/r/CTH was always accused of brigading but so few people listened to the pod that the sub was just the brigades first victim.
I know right? How dare you utilize the function of the website.
Tik Tokers learned how to close caption their videos to help those with disabilities and it became a community thing that expressly separates them from others.
Yes, it's become a distinguishing community in-group feature to the point folks apologize if they hurried in making captions or forgot.
There's a difference between: banning users for doing something, tempbanning for doing something, warning users for doing something, PSAs about doing something etc...
As you can see there's an escalation path, and depending on what "something" is, you can craft moderation policy that will build a good culture in your community. Obviously banning over something that most of your users would consider minor right off the bat, is a bit over the top. At the same time, you may need to resort to banning certain behavior in order to "right the ship" if things are out of balance. Takes some skill that the LSC mods apparently didn't have, despite their best intentions.
Correct the Record was the name of HIllary's PR/astroturf campaign. We saw some of it in action in the 2020 primaries, but it was even more prevalent in 2015/16.
Which sub was it that "the CTR shills took over ... overnight"?
EDIT: Got it, r/politics
that happened pretty late though. definitely closer to the sub's ban than to the sub's initial explosion of popularity
what was this catgirl conflict I keep hearing about in this thread?
Oh man that CTR shit was so funny in hindsight. Literally, the day after they called the election you could actually use /r/politics again. It was like a breath of fresh air. It was literally like someone hit the off switch on CTR.
It was literally like someone hit the off switch on CTR.
You know how Virgil just disappeared for a few weeks after Bernie lost? I think a lot of people in r/politics did something similar after Trump won. I sure as hell did.
My toes were already in the water when the catgirl fight happened. CTH was one of few places to see it as ridiculous
remember the communist cat girl fiasco at r/socialism?
god fucking damnit I know exactly what you're talking about and it made me realize that I seriously need to log off.
i'll be honest i found the subreddit before hearing the podcast, stuck around for about a month before listening to it, and my initial reaction was "wow, these guys are like the subreddit but actually funny"
Same, I was a big time Reddit nerd and had recently been exposed to leftism and I found the Chapo sub through something that had been crossposted to CompleteAnarchy
Same more or less, although I've only listened to a few episodes of the podcast
It took me probably two months of browsing before I tried it but I've become a regular listener since
This is the exact reaction I had. I saw CTH on all, liked the give-no-fucks lefty hangout space, eventually realized there was a podcast people kept mentioning. Never listened to it though.
I never listened to the podcast. Joined the old subreddit which then radicalised me and got me to read theory and understand radical politics so you're right about people engaging without understanding the original context.
Right! The old subreddit was a good place It fleshed out every thing I felt was wrong with politics and pushed me away from me your typical John Oliver lib
I was seeking fellow :citations-needed: listeners to chat with but rt recommended the cth subrt to me I click on there and see discussion about some strange things so I just wait but not long as the rt banned the subrt then not long this was made
Oh wow I didnt understand this reply until now I seriously fucked up that post
Dirtbag left is in opposition to polite "left" or mannered "left" that was common throughout the Obama years. You were supposed to win people over not materially but purely with "good" ideas (always democrat) in opposition to bad ones (always republican). Dirtbag left people instead of trying to hide that they were socialist were open about it and also weren't afraid to insult people or to insult the democratic party - who were always viewed as a senior partner in some vague, imagined left-center unity and so were beyond reproach. AOC is more in line with what lefties were like and what the Dirtbag Left spawned in opposition to.
I think that the cohesion of the "dirtbag left" peaked around 2018, but has since began to fracture into other (closely related) cliques such as "stupidpol", "irony left" (this one would be closest to "Orthodox dirtbag-leftism" IMO), and "communist debate nerds" (that's a lot of Hexbear users, but there is still plenty of overlap with other groups, it's all a spectrum and people will fall into more than one camp). I'd be interested to see if anyone could identify any other poles.
A lot of the online left was united behind Bernie 2020, but now that that's over, it will be interesting to see where things move from there. obviously a lot of liberal leaning people are happy enough that Trump's gone and aren't a factor at all. I think a lot of people are shifting gears from the ironic detachment that was fostered with Trumps antics (both humorous and abhorrent) to becoming more sincere. The real bridge to cross is channeling that sincerity to actual organizing. I think that that's accelerating a bit, but I don't think it's very likely to "actually" happen.
One other aspect is the rise of "anarcho-Bidenist" socdems who appropriate both Marxist and (more commonly) Anarchist terminology, but don't provide an actual analysis. Frankly, this is kind of a good thing. I went through a phase of this myself a few years ago, and I've come a long way in my knowledge since then. The big difference was that my "sink" was agreeing with P_K on the sub, and it wasn't hard to pull myself out of that orbit. Nowadays, you have more Youtubers and Twitter people who are motivated to create popular content, rather than develop their ideals and knowledge. This could be a more difficult cultural sink to break out of, but we will see if these people are still relevant in 3 years. I have a feeling that a good chunk of them will be pipelined left over time in views, though I still am not convinced that it will translate to very much IRL.
Thanks comrade, it would be good to do a coordinated propaganda/educational effort, but I've only seen that transpire on the very rare occasion. From what I can tell in my brief visits, there is still plenty of yelling on Twitter (as always). I know that sort of thing worked to move me along on Reddit, so we might just need patience. At the same time, I don't have the same confidence that Twitter yelling is much more effective than a political bumper sticker.
Amber A'Lee Frost (the girl chapo) wrote the article generally credited with codifying the "dirtbag" affect.
(and to emphasize, it's an affect, not a tendency or a politics entire)
Chapo is rejection of civility liberalism. As time goes on and chapos become friends with people who "play the game" for a living - even they have weakened on this. Now youtube is filled with lefty grifters like vaush so its only going to become watered down even more. I'll likely leave once the AOC stans take over.
People like shoe have awful idpol takes and also don't understand socialism. I don't know how this could be construed as a good thing.
Hopefully the mod vanguard can control that for at least a little longer
CW: homophobia
I got called a "removed" enough times just for saying slightly left-of-center things on reddit so I finally checked out the sub. That led me to the podcast, which I still enjoy listening to.
I miss the old Chapo, straight from the go Chapo Rev up the proles Chapo, set on their goals Chapo I hate the new Chapo, the bad mood Chapo The always rude Chapo, electoral news Chapo I miss the sweet Chapo, eat the rich Chapo I gotta to say at that time I’d like to meet Chapo See I invented Chapo, it wasn’t any Chapos And now I look and look around and there’s so many Chapos I used to love Chapo, I used to love Chapo I even had banned alts, I thought I was Chapo What if Chapo made a shitpost about Chapo Called “I Miss The Old Chapo,” man that would be so Chapo That’s all it was Chapo, we still love Chapo And I love you like Chapo loves Chapo, hahaha
I think there are a few critical aspects to the "divorcing identity from the source material" pipeline.
- The source material has to release very sparsely and ultimately have little material to work with for memes between releases.
- There needs to be no creative "fan content". No art, no fan videos, etc. This content fills the gap between official releases and maintains a community's focus on the source material.
- The community has to be actively encouraged to engage in off-topic content that is not directly linked to the source material. It will usually not engage in this by itself spontaneously.
Many fanbases have the potential to create identities that are divorced from their source material but do not because they do not meet the above pre-requisite requirements. Without meeting the pre-requisites you can not get the outcome.
Anime and videogame communities have the potential to do this but just... Don't. Not without the push that comes from building a community into something new.
Very specific examples are hard to recall but I would say this happens in videogames with modding communities often. When a game becomes so old that it no longer has content, no longer has artist interest, no longer has any fanbase creating content or even memes about that game anymore... The community has to come from something right? In order to keep a community they have to form some sort of identity around something that is not the core game anymore.
Modding communities form around a love of the game, then they create mods and form identities around both the game and the mods. Then eventually the game itself dies off and mods become so sparse that in order for the community to "live" its members push to build an identity together around all the other interests they have. This push comes from not wanting the community to die, because they like it, they're invested in it. And this creates a pocket community that is now divorced from its original content.
All communities have the potential for this to occur but it doesn't naturally occur in large communities easily because the incentive doesn't exist - "I don't want this community to die" - that incentive is what causes community members to push for building the group around things other than the original content usually. In CTH's case this push just came from the sort of atmosphere of shooting the shit and mutual interests with no clear push to keep the community "on topic" so it went wild.
The same pattern can be extrapolated out to just about any community that forms around a content source though. The community either dies without that content source or its members decide they don't want their community to die and take on the effort to build something that exists beyond just the content source.
This makes me wonder how many people still listen to the pod.
And then that makes me realize we still haven't had a community demographic survey. I always liked those on the sub. Maybe I'll put one together.
Does anyone know of a good survey software similar to Google forms that doesn't steal the data of every person who submits a response?
This makes me wonder how many people still listen to the pod.
I listen to it routinely. But I've got a laundry list of pods I tune into.
I think a lot of people who used to listen to the pod while on Reddit gravitated to the sub because it was fun and engaging. Now this site is just a kind of insulated residual spot for a handful of people that used to visit a sub that hasn't been around in nearly a year. There's no steady influx of "people who discovered chapo" coming in from a larger community. And the pod is increasingly just "comedians who like talking about movies" rather than "leftists who like talking about politics", so a sub that's more keen on politics isn't going to be particularly interested in an hour long conversation about the Snyder Cut.
But I imagine this place will kinda dry up and die out over time, for the same reason interest in the pod has dried up over this community. Eventually, everyone's going to call everyone else on here a :LIB: and peace-out.
I found the subreddit through the podcast, which i discovered through Street Fight. I was mostly on leftbook at the time, but found the acidity too much. I was in the sub fairly early on, but vibed and used to comment occssionally. I think the dirtbag aesthetic helped, as i was a seasonal welder. I got onto hexbear after rememering the original url.
I came in at step 5 here, loved the podcast at first but stopped listening to it last summer.
Fantastic post comrade, super fascinating topic
