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Leftist Youtube |OT| We Virtue Signal
- Thread starter CannonFodder52
- Start date
- OT
I'm just going to use this nice thread to metaphorically scream into a pillow. I'm often disappointed by the fact that though a large portion of Era has a propensity to support progressive social policies, there is a huge amount of indignation towards ideas about reducing corporate power and influence. If there is a single semantic point or technicality that can be brought up to avoid discussing the substance of stemming the growing influence of some companies, it'll happen ad nauseam. At the very least, it's always ire aimed at the possibility of limiting the reach of very consumer facing companies. I wonder if ground could be gained if these kinds of discussions were framed with regards to large companies in energy or insurance which nobody really thinks about or actively likes. Maybe I'm just getting indoctrinated by like, anti-neoliberalism Youtube videos or something.
Not that I can provide much solace or a clever explanation rooted in deep political analysis - in other words, these are just my two cents -, but your sentiment overlaps nicely with how Warren vs. Sanders is handled in many discussions. You'd think a progressive/leftist forum such as ERA would be more critical of Warren's capitalist slant and/or love Sanders's commitment to socialist/quasi-socialist ideas and lingo, but I don't see much of that, all things considered. Well, outside of this thread and the socialism thread, anyway. Neither candidate is perfect, mind you, and both are fine enough, but my sense is that Warren isn't that heavily scrutinized on her more questionable stances with regards to capitalism.
My take is that many people's progressiveness stops at capitalism. They're willing to improve people's lives, be empathetic, etc., but anything that amounts to a fundamental questioning of capitalism - which is what you're engaging in if you're heavily criticizing corporate power - will have them shrug or think you're a bit too extreme. Capitalism is so ingrained in our way of life that it's become hard to recognize it as 'normal' or 'the only system that can work'. I don't necessarily blame people too hard for it because it's almost unconscious at this point - I'm sure part of me unconsciously defends it still.
One thing I've noticed on a personal level is that people will use many different words to criticize capitalism: they'll blame "inequalities", "corporations", "corruption", or, at best, "the rich". Or they'll start arguing for so-called alternatives like "degrowth" - at least in my country they do - that are not actual political systems but just criticisms of components of capitalism. But they'll rarely outright say "capitalism is the problem, and it should be replaced with XXXX-ism". I might just be pulling things out of my ass, but I find it... interesting... how people are seemingly avoiding bluntness when it comes to capitalism. It's all about symptoms and quasi-synonyms, but the second you're actually calling out capitalism by name, you're being weird. It's as if the word held such power over us that we're scared of it.
By the by, the socialist thread is kinda the thread were folks collectively scream into a pillow about proud neo libs. Myself included.
Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era OT
Fortune has seen to it that ResetEra has opened its doors on the same day (well according to the old calendar system anyway) that the October Revolution happened 100 years ago. This thread is meant to be a place for comrades and fellow travelers to discuss socialism in all its variants* - its...
www.resetera.com
Functionally, it's more of a broad leftist thread that includes folks who at least appreciate a strong true socialist flank in the world. Join the insurgency. 👀
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what the hell lol. check the batteries in your CO2 detectors bro
This board is pretty weird about this in general. I took one of those in-depth political quizzes and matched with Sanders at like 96%. Since then, I have supported him as my #1 candidate, but I'm just so sick and tired of hearing about Bernie Bros, how Sanders voters lost the 2016 election (false), etc. that I just rarely champion him, even on Era.
Of course, that might be the point in the first place, but I'm not about to dive head first into conspiracy theory waters.
I guess Contra is experiencing some controversy again with her newest video, as it features someone named Buck Angel. I'm not aware of what he has said/done, so I'll leave it to someone who is more knowledgeable to explain exactly what's going on.
Enjoyed this view on Christianities impact on climate change denial in the US.
Also everyone, please remember you too can do direct action. Yes, you!
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Thread detailing it. It is really not a good look for Nat considering her recent controversy and neither is PhilosophyTubes recent tweet downplaying her "cancellation".
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I'm personally more interested in knowing how Hbomberguy will react to this - if he reacts publicly, which I doubt he will -, given that Buck Angel and Graham Linehan agree on things and Hbomb did a whole fuck-you Graham charity stream before the exchange between Buck and Graham. He has to be at least disappointed in Natalie.
I don't really know the characters involved here. What's the implication here?
Contra had a known anti NB personality do a voice-over on her show and has a history of being a dick against NB people?
This is heart-wrenching but important to hear about and understand. Thanks for posting.
So far, he's been somewhat quiet. Today we got this. He's taking his time, and as you suggested, he does seem disappointed in Natalie.
Thank you for the update. Well, this seems like a (good?) start at least, but we'll have to wait and see what his exact stance is.
Can't say the same of Philosophy Tube's response so far I'm afraid, which sucks because I'm a fan of his (and ContraPoints, and Hbomb). What little he has let transpired seems snarky, and he has failed to actually address the issue in any way so far.
I get that these people are friends and all, and I hope they're having meaningful conversations about in private, but at the same time, I hold them to a higher standard: these are very educated people, ostensibly on the left of the political spectrum, and capable of being highly eloquent and thoughtful on complicated subjects. They, of all people, should know better. Hbomb seems to be learning *fingers crossed*, but Natalie and Ollie? Eeeeh...
That's about as much as I can say on the subject. I'm cishet, and I don't know any trans people or enbies (or if I do, they haven't come out to me), so yeah.
You're welcome. :) Yeah, in that thread some people were talking about Ollie's response. I actually haven't seen it yet. That's disappointing that he's not given a better response.
Like you, I'm also cishet, so I'm basically doing the same. Just trying to listen and learn.
always happy to see an irony bro discover in realtime that his nonsense only works Online
I think Lindsay said this idea well. You can disagree publicly with what Natalie did, but that doesn't mean you have to burn every bridge with her to remain "pure."
This was a very interesting watch thanks for sharing. I had no idea she went through something like this, and I can't even imagine how horrible that experience was. The presentation was really good, and she seem to be doing better now and is getting the help and medication she needs. Good on her.
That was kind of a double-takeaway from that video for me. I also had no idea that she went through something like that, and then she had a whole section of her talk dedicated to the fact that most people would have no idea something like that happened to you. It was pretty eye-opening.
Yeah had the same realization. I have watched her content since her early NC days, but I don't use Twitter, Facebook or any social media platforms so I am usually very out of the loop on what's going on there. I just feel awful she had to go through something like this so solitary.
Likewise. It made me feel terrible for her. And I'm not sure you would have even seen all that if you did follow her on those platforms. I do actually follow her on Twitter, and I didn't know. She talked about how the people with a vendetta against her coordinated their efforts, presumably somewhere like 4chan. And she intentionally made the decision to not refute them on social, so she just had to bear the weight of it all silently. (And with the help of her friends. In fact, I think some of that connects with her comments about Natalie.)
I was about to eat lunch, so I decided to pause real quick and watch this first. Thanks for the advice.
At least I could laugh at the abortion allegory. But then it dips right into scientific racism, ugh.
You consider this fine?
Also this ain't the first time Contra has done terrible things to the NB crowd so the whole "maybe she'll improve" thing is BS.
I wanted to give Natalie a pass with her prior controversy on twitter, but this stuff just keeps happening to the point that I don't feel like I can defend her any more.
Fantastic video as always, probably the best video I have seen on radicalisation.
This is why posting on the internet matters. Reddit has made it especially clear to me through the upvote system that popularity of statements can change if there's pushback.
Like when there was controversy around Battlefield V, there were some nazi talking points that were clear to me but not clear to everyone else, and pointing it out drastically changed the course of the conversation.
Or in Ben Shapiro's subreddit, I've seen a lot people believe that it was the compasionate thing to push back on left's promotion of the "mental illness" of lgbt and had nothing to work from to believe otherwise. Saying it's like treating someones schizophrenia as real may seem too insulting to engage with, but it's not an inherently bigoted thing to say if you don't know what you're talking about.
The key is identifying the audience of uninformed moderates, just like they do. And we do have advantage of not having to hide our "power level", because people know nazis are bad and the things we want to do to help their problems are very straightforward. The only thing you need to hold back on is the desire to virtue signal with a leftist ingroup form of speech, but you don't really need to hold back on your overall core ideology.
This was a terrific callout targeted at our culture of normalization. Bush is paramount among the multiple people responsible for the worst kinds of inhumanity and to pretend otherwise is to disintegration the humanity of our country. Like RC said, the moment I saw Ellen and her rich friends prop up her friendship with Bush I knew, without significant pushback, the same thing will likely happen once Trump is out of office for a few years. If monstrous people want to be "forgiven" that requires accountability and profound change. Suddenly though, it seems we shouldn't expect that at least not from rich dadified white men.
I'm such a huge fan of this series. I've watched them all about three or four times at this point. This one was just great as well.
I agree with you. This point was brought up in the thread about this video, but this is why I think some of what we do on the left is a problem. We quickly bring out the long knives for people who are simply ignorant as opposed to actually hateful. The right has spent decades sowing lies and misinformation, and people have been raised believing false things about how the world works. But they also warmly welcome in anyone who shows a hint of agreeing on a subject, like what this video is saying about the red pills. (Natalie has talked about this, too.)
Of course, this comes with two caveats. Firstly, it's also good to have places like Era that aren't a battleground for any and all ideas. Minorities, members of the LGBT+ community, etc. should be able to feel safe posting here. It's good that we don't tolerate hate speech, etc.
Secondly, there are plenty of bad faith actors who will go online and Just Ask Questions and pretend to be a moderate when they are nothing of the sort.
That's what I believe happened in my Battlefield V example. It was a bad faith actor trying to take advantage of controversy about Battlefield V's game design and blame it on SJWs, but they needed to be challenged for the sake of the non-bad faith audience that person was trying to convert.
It's extremely important to know your audience. That's the key to all this. And the audience is never the nazis and diehards, even though they might be your debate opponent.
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Yeah! It's like how people point out that you don't really argue publicly to change the mind of the person you're talking to, but to change the mind of your audience.
That's an excellent video.
And it reminded me of something I've wanted to talk about for a while.
Vaush, who was mentioned in this thread a while back, made a series of videos on his problems with the Left. I won't link to the videos themselves, they should be easy to find.
He talked about a number of different things, but one point he brought up and I found very interesting is the difference in how the Left and Right treat their online spaces.
The Left treats them as a purely social spaces and because many people there belong to vulnerable minorities desiring a safe space, there is a tendency to kick people out that don't meet some standard. There is a reason terms purity-testing, cancelling and woke scolding exist.
Contrapoints. Current controversy. I don't need to continue this sentence.
The Right on the other hand is nowhere near as united as they seem, composed of many smaller groups whose relationships range from slight disagreement to vitriolic hatred but are willing to recognize that they share some common goals and are willing to ally with anyone to cooperate and advance their agenda.
Milo is an example of this, a gay jew with a black husband? Every single thing the Right hates, and yet they propped him up as long as it was politically effective.
The Right sees their online as political and are willing to engage in ruthless pragmatism.
Actually that's not true. Right-wing subs on Reddit ban you at the drop of the hat if you should dare to disagree with the hatred.
The same goes for Milo and other tokens. They are only tolerated as long as they support the hate. When they dare to disagree they get dropped without a second thought. Usually violently so.
That happened to quite a few people from the not your shield campaign during Gamergate for example.
There is a reason for the onion structure mentioned in the video.
The same goes for Milo and other tokens. They are only tolerated as long as they support the hate. When they dare to disagree they get dropped without a second thought. Usually violently so.
That happened to quite a few people from the not your shield campaign during Gamergate for example.
There is a reason for the onion structure mentioned in the video.
This is honestly very true. Say what you will about Contra right now she is getting much more money from crowdfunding than Milo is. She can quite safely get "cancelled" or whatever and have a pretty solid savings built up for herself.
The ones focused on personalities where debates are a part of the brand are less likely to ban, but otherwise this is true.
Bans are especially frequent in any community that's generally in favor of the republican party, because the republican party is just way too easy to dunk on and there'd never be any pro-republican online community without frequent bans.