Everytime I've checked the subreddit, other places of discussion like chapotraphouse podcast, etc... I am left confused.

What is this? Do I just not get it? What is the purpose of chapo? Why is the podcast entertaining to people?

Sorry if I sound like a dumbass but I genuinely want to know why people gather around the chapo name and listen to the chapo podcast.

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    5 years ago

    Somehow at some time or another the chapo subreddit became the biggest sub on reddit where leftists of all types gathered without too much sectarianism. It got to the point where half the users didn’t even listen to the podcast, the community just grew naturally. The name is incidental at this point, the hosts of the show famously hated the subreddit. I’m thinking the Bernie campaign helped it blow up some more over the last 18 months.

    • sunlit_uplands [none/use name]
      ·
      5 years ago

      The lack of sectarianism was it imo. Appreciated the kind of unique trans positivity and I think trans people did too.

      • ElGosso [he/him]
        ·
        5 years ago

        That's def a part of it, I stuck around because of the flagrantly disrespectful attitude though - very transgressive and edgy, very 2008-chan-culture esque, at least when I started.

          • skeletorsass [she/her]
            ·
            5 years ago

            That's such fucking horseshit too that the US military just gets to control the entire TLD like that too.

            • slevin [none/use name]
              ·
              5 years ago

              The us gets to control .gov and .edu as well. Governments and universities of other countries have to use the country specific TLD that everybody else uses.

    • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]
      ·
      5 years ago

      I think the subscriber count really blew up some time around when the pod started getting mainstream news attention:

      https://www.salon.com/2018/06/10/how-linkedin-made-this-failmom-into-a-socialist/

      Edit: Pretty sure that was how I found the sub, back in the ~50k-subscriber days. That article was posted to LSC, and thus the liberalism to more different liberalism pipeline began in earnest.