Everytime I've checked the subreddit, other places of discussion like chapotraphouse podcast, etc... I am left confused.

What is this? Do I just not get it? What is the purpose of chapo? Why is the podcast entertaining to people?

Sorry if I sound like a dumbass but I genuinely want to know why people gather around the chapo name and listen to the chapo podcast.

  • heqt1c [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    "Big tent leftist community that doesn't take itself too seriously"

        • nox [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I think r/alltheleft got started recently in the wake of Chapo getting b&, intended as a space for all leftist tendencies, but while it's good to have it hasnt got the same size or energy that CTH did. But we're here now!

          • piratemao [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Feels very weird. I participated here and there on the discord, but it's just not worth the mental energy to keep up with all the friggin scrolling. This format is classic and it feels good

              • UncleHo [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                The auto refresh kinda pisses me off, keeps bringing me back to the top of the page

                • chmos [any]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  This. I think it should show when there are new posts and prompt a refresh instead.

                • eduardog3000 [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  I watched as the person I was typing a reply to edited their comment multiple times.
                  I do that to, so good to know people are less likely to miss my edits now.

              • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
                ·
                4 years ago

                The autorefresh sucks, maybe there's a reason no site does that.

                Horrible trying to read a thread with comments reordering every second.

            • nox [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Yep for sure, only downside for me is i'm used to being able to browse reddit using RIF on my phone. But the mobile site for chapochat is far from the worst I've ever had to use. The devs are doing a great job.

        • Drewfro [he/him,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          /r/DankLeft is alright. The content is really low-quality but it's been getting better as more professional chapotraphouse meme lords funnel in

        • ComradeMikey [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I think being so hardcore about a tendency is annoying and larpy. leftist is a leftist in my book. except racists/transphobes etc fuck those guys

  • s0ciety [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I love that someone that has no idea what's going on followed us here. That rules.

    We're leftists of various tendencies that started as fans of the podcast of the same name but grew to be our own community, fairly separate from the podcast

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Just because someone follows weird internet links doesn't make it okay to call them a lemmy.

  • cadence [they/them,she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's a place where my first interaction was as a politics baby asking sincerely what the difference between a liberal and a leftist is. Amazingly, people actually took me seriously, upvoted my question, and provided well-thought-out answers that, at the time, I didn't understand, but my curiosity about this political sect was piqued, so I subscribed. I didn't understand anything that happened at first, but over time I became accustomed to how people interacted, started to learn the basis of what they believed — USA bad, question western narratives, liberals do not seek progressive change, helping poor people good — which as it turned out, I agreed with a lot. Now I'm a leftist of some sort. I'm not particularly a fan of either anarchy or authoritarian beliefs, so I just post about killing billionaires. :af-heart:

    And yet... I still don't know why it's called Chapo Trap House. I think it's a reference to a recurring joke that originated on the community's official podcast, Cum Town.

    • confuser [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Is it a running joke in this community to claim that the official podcast is not chapotraphouse? lmfao

      • Rashav3rak [he/him, any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        No, cadence is just mistaken. Citations Needed is the community's official podcast

      • TwilightLoki [he/him,any]
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        4 years ago

        Everyone hates the podcast it sucks ass and is not related to this community, which came before the podcast

        • ElGosso [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Well maybe if we didn't stick our fingers up our ass we wouldn't have come first

      • Waylander [he/him,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        No, this community is based on Pod Damn America. The Chapo Trap House podcast took its name from the subreddit.

  • scramplunge [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    My favorite thing about the sub was being able to search topics and find an array of differing leftists opinions. I’m not sure there’s any place I can go online and do that now. If their is please let me know.

    It was a great pipeline to radicalize libs.

    The show was good for a bit, but I was done after the “HR departments are shit” episode, during a nationwide protests. And then them constantly shitting on the sub bc some people hurt their feelings. And then them celebrating this biggest leftist online community being destroyed for hating slaves. So now I’m here and I hope we can grow this instance as well as other leftists instances in the fediverse.

    • standardissue [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I thought the hosts' disdain for the sub was a bit but I guess they were serious about that. I dunno, when a bunch of well meaning dorks who like your show create a mostly good community around it, it's very weird to constantly be like "you guys disgust me"

      • Blakey [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        it's not a bit, the hosts are honestly mostly just kinda shitty people.

      • 420clownpeen [they/them,any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Imo it's mainly Will, and I think it mostly was a bit until that idiotic drama about the mods refusing a request by Leslie Lee 3rd's request to pin an episode of Struggle Session (podcast he co-hosts) and just kinda insulting him for no real reason.

        • hagensfohawk [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          To be fair Leslie Lee III is an asshole online and nobody wanted to listen to his podcast on Spiderman

          • 420clownpeen [they/them,any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            He can be, but I think he plays a decent straight man and facilitator to the others' antics, so I give him some benefit of the doubt. Though maybe not so good a facilitator from what I've heard about the Taibbi episode.

    • ComradeMikey [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      i learned all my theory either from there or a source linked from there. its good folks

        • ComradeMikey [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I mean I learned alot and its not like I don’t know anything. Watching debates between factions allowed me to get a good grasp on things in addition to discourse collective summarizing marx for me

          • Ent [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Collective discourse is key to theory, as sociology is the modern iteration of philosophy. Marx is even regarded as the father of sociology.

    • CatherineTheSoSo [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      There is an archive of the sub on the github. Don't know if it's searchable yet, but I'm sure somebody will figure it out soon.

        • CatherineTheSoSo [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          This one. Seems like a work in progress. There is an archive category(?) on chapo discord. I'm sure they have more info.

            • CatherineTheSoSo [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              I dunno. I don't like discord format but so I don't participate, but it says there are 10k people on the sever as opposed to 2k here. Not sure what percentage is actually active.

                • Ayavaron [they/them]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  Discord's great for learning and discussing but it doesn't scale well to communities larger than a single person can keep track of.

            • cadence [they/them,she/her]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Discord sucks ass, both as a company and as a way of talking for large spaces, so I deleted all my posts there and left the server as soon as they posted the official announcement of this place.

  • hirsute [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I don’t know who those podcasters are but I wish they’d stop calling themselves chapos. We came up with the name first and this site predates the podcast by almost a decade.

  • Girtsquirt [he/him]
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 years ago

    I’ve only listened to the podcast twice. It sucked ass. I’m here because I liked the shit people were posting.

  • victim_of_leisure [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I love the cynical truth of the pod and the community. When I am at work, when I'm watching TV, everyone is acting like 'this is fine' when there's so much unnecessary suffering, and so much more to come as climate change just keeps chugging along.

    The humour of the pod and the community cuts through the sanguine, sappy propaganda of the culture we live in -Chapo is a cultural antidote. That's why Felix's 'This is Suss' fits the theme of the show somehow, even though on the surface it's got nothing to do with politics, and why the show has such an international audience when it's often just about US politicians I haven't even heard of.

    Work makes me feel spiritually gross. On my way home, I listen to the podcast and look at dumb memes about leftism and foot fetishism and it makes me feel better somehow.

    • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Work makes me feel spiritually gross. On my way home, I listen to the podcast and look at dumb memes about leftism and foot fetishism and it makes me feel better somehow.

      This. I've been really struggling with the meaningless corporate environment, and the dumb leftie memes and the podcast have been among the few things that kept me sane. IDK perhaps I should go out more...

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Somehow at some time or another the chapo subreddit became the biggest sub on reddit where leftists of all types gathered without too much sectarianism. It got to the point where half the users didn’t even listen to the podcast, the community just grew naturally. The name is incidental at this point, the hosts of the show famously hated the subreddit. I’m thinking the Bernie campaign helped it blow up some more over the last 18 months.

    • sunlit_uplands [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The lack of sectarianism was it imo. Appreciated the kind of unique trans positivity and I think trans people did too.

      • ElGosso [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        That's def a part of it, I stuck around because of the flagrantly disrespectful attitude though - very transgressive and edgy, very 2008-chan-culture esque, at least when I started.

          • skeletorsass [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            That's such fucking horseshit too that the US military just gets to control the entire TLD like that too.

            • slevin [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              The us gets to control .gov and .edu as well. Governments and universities of other countries have to use the country specific TLD that everybody else uses.

    • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I think the subscriber count really blew up some time around when the pod started getting mainstream news attention:

      https://www.salon.com/2018/06/10/how-linkedin-made-this-failmom-into-a-socialist/

      Edit: Pretty sure that was how I found the sub, back in the ~50k-subscriber days. That article was posted to LSC, and thus the liberalism to more different liberalism pipeline began in earnest.

      • Hegel [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        wow fuck i thought that said "debate" but it said "celebrate" lol. carry on, celebrate hard, comrade

  • slevin [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I enjoy the chapo podcast but it's just entertainment. If it's not for you, that's cool.

    The community emerged out of the listenership of the podcast but eventually assembled the a bunch of different kinds of leftists who didn't feel quite at home in any of the other leftist subreddits.