Listened to the podcast for the first ever time
Listened to the podcast for the first ever time
It fucking sucks, how tf did the subreddit get so big? This is just them talking about decade old twitter drama.
the Chapo philosopher king and best reason to listen had a stroke and is on indefinite hiatus
I miss my large boy.
Just like Lenin’s brain couldn’t handle the defeat of the German Socialists, Matt’s brain couldn’t handle the IDF cum squad.
a stroke and a kid!
in the same week
The worst part is that I legitimately liked hearing the electoralist brainworms of
and that MF'er straight up disappeared
the subreddit was almost completely unrelated to the show, like legit i was there for months before i knew the show even existed. the sub got big because it was accessible big tent leftism - actual leftist shit that could criticise neoliberalism and point out the contradictions while being easily digestible and not racist. thats all it took because there was virtually nothing else that did all those things.
The Sub also got big because the rest of Reddit fucking hated it.
because it was accessible big tent leftism
This is rapidly occurring in /r/anticonsumptioon at the same scale as antiwork was prior to the takedown and explosion of drama.
I am extremely concerned for its future as it has literally 2 mods and my conversations with the existing mod suggests the top mod is entirely inactive and the 1 existing mod has no permission to add new mods.
Eventually reddit's going to force them to add new mods and they're all going to be turbo-liberals.
The current existing mod is sympathetic to us, and has assured me that they don't want the modteam doing anticommunism in the community like the antiwork team did. But the way this is gonna go is gonna be at the whims of how the admins force new mod additions when they get fed up of it being moderated poorly.
They were at peak form during the election cycles because you had a cast of dipshit politicians doing things every week and so you got recap + jokes each week so you could keep relatively current without bothering with liberal media.
True Anon is the real podcast now
Citations Needed is a good podcast, if a little dry. Do they talk about Twitter drama much?
Whats wrong with
?I think citations needed only really works for terminally online turbolibs as a window to the world outside the mainstream narratives. I don't really get anything from listening to it and thinking, "Yeah, I know." and agreeing with them on most things.
Sometimes it's just playing to the crowd. Sometimes they actually talk about a through-line of American propaganda that I never noticed and that's when it works super well. Sometimes it's so good that I hope it gets preserved for future generations as a way of understanding the US.
The recent episode 195 was decent.
They really are the perfect podcast for sending to politics-minded friends (not that I actually do that, lol). Just make sure you don't send an episode where they talk extra-smarmily for extended periods.
Occasionally they'll have a good bit. They did one on why country music turned chuddy a while back and it was excellent
Finally getting into the Beetles in 2024 and y'all I don't think McCartney is that good also where's John Lenon at these days?
I don't know why you started with episode 1.
It was only 2 year old Twitter drama then
Maybe part of it was that there was a widespread desire to be irreverent, and the hosts mixed a lot of history and politics in with their media critique.
But the bigger reason why r/CTH took off is because r/communism sucked and r/anarchism sucked and r/socialism sucked and r/latestagecapitalism sucked. As soon as r/CTH became known as a nonsectarian space that upheld progressive politics but no specific banner, and started to develop a reputation of its own, including making fun of reactionaries instead of banning them, it began to really take off.
Genuinely this is why I loved it and now love hexbear. I don't want to get into Internet fights with leftists, I want to shit on right wing assholes together. None of this really matters climate change is going to doom us all and we can debate theory amidst the ruins of society.
It has good episodes and bad episodes. I generally like it. I enjoy when they really dig into liberal/chud brainworms, and regularly get good guests.
I think it had finally gotten into a good post-Bernie rhythm, but then Matt had a stroke and it's been more hit or miss.
I don't think it's "must listen to" by any means though.
I haven't listened to an actual full episode of the Pod in years, in fact I hardly ever listen to full podcasts anymore. I do follow their YT channel where they post clips and in my opinion those are still pretty good, but I assume they're just editing out the good bits so Idk the good/bad ratio.
Honestly this is how I engage with most podcast content now. I've actually NEVER listened to an episode of Cumtown but I still follow Saul on YT since he just animates the good bits and edits out all the parts where they just talk about ordering pizza or whatever.
That's interesting, I wonder how many folks mostly take in podcasts that way (it certainly makes sense).
I think a lot of my podcasting habit is shaped by having an hour long commute on the bus most days.
Last 3 episodes were really bad. The regular show is good when they find a slate of insane ameribrained op eds to ridicule for 45 min also bc of the size of the show they have on very good guests fairly regularly. The episode recently with Ryan grim where they discussed his new book about the squad(absolutely brutal portrayal of AOC) was very good. Their interview with beirut based journalist Séamus Malekafzali was also stand out. All the spin offs that are actual passion projects are also good like others mentioned in this thread.
I think Chapo’s moment kind of passed with the failure of Sanders’ 2020 run tbh. Kind of felt like one of the last nails in the coffin. Also other podcasts do what they did better these days.
I will say I do still love the pure screaming pathos of Matt losing his shit at an awful Megan McArdle OpEd about the Grenfell fire. One of the first times I ever felt like someone else was being driven mad by this stuff to the same degree and in the precise way I am.
it's background noise at work i would never pay for it
I wonder what they actually do with all the money they do get.
I think the media analysis is really smart and insightful but it has a weird way of making you feel like you already know everything they're saying, and the delivery tends toward the dry side.
I still listen to them, and subscribe to the Patreon, but their podcast has been getting weaker for a long time.
Like everyone else says, their golden era is 2016 to 2020. 2020 to now has been a slow decline, that accelerated as soon as Matt was hospitalized.
I mainly still subscribe and listen out of inertia. If Trump wins this election I expect the quality to go up a little, but without Matt this podcast is a hollow shell of its former self. The main things keeping me around are the occasional amazing guest, and their coverage of Israel.
Trueanon is much better in general, and Bad Hasbara usually does a better job of satisfying my need for anti Israel content. Starting Chapo now is like watching the last season of Lost, without the sunk cost of all the previous seasons, It's going to be confusing boring and lame, and you're not going to understand why it was popular in the first place.
I stopped listening sometime in 2019-2020 because I just couldn't handle anymore doses of reality while I was doing the dishes.
In the few years I lurked it, the subreddit legitimately was only ever tangentially related to the podcast, it very much had a life and culture of its own that just reacted to the podcast instead of being shaped by it at all.
I got way much more out of the community than I ever did the show. And still do, obviously, since I haven't listened in years.
Some of the running gags got their start on the podcast
we turned one off jokes from the show into karmabait copypastas and people were surprised that the hosts made fun of us lol
2016-2020 was peak chapo era and I'm guessing the period when most of us on this site listened to the podcast. I at least stopped listening at the start of 2020 and I think a lot of other people stopped listening in that year also. I think it was really a product of that time period, of these new extremely young leftists discovering socialism for the first time. Most listeners also I'm guessing were fully children of the end of history, many of whom came of age during the Obama era, and the irreverent takes and just taking the piss out of the absurdity of the 2016 election and then the subsequent dumpster fire that was the Trump administration were a breath of fresh air to the civility politics that had defined the earlier era, especially during Obama. People were sick of West Wing, they wanted Chapo.
So I think that's the context for the podcast existing and getting so popular. But the sub pretty quickly moved past the podcast, and I think the podcast hosts actually mentioned the sub on one episode to criticize it? They sorta hated the sub. So there was a divide between the sub and the podcast, at least by the time I got on there. Nevertheless, the subreddit always had the new episode pinned to the top, and the podcast was still mostly how people got on the sub - they were attracted by the podcast's refutation of liberalism and civility politics, and then found their way onto the sub to further their development into a marxist-leninist.
correct, Bernie's loss and covid broke their brains
I don't know how much longer the podcast can last without our glorious big boy
I think that it's still pretty good and I would never pay for it but it's nice to hear people who think like me during the week otherwise I would go insaneHalf the hosts aren't even there at this point for various reasons . I still tune in regularly if only hoping to hear the sweet insightful tones of Matt Christman once again but even with his presence the podcast is and always was going to be a shadow of itself in the wake of the Bernie campaign. Matt himself actually acknowledged in an interview that it was incredibly relieving to not be 'relevant' anymore such that they could actually influence anything.
I have no plans to ever stop listening but at this point: it's not a place to get cutting edge hot takes or anything super insightful/important. It's just something I listen to while working out cause it's a classic para social relationship where I feel like I'm hanging out with my old friends from back when I still had optimism.
It was my gateway to learning about leftist podcasts but I also still find some episodes funny to this day so idk
I'm not even American nor have i ever used Twitter
Cumtown is sorta an acquired taste, so I get it.
There's a podcast?
yeah, it's awesome.
ep 800 was really good, listen to that one
Their voices are annoying too (except for Matt) and they all desperately try to one up each other with the most damp humor, it makes me want to throw my phone against a wall.
It's a case where one member's spinoff projects are all better than the original band. Check out Hell on Earth and Hell of Presidents.
I just listened to Hell of Presidents again, love it.
Matts historical thesis that doing stuff is hubristic and will result in punishment from the heavens and any subsequent conflict is on your head, is fucking wild though.
show me the lie
Yeah, it is pretty bad. I still enjoy it on rare occasions for some entertainment, but for all the trash people lob on Hasanabi, I gotta say the Chapo boys are even more lib-coded.
The podcast?
Generally just some chuckle-able background noise while getting ready in the morning. Ironically, the most recent episode was one of the worst ones in a long time, so unlucky you lol
796 is an example of a good episode that is fairly recent, if you're interested.
Matt is the best part of the show and he had a stroke.
Listened to it for the first time a week ago and all of the 3 episodes I've listened to one of the guy's voices fades in and out when he talks for some reason
