Body text
Matt’s grillpillism is kinda like Camus’ absurdism, ya? Like I don’t wanna do a suicide of the body, or a suicide of the soul, so ima accept this clusterfuck as it is, determine what I find meaningful and worth struggling for, and get out i the world and do it.
Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir were all socialists for a reason. The Myth of Sisyphus essay is probably the philosophical text that's resonated with me most. It's what you're left with when you become consciously materialistic and reject mystification/idealism. Grill pilling growing out of Jokerfication absolutely makes it an absurdist project.
If there is any theory relevant to this era, it's formalising Jokerfication as an absurdist response to pre-revolutionary imperial decay. The Murray scene understood the moral logic you have to apply to things like democrats and antimaskers to stay sane when the moral conditions you live under are insane and you can't act on them. That post-2016 psychic shift toward chaotic good morality hasn't yet resulted in bolshevism, but it's putting us in similar preconditions for bolshevism and it's important to seize on that energy so it isn't misdirected. Boogaloo boys, representative of Heath Ledger Jokerfication, show the kind of moral pitfalls you'd otherwise fall into without an absurdist framework to understand the chaos through.
Hippies only had shitty 1960s Joker so they tuned out and let the world die. 2019 Joker, that's a good one to fuse a Marxist understanding of Spectacle and an absurdist understanding of morality.
I hadn't considered that parallel, but it makes a lot of sense. Also makes sense that I latched onto the ramblings of a man telling me what I already believed.
I agree, but isn't that closer to Existentialism than Absurdism? Maybe I don't remember my philo courses.
It probably is, I don’t remember them either lol, too much acid and adderall
A not inherently bad idea which will be misunderstood by a lot of people as an excuse to check out from politics while also not doing meaningful praxis
The Chapo Trap House Podcast? Wow, they made a podcast about this website, huh? Sounds interesting.
I finally learned what it was after I was grillpilled, believe it or not, so I think there’s some truth to it. You eventually just get to a point where you know nothing is going to change and posting and reading won’t do anything. You log off and actually do stuff with your life, and that actually makes you a more effective activist.
Having hobbies is cool and good but totally checking out and going apathetic is bad.
grillpill isn't checking out, it's logging off
it's finding points of contact in your local community and organizing over real things that materially affect people
it's realizing that twitter discourse will never move the needle, and instead organizing where people are
One wonders why this is a "pill". It seems like basic common sense.
Yeah, virtually all the pushback against it (especially from the "chapo is a fash pipeline" crowd) is based on this fundamental misunderstanding. It's not hard to correct, and I think it's a branding issue more than anything
as for how common sense it is... well I think it all comes from Matt just kinda working stuff out for himself on the stream. It might not be a revolutionary idea, but his articulation of why twitter arguments are fruitless struck me as true, and I think that's really the core of grillpill
Ah that sounds much better then, I had the totally wrong idea about it.
To iterate on others, the reason matt says "go off and do something IRL that you enjoy, preferably something with some human contact" isn't because you're checking out, it's because Capitalism seeps into everything.
Eventually your "hobby" will come up against Capitalism in some way, and then all your left theory you were previously yelling into a twitter echo-chamber will have a material context that will allow praxis.
It's better to something tiny but meaningful. Better to radicalise theatre-nerds via an actors union dispute, or provide materials to minorities and workers in your sewing group, or get equipment so the unhoused can play your favourite sport than to fuck around on reddit for 14 hours a day. And success there will give you skills for larger scale stuff.
It'll be misused by some, but it is also a necessary thing to make people realize posting really won't do shit. I've logged onto politics twitter much less and done my best to engage locally and do my hobbies. It's been way better for my mental health. Hell, I've tried to log onto here less as well.
I don't find it particularly profound. But maybe that's because I'm an Old™ and my first interactions with socialism were through organizing and studying theory.
Which is basically his whole thing: socialism happens in person, not online.
I stopped listening to CTH in Juneish because Matt was getting too nihilistic. Too much emphasis on electoralism for me to keep tuning in.
The cushvlogs are the only good chapo content right now, change my mind.
I think the most important theory in Marxism is alienation. The things separating you from your Maslow's hierarchy of needs are the things that all base and superstructure are built to mediate. Debordian Spectacle, the most insidious and vicious part of capitalism's relationship to the individual, preys on your alienation to reinforce the whole monster. The entire self-help industry is geared toward idealism and social atomisation, so without a coherent Marxist approach to being an individual countering your alienation you're left with grifters and woo.
That's where grillpilling has value to me. I don't like r/acidmarxism because parasocial relationships are fucking weird, but when you're carving out some interest beyond a side gig and doing so for a consciously left-ideological sense of self-actualisation then it opens up new doors for how you understand your socialism. Working in American for-profit healthcare was extremely alienating, my grill pill was houseplants and later fungi, now I've reoriented toward a more ethically palatable career. That career is the sickle they put on socialist flags. As things get worse my usefulness to an org is much better than it would otherwise be, as giving luxury foods to people in breadlines is the lunch version of what Black Panthers did with their breakfasts. Working with those kingdoms reinforced my interests in environmentalist subjects and other academic subjects like ethnobotany which feed into reading more about indigenous studies.
None of that would have happened without carving out time for a self-betterment hobby which doesn't leave it at "life sucks less if you have a hobby".
Obviously it has value for terminally online people, but the real value of his streams was/is watching a well-read, articulate, good-faith leftist expose himself and his political journey to the world, while also providing actual insight into the political moment and readying people for potential moments to come.
There was/is nothing like it out there for chapotypes imo.
ngl tho I was laughing for 5 mins at the humanity of the recent streams:
-
"ok guys, this is the final stream, I'm gonna log off to write, if you see me on twitter tell me to log off"
-
1 week later "ehh guys, you can stop telling me to log off on twitter, it's a good bit but I use twitter to communicate with my friends and shit, I really am writing, honest."
-
