After the 2016 election, I kept seeing a bunch of references scattered around reddit politics boards where they were discussing the sub like boogeymen, and looked it up just to figure out what they were whining about. I realized it was the kind of sub I was looking for amid all the russiagate madness of libs trying to come to terms with trump, there wasn't just a bunch of impotent hand-wringing and panic, they actually had a sense of humor about how fucked everything was - which when you're feeling powerless can be therapeutic, instead of the 24/7 onslaught of doom-posting that's become the new normal (but wasn't quite normalized yet by that point). Even all the humor shit I typically enjoyed (or at least used as politics junk food) was just destroyed by Trump's win, cause their only jokes were 'orange man bad'. None of it was funny and it only made you angrier.

I voted bernie in the primary but didn't hear about chapo until summer of 17, so after a few weeks on the subreddit I looked up the podcast. After downloading a few episodes for a long drive, including the post-2016 election one, and hearing the felix cold open about dale earnhardt, I was hooked for a long time - I probably hadn't laughed that hard in six months, since before the election at least. Was always leftist-adjacent in sensibility but I was ignorant enough that I didn't know too much of the intricacies or specifics of leftism, so learned quite a bit while shitposting, too.

I don't follow the podcast as close these days, because it's kind of babby's first socialism and I've kind of just moved beyond them - probably the closest I've got in months to listening to chapo is watching a few of matt's streams - but the sub was its own free-for-all with a unique culture even among leftist spaces, a beast all its own that was extremely different from the podcast.

The fact that it was as irreverent as 4chan, while espousing a compassionate worldview, had just as many sincere posts mixed in with the shitposts, and was one of the most trans-friendly subreddits anywhere on reddit that weren't specifically trans-oriented subs created by the trans community, was what kept me around long after I stopped paying much attention to the show.

First time I'd seen a Chelsea Manning post and no one misgendered her.

It was when people would post incredibly racist and transphobic things on Reddit. CTH users would ping them with terrible, nasty insults and demand that they show their dick. It made me feel appreciated for being a POC. It was a different and refreshing look at diversity. I didn't think about politics after being disillusioned by Obama's administration because I knew no alternative besides the right with their obnoxious ideologies. It was somebody being mean online on my behalf that got me to start listening.

/r/chapotraphouse showed up on /r/all and it looked like a funnier version of /r/fullcommunism but everyone was into feet.

TBH, I was first coming to terms with being trans. Searched "trans" to find subreddits and CTH was the only one that came up that wasn't explicitly a trans subreddit but was positive about it.

Stayed for the memes. Listened to the podcast and became a liberal.

I found the sub only after it was quarantined. Somebody, i forgot who, always posted these contrarian, snarky, but kinda interesting comments on /breadtube, so i went through their post history to see if they were arguing in good faith or a concern troll. Turns out they were based af and posted a ton on CTH.

I liked about the sub that it was more active and funnier than other leftist communities, that it wasn't a typical fan sub (never really got into the podcast before or after finding the sub) and that it occupied a very unique niche ideologically, in that it was both intersectional and class conscious af, that it included both anarchists and MLs, that it was against the lib left without tolerating any form of reactionary bs - it basically did everything right that other left online spaces do wrong in one way or the other. So i stayed until the ban, joined the discord after that and now i'm here to continue the shitposting.

I liked that the sub called out dishonest uses of idpol without actually being racist and anti lgbtqia+ also having a focus on class politics. The sub was a decent way of staying informed without spending too much time sifting through the mainstream media bullshit. I was a patreon until the recent episode with Matt Tiabi I have since switched my patreon money to citations needed.

some chuds were seething about it, I checked it out and it was coolio.

There's a podcast?

It was definitely the subreddit first on my end. I'd been nebulously distrustful of, alienated from, and exhausted by capitalism for a long while - though like I suspect is true of many apolitical, miserable working class people I struggled to envision an alternative, and didn't even really know what socialism was in any real sense. But in early 2018, the child separations were big in the news cycle and something sort of snapped in me - I had an overwhelming feeling that any system that led to this must be rotten to the core. And it so happens I stumbled across the sub right around then - the discussions going on at the time helped me contextualize what was happening within the larger framework of the mechanics of capitalism.

And broader than that, the subreddit was just the right blend of irreverent gallows humor, compassion, and genuinely informative content for me. Especially back then, the silly memes very frequently led to actual discourse and educational resources about socialism. It felt like a space where people spoke uniquely honestly (and hilariously) about the various absurdities of living under capitalism - absurdities that were not really permissible to address elsewhere (or even worse, were simply treated as features of reality), but which I had intuitively felt were obvious for a long time.

Even toward the end - when the quality had admittedly dipped - I think the sub was far and away the "best of the worst" of online left spaces. The other subs were way too self-serious and tyrannical in their modding, and Twitter is frankly 90% narcissistic hellscape. Can't really overstate how glad I am to have this space back! I've got high high hopes for the Lemmy.

PS: the pod is OK as well - it can be great at its peaks, more for humor and catharsis than education typically, but they've definitely lost their way post Bernie. I know I'm the millionth person saying it, but that Taibbi episode was god awful. Matt's streams are still mostly dope though.

It's free of chuds and not heavily moderated. People have a sense of humor and can tolerate viewpoints they don't 100% agree with. I'd heard all sorts of stuff about the sub being toxic or whatever so I was hesitant to check it out, but once I actually did I found it to be a supportive and validating community. Much healthier than my previous outlet of trying to argue with chuds. Like, we have our struggle sessions, but at least we exist on the same fucking plane of existence.

Listened to the podcast once or twice and didn't hate it, but definitely more here for the community.

Only sub ranting about Bolivia coup live

I was a PodSave shitlib at the time, then John McCain died and I was extremely underwhelmed with the Jons' take on it, so I listened to the Chapo episode, and after that I ditched my PodSave shitlib shell to emerge as a shiny new Chapo shitlib.

I first started posting on Reddit when Gamergate began- I was disturbed by how many young men online suddenly started espousing rightwing, trad or just straight up Nazi shit seemingly overnight (though to be fair, if you looked at gamer or nerd culture even before GG, the warning signs were already there.)

I ended up on anti-Gamergate places on Reddit and hung around to track the movement and to partake in communal dunking on their "thought" leaders. This was the time I first stumbled upon people like hbomberguy. Skip forward a couple of years, and Gamergate starts to wane, largely replaced by Trump's presidential campaign and the newly named alt-right as the main topic of discussion, the latter featuring many famous Gamergate people among its figureheads.

I didn't really pay attention to the DNC primary or Bernie's first campaign and I just assumed Hillary was going to get the nomination. At the time, I wasn't too concerned with leftist politics and and was just more generally opposed to right-wingers, conservative culture war shit, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Still, I found myself not fully fitting in with the posters on anti-Gamergate, anti-Trump and other liberal spaces on Reddit.

I first stumbled on cth from the Other Discussions tab on popular news stories, but was initially put off by all the anti-Hillary and anti-Democrat stuff as well as the abrasive language- I couldn't fit it into my liberal vs. conservative paradigm so chapo posters sounded dangerously close to 4chan guys or the_donald posters to me. I still continued to check discussions on cth, though, finding myself aligning more and more with the chapo mindset as time went on, and some time in January 2017 I just finally got fed up with Russiagate nonsense and limp-dicked #Resistance bullshit on liberal subreddits and swore them off forever. In the past two years, I've even started listening to the pod

deleted by creator