For me it has to be the Berlin live episode and in top spot the live DnD episode, which I literally had to turn off after about 15 mins because it was too embarrassing. I can't imagine what being in the audience must have been like, lmao
(Obviously the true leftist answer is all of them)
Matt Taibi in the height of the George Floyd and Covid struggle going “actually calling for the abolishing of police is bad for the left”
I hate those cliquish episodes where they have some NY comedian or podcaster I never heard of and they're joking about people they known that I don't.
I'm really not a fan of the interview episodes in general, especially the cliquish ones though. I think the only slightly interesting ones are with people with, or who have had, actual power, and there's probably like, one or two good-ish interviews with an author. But I'm a very non-movie person and so any of those interviews, even with "celebrities", are incredibly boring. What inevitably happens is that they have to lib down their views, which isn't automatically bad (you don't wanna be confrontational all the time, life isn't a Twitter or Reddit thread) but it does really make me wonder what their true convictions are. But yeah, I skip all the interview episodes now. At least the movie episodes have some good riffs in them, even if the movies are terrible and I'll never watch them.
The other ones that really grate me are the doomer-y episodes; it really viscerally reminds me that I'm hearing about events through the perspective of relatively well-off New York podcasters and not really any coherent, broad, socialist viewpoint, regardless of what they actually individually believe. Matt is the least bad about this but even he suffers from it - and I think he'd be the first to admit that he has a big bias due to his current socioeconomic situation. I don't go to Chapo for leftist analysis, I'm perfectly aware it's an entertainment podcast, but hearing "Man, shit's terrible. This was another light-hearted episode, right guys? deflated laugh" for the hundredth time really grinds my gears.
Is that the one where they said not all cops are bad, minorities actually need cops, and 'abolishing' the police is actually helping reactionaries?
I went from being a regular listener to only turning CTH on once in a blue moon.
I didn't catch that one. Probably because it had Taibbi on it lmao
i never listened to that one either but iirc it was matt taibbi's obsession with CANCEL CULTURE (tm) because deep down inside he knows he has no skills other than "media pundit" so it's the biggest threat to his income
i don't think there was any pushback from the chapos, who are likewise largely talentless hacks who rely on people sending them money every month to keep making replaceable jokes at one another for an hour or two every week
who are likewise largely talentless hacks who rely on people sending them money every month to keep making replaceable jokes at one another for an hour or two every week
Someone is bitter from Chapo's success, lol
These are rich podcasters who grew up in Manhattan and Lake Forest, Illinois, two of the wealthiest areas in the entire world. You don't need to white knight them.
Didn't :matt-jokerfied: work at like a bookstore while also on disability or something
He lucked out by having the right internet friends, lol
Lake forest is one of the laziest names ever, right up there with basically every medium sized place in Illinois. Oak park, oak forest, oak lawn, oak brook, rock island, Plainfield, crystal lake, galena, Springfield. All these places are just named for what is there in plain english. At least Galesburg mixes it up with some German.
I'd be bitter if they accomplished much more than a
twitterpatreon following. money + followers isn't success.Are you bourgeois? I don't know any other perspective that would say money isn't success
Are you bourgeois? I don’t know any other perspective that would say money isn’t success
imagine posting this on a socialist website
From what I've seen, it's mostly rich people who say that sort of thing :vivian-shrug:
Also it's not anti-socialist to pursue wealth :deng-cowboy:
bitch, I'm not saying money isn't valuable. I'm saying wealth isn't something to aspire to for its own sake. money isn't a moral good. the liberal brainworms are eating you alive. recognize them and fucking devour them first.
yes i am bitter about the podcast i still listen to, not just realistic about who they are. i am owned, etc, so on and so forth
I mean I enjoy putting on the dry boys once in a while but that is literally what they do lmao, implying this was said out of bitterness is kicked in the head by a donkey levels of stupidity
Matt Taibbi
I've always hated that guy. He always gave me weird vibes when he was on Majority Report or whatever the fuck.
He literally wrote a book explaining how fucked up the police were during the Eric Gardner public execution. And how deep the corruption goes. But guess calling for abolition of that force is a step too far
But guess calling for abolition of that force is a step too far
I don't have to like him just because he did a right thing one time.
I don’t like him either. It’s just wild to me you could write a while book detailing why the system is fucked and still come to that conclusion
That Berlin episode was so bad. They reverted to making cringey jokes about Germans that boomers thought were funny in like 1994.
Safdie brothers interview (Uncut Gems) is a close second for me. Doing that during the absolute zenith of the Bernie's primary run was a real odd choice.
Not a whole episode, but one segment that made stop listening to them for months was when Amber was fawning over conservative commentator Kim Klassik (sp?). Made me realize Amber will make excuses for anyone who hates liberals too, even if they're reactionary as fuck.
They reverted to making cringey jokes about Germans that boomers thought were funny in like 1994.
:this:
That movie did perfectly capture the feeling of the primary though, so maybe they knew what they were doing more than we realised?
literally no good episodes, please listen to a better podcast
Actually, you've fallen into my trap. You see, I don't listen to any podcasts at all, so by asking me to listen to a podcast, even a non-Chapo one, it is you who has posted cringe
I do listen to them on occasion. I really like them, but I always go away with a deeper dread.
For a similar vibe, Pod Damn America are 3 comedians who cover recent things, while often bringing up they know they're dumb, and more frequently than chapo have a guest on who knows what they're talking about. It's mostly riffing about current events and then pivoting to a deeper dive they do themselves or with guests. So kind of chapo-esque but less shit takes and some amount of effort to put out something funny and informative, though not like citations needed or blowback.
I listen to several better podcasts but I also listen to worse podcasts, so unless you have like 7 better podcasts that I’m not already listening to I will continue consuming that garbage
That one episode where Will and Amber talk about the 1619 project and call being a cop a "normal middle class job." I thought I fell through a hole and landed in a universe where chapo is somehow even more lib.
That was the one where I stopped listening. Mind you this was in the middle of the protest surge and that’s what they chose to focus on. Felt gross even listening
Oh shit I completely forgot they were doing this shit in the middle of the riots. Yeah, fuck them for that one.
Some of the recent episodes have been solid, but you're not missing much.
I never listened very steadily, but I heard some of the best known eps when the old sub was still around.
I think that a Biden win (among other things) is the worst thing that could have happened, but since shitty things have started happening in rapid succession after Brandon gave us an 18 month "break" I'd heard that some of their newer content was actually pretty decent. I checked out a few recent episodes in the last week weeks and I'd say they're worth a listen. Hopefully the trend keeps up.
I hate their movie reviews. The world is on fire and you want to talk about Face/Off for an hour and a half?
I also hate when they "hate watch" something and then spend forever talking about it. It's like "motherfucker, I spend a good deal of time avoiding these things and you guys are one of the few sources of entertainment that isn't endless trash, could you please just stick to current events?"
Maybe it's just my MST3K mindset but I totally disagree. Watching terrible movies is great entertainment, plus in something like assassin 33 AD you can better know the enemy.
Maybe I just like film crit/commentary tho
I can dig MST3K but I'm not interested in a review of that Viking movie that just came out. There are plenty of other podcasts that do that
I like when they review movies they hate, I hate when they review movies they liked because I always disagree with them. Except for Avatar, that one’s good. The Top Gun episode was exhausting.
I could see it being its own show or something, but it's like opening a box of cookies and discovering it's been replaced with celery when I see "new Chapo episode" then read the description and it's a whole episode where they dunk on Avengers 1,937,362
I watched the first 20 min of the Northman and it was ass. That scene where the main character is screaming near the bonfire literally reminded me of :frothingfash:
I can't imagine any part of it being good. Movies have such a dumb wink wink nudge nudge underlying theme that's about as deep as an eighth grade philosophy class.
I also hate when they “hate watch” something and then spend forever talking about it. It’s like “motherfucker, I spend a good deal of time avoiding these things and you guys are one of the few sources of entertainment that isn’t endless trash, could you please just stick to current events?”
This is a core part of the chaposphere (including here) that I really dislike as well.
I just don't get it. It amounts to "have you heard of this stupid lib movie/capeshit/whitewash of history play? It's so awful! Well, we watched it, and here are all of the details".
I don't give a rats ass about wonder woman. I don't want to hear about it. I don't even want to hear about why it's bad. I don't want to know trivial details about why a movie is bad. I don't want to waste bandwidth on it.
I have a 40 minute commute. There are three podcasts I like. They all seem to hit on the same day, so if there's a bad episode, I have jack shit to listen to for most of the week.
Sports?!? Fucking SPORTS was the subject of the last Chapo episode? You mean the thing that's fucking everywhere? It's on my soda can. It's on every billboard. It's every commercial. It's all people talk about in public. Fuck!
Ok. I guess I want to listen to a better show then.
I've noticed something in leftist spaces. When it's time to lay the cards down, everyone always takes on this "...but what do I know? Don't listen to me. It's just jokes." thing.
Where's the serious part of the movement?
The only people taking it seriously are the ones who don’t get paid to talk. The organizers who start unions, god bless em. Talking to coworkers and getting them all to agree and work on a shared project sounds downright impossible. Idk how anyone does it
I had forgotten about the dnd episodes. Those were worse than the stuff qanon anonymous puts at the end of their episodes.
Those were worse than the stuff qanon anonymous puts at the end of their episodes.
You will apologise to my nephew and his creative writing assignments
no disrespect to the open mic time at the end of the pod I'm just not cultured enough for it :side-eye-1:
I actually don't think they've even done one of those stories in at least a year, I wanna say I haven't heard one since they added Annie and Liv
I guess they still do them occasionally then. I must've missed all of those specific episodes
have you heard the good news about how smartphones have turned my brain into mush? :theory-gary:
Genuinely felt bad for them listening to the live show one
Nothing really. It was just really awkward feeling. Imagine going to a comedy show where none of the jokes land so everyone is just forced to sit there as the comedian slowly goes through the material. It felt like that to me. You got the impression that they felt really uncomfortable through the whole thing (or at least for the part I made it through)
Nah, the DnD episode was with an American audience. The Berlin audience was pretty generous to them considering how terrible their material was
it was like listening to a comedian bomb who never got the confidence to lean into "oh i'm bombing? fuck it, you guys suck not me" to bring it around
:sadness-abysmal: oh boy a pateron episode! oh its another Dnd epidsode....
sometimes they get me good, I'll be about to do something that will make my hands messy or just occupied for a while, take a quick look at how much of the episode is left and think "ah plenty of time", then my hands are covered in paint or grease a scant few minutes later and the storytime starts
I didn’t mind the call of cthulu episodes, but the dnd episodes sucked ass
That really encompasses everything I've disliked about the podcast over the years. The solid episodes (of which there are a good handful) are the ones where they avoid doing this.
I was thinking about the Andrew Yang interview the other day. That was pretty awful
Lol I had a (well-meaning lib) friend recently discover the Yang interview through the Chapo YT channel and I had to deal with a flurry of unhinged messages about how Yang seemed like a well-meaning guy and it was amazing how he "held his own" :virgil-phone:
Exactly. Like you get a huge candidate and just throw him complete softballs for an hour and a half. Embarrassing
To be fair, they are heavily incentivized by the media environment to do exactly this, since if they go hard on him they will never get another interview like that ever again.
This is such a lib take. I heard the same thing while it was happening. If you’re not going to go hard then don’t do the interview
Individuals must never bow to the pressures that society puts on them.
-A. Marxist
I think the options are something like this:
- Have a podcast, do boring interviews sometimes.
- Have a podcast, dunk on public figures all the time, and just blow off interviewing them cause they won't call you. If you do 2., don't revert to 1. which is lame af.
- Have a podcast and build a following by being "challenging but fair" as an interview, which is hard coming from the socialist left cause who would want to be "fair" to these ghouls. It would be an interesting project, but incredibly difficult until the "left" actually grows in size and coalesces better than with the Bernie campaigns (could be several years till that happens). Chapo is definitely not this and I wouldn't expect them to be.
Oh god. Thankfully I don't think I ever heard that one
the one where they misgendered Ezra Miller as a "bit" was pathetic
it was painfully cringe and painfully straight
I've pretty much stopped listening to them since then.
