OFF ON TWITTER. There are no good Presidents, Obama was bad!” That type of political commentary I think just dissuades people from wanting to engage in politics. I can agree with the DemSoc people too, but they need time to build and we need counter-action now.

Personally I’d say they should be a jumping off point for better, more analytical political podcasts. I found a good one through their subreddit called “Citations Needed” that really explored the history of some big political myths and how certain stories came become a pop culture staple.

I would agree with the first bit, if not for the second bit, and one other thing.

Chapo definitely hate the right wing, but they hate the Democrats/non-chapo leftists more. Their ideal audience isn’t necessarily the leftists, it’s the segment of Bernie supporters who were more anti-Hillary than pro-burnie(which, side note, by his polling movement since the election, is a stunningly large amount of his support). They’re the personification of the entitled rage that they didn’t get their preferred old white guy into the nomination, and that’s not the fault of the right wing. And if you’re more dedicated to punching nominal allies instead of your alleged enemies, then you’re not really an ally, you’re just another enemy.

The other issue is that - as I said, they attract a surprisingly large amount of fans from the Alt-right. Richard Spencer is a huge fan of theirs. They pal around with people who claim to be left, but espouse a lot of right wing ideas, like Angela Nagle, Katie Halper, and Glenn Greenwald, as well as Cumtown, who are notorious harassers and who hang with Nazis. They drop a lot of “Ironic” racism, sexism, anti-semitism, and so on.

But that’s kind of the thing - Ironic bigotry is still bigotry, and it just makes you more appealing to bigots. Hanging out with shitty people doesn’t convert them into good people by your influence, it just attracts more shitty people. Pretending to be a garbage person rapidly attracts more garbage people who don’t think it’s a joke, they think they’ve found like-minded company, and that’s not a problem that changes, it just gets worse, as the garbage people attract more garbage people.

I don’t agree that they’re a jumping off point for more analytical podcasts - because they essentially teach that anyone who disagrees with them is just some shitty neolib who is wrong about everything, and must be attacked, and turns out when you get a bunch of assholes with an ideology, but who are almost entirely politically ignorant, pretty much anyone who is more analytical than “Fuck the dems!” disagrees with them.

What they are a jumping off point for?

Well…they’re already adjacent to some pretty shitty people, and run a lot of style that’s already long-worn by the alt-right. It’s not a long hop from Chapo to more right-wing commentary of a similar style and theme. Especially if someone has come in because they like how they attack the dems, and pretty much the rest of the left-wing, along with their rather right-wing ideas about feminism, identity politics, social justice etc, but that person isn’t quite as comfortable with some of their left-wing ideals.

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You are not alone. I didn’t really watch YouTubers/streamers and have no idea who 99% of the streamers people talke about on here. Too much of a shit wasteland to find those diamonds.

Also I feel most will end up being ‘that guy’, which ends up being true than not. I honestly am ok with this.

I also tend to not care about any streamers that are white males. If I didn’t know of GN/ScRym beforehand, I probably wouldn’t give them a chance today.

Just tired of consuming white boy created content. It seems all the same to me.

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I have a few streamers that I watch, but it’s almost entirely people who aren’t just white dudes(Glitchy, Shy, etc), or people I know personally in some way(Dave&Graz, Wealthy, Eoghan, etc)

Pretty much the same for not giving people a chance today, if I didn’t know about them beforehand. Too much rough, not enough diamonds to spend that much time figuring out which is which. Not excluding shows I’m on from that, either, we’d be pretty low down on my list of things to check out.