CuriousCat Archive Page 159 of 202

  1. There's an alternate universe in which cars were never invented. As you might imagine, this had many ramifications on the direction our society took in this universe, one of which is that Pixar never made the movie Cars. In its place, they made a movie called Horses.

    Horses hits many of the same narrative beats as the Cars movie we know in our universe, but is different for its choice to star race horses rather than race cars, in probably all the ways you might expect. Like our Cars, Horses was critically panned but wildly successful among audiences, and sold lots of Horses lunchboxes to earnest parents of kindergartners.

    Having not experienced this alternate universe firsthand, can you imagine that the Horses film is any better or worse than Cars, and, if it's better, do you suppose that universe is better for having it?

    How big was Horses with the brony crowd?

  2. https://i.imgur.com/DDhjC7y.gifv ^^

    I have no idea if there's context for this but it's adorable.

  4. Have you seen Luce?

    Because in today's battle of wits, you either win... or luce...

    I'm sorry

    Is that a prequel to Footluce?

  7. YO I THINK THIS WAS ME AND MY FRIEND?! What are the chances this would happen in multiple clubs! Shout out to my fellow dommes in Boston!!!! <3 <3

    in response to This weekend at 'teh (kink)club' I watched a few dommes kick some dudes out for shititng on left tube guys, in this case specifically you and philosophy tube. Apparently the thing I need to do to attract a good fem domme is to be a lefist political youtuber? Any tips and how I can get started?

    I have someone else telling me they think it was in Olympia, so either one of you is lying or this happens way more often than I thought.

  9. hello! i don't have a question, just wanted to say i really admire your work :) a flower for you: 🌼, and have a nice day!

    no YOU have a nice day!

  11. Why yes, yes it does!
    But want do we know maybe "Stalin was only not a Fascist by a technicality", ah Don?

    in response to Hiii! I just saw your tweet of that lemonade (?), the red one, comrade. This question just occurred to me: when contemporary communists use the hammer and sickle, do we think it neve rubs victims of descendents of those murdered by the Soviet regime the wrong way? This is a bonus question that I've never understood, but why was the SU's population so poor, malnourished, while the elites still lived in luxury? To what extent was the Soviet Union actually a Marxist state?

    Do you think me saying he wasn't technically a fascist was some kind of defense? I said he was an authoritarian.

  13. Hey for the record there are subs at those parties who think you’re great too. We just uh...tend to be a little less vocal. 🤐

  14. As a dom(me) myself, I lot of kinky-queer people are pretty leftist. That's probably part of it. A lot of being kinky is about negotiating and understanding power structures, which is a pretty leftist thing to do (as opposed to forcing those power structures onto people like rightists).

    in response to There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the kind of guy a good femdom would like though, right? So idk. Can you give us a reading list so i can be smart!?

    yes but where's the party

  15. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the kind of guy a good femdom would like though, right? So idk. Can you give us a reading list so i can be smart!?

    in response to This weekend at 'teh (kink)club' I watched a few dommes kick some dudes out for shititng on left tube guys, in this case specifically you and philosophy tube. Apparently the thing I need to do to attract a good fem domme is to be a lefist political youtuber? Any tips and how I can get started?

    Thing is, it's not the first time I've heard of fem dommes sticking up for me. So I'm really curious about these kink parties where all the dommes think I'm great. Where are they? I ask for... reasons.

    As for what they're looking for, I'll tell you when I get back from the party.

  16. Do you think the rethoric of national pride and national fraternity could be useful on the left as it is for the right?

    I've answered this before, but, in short: I don't think so.

  17. can one... pay for.. a hug?

    in response to can I have a free hug?

    People can pay for more than a hug, but I'm not selling.

  18. Who is the most dangerous person on YouTube?

    I'm not as well-versed in who the big names of Far Right YouTube are as I used to be, and I don't know what the value is of making rankings. Like, which end of the PewDiePipeline is worse? The Roe Rogan/Rick Rubin types who platform reactionaries, or the reactionaries themselves? Onboarding people to a dozen different toxic ideologies might cause as much harm as any one ideology on its own.

    So, who knows? It's all bad.

  19. I'm not a dude

    in response to can I have a free hug?

    I suppose I meant "dude" not as a means of addressing you but as a declarative meaning "what the hell"

  20. Wow people are so rude asking for physical contact with a stranger. Do these sorts of questions make you uncomfortable?

    in response to can I have a free hug?

    Obviously they aren't actually asking for a hug because it's online, but... yeah, kinda.

  21. can I have a free hug?

    dude, no

  22. This weekend at 'teh (kink)club' I watched a few dommes kick some dudes out for shititng on left tube guys, in this case specifically you and philosophy tube. Apparently the thing I need to do to attract a good fem domme is to be a lefist political youtuber? Any tips and how I can get started?

    you don't need to find a fem domme

    she'll find you

  24. Same anon—she’s also so deeply entrenched in the history of the Oval Office, and I think that had a lot to do with people’s perceptions of her. (Part of that perceived centrism, I think, was a sort of slander—“this once uber-liberal is moving center to gain votes wasaah”—but everything the right says about the left is slander.) The generations above mine remember her for her healthcare push in the 90’s, but mine, the newer voters, didn’t have the perspective of time to put on it, so things like DADT, which seemed like impermanent solutions at the time, were viewed retroactively as huge gaffes.

    Poor Hillary, man. She wasn’t a particularly compelling candidate to us youngun’s but the woman got wayyy shit than she deserved.

    in response to You mentioned on Twitter that you think the things Hillary was/is criticized for in high volume are very odd, given her actual flaws as a candidate. Can you expand on that? The shortcomings of Hillary fascinate me while they can’t explain Trump’s win, can they offer us insights into the liberal penchance to, well, lose?

  25. Why do people so frequently defer to evidence relating to how animal species live to support their arguments about how humans should live their lives when either lacking or ignoring any relevant evidence concerning human beings?

    If you cite biology your nonsense sounds vaguely like science. There's also often a religious undercurrent, "this is how God made all the creatures," which I'm sure is why Jordan Peterson is fond of it.

  26. If the internet didn't exist, do you believe climate change, and us tackling it as a society, would be as big of a problem as it is?

    Might be worse, honestly.

  28. I'm being evicted without cause at the end of next month. I've never missed or been late on rent, I've fixed the place up from the literal garbage heap it was, while the landlord dragged his feet and took months, and I've kept every rule in the lease.

    But because the lease is month-to-month, he's legally able to kick me out any time he wants for no reason at all.

    No question, sorry, my whole shit is just falling apart and I had to vent. Capitalism is hell, landlords are scum.

    If you don't have a lease, the law defaults to whatever your county's tenancy laws are, so you might wanna look into those and see if you're getting screwed illegally. Your library may have a copy of Tenants Rights and Responsibilities by Nolo, which can help you protect yourself.

    And, barring anything else: that sucks, friend. :(

  29. Hiii! I just saw your tweet of that lemonade (?), the red one, comrade.

    This question just occurred to me: when contemporary communists use the hammer and sickle, do we think it neve rubs victims of descendents of those murdered by the Soviet regime the wrong way?

    This is a bonus question that I've never understood, but why was the SU's population so poor, malnourished, while the elites still lived in luxury? To what extent was the Soviet Union actually a Marxist state?

    I don't know enough about the former Soviet Union to answer either of these questions! I know most Marxists will tell you the SU wasn't properly Marxist, but that's as much as I feel comfortable saying without studying further.

  30. A sense of responsibility being thrust upon the group, possibly to a somewhat unreasonable degree, is something I had seen brought up in discussions around the concept. It makes sense as a point of contention since breadtube seems to have emerged largely organically.

    Being only semi-online, I'm only seeing chunks of this conversation at a time that may make certain things click better, but it helps a lot to see the concepts outlined a little stronger. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, and sorry that my word choices came off the way it did, making things looks harsher or more flippant than they actually were. I'll work on that.

    Oh, and thank you for your own work as well, of course.

    in response to Hey, Daddy. I've been seeing some fuss centering around bread/lefttube, both as a concept (Shaun outright denouncing it as an idea while others defended it as a functional category, HBomb said he didn't want to consider himself part of it) and some vague drama seemingly about cancelling (Lindsay and Natalie were mocking the drama together, saw some people saying the group isn't effectively policing it's members when they do a bad.) I am already not clear on what brelefttube is supposed to be in the first place. For example, I don't know why Dan Olson would be considered part of it because his content is not politically/leftism driven and barely ever political/leftism at all for that matter. Bearing that in mind, do you have any insight into this? (Other than "please do your own research," which would be a fair thing to say.)

    Hey, no stress! I assume the hyperbole started on Twitter/Reddit/Discord, not with you.

  31. What are your thoughts on Brexit?

    it bad

  32. I’d like you to see you do an analysis if the skeptic community. They seem to have some overlap with the alt right and certainly a whole lot of similar talking points about being anti sjw and “market place of ideas”.

    Big Joel already covered this way better than I would.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1rEtk0b4tw

  33. If I want an entertaining nonfiction book about politics, do you have any recommendations? I'm quite young so preferably nothing too heavy on terminology and jargon :(

    in response to Do you see your (specifically political YouTube) work as a presentation of your own ideas (founded upon research), or a repackaging of the research you've done?

    It turns out Matt Taibbi is a scumbag, but his essay collection Spanking the Donkey was really eye-opening while still being an entertaining read. Just go in with a critical eye, because some of his methods are deserving of criticism.

  34. Do you ever write fiction?

    Not in a long time, but I'm working on something at the moment that I'm excited about. It's gonna take a long time to come out, though.

  35. I had a friend named Ian once. Whenever I read your name, I always think of him despite not having spoken to him for several years.

    I guess there just aren't that many Ians.

    It's a crime that one of the few Ians is Ian Miles Cheong.

  36. Wow there sure are a lot of daddies in breadtube now

    in response to Hey, Daddy. I've been seeing some fuss centering around bread/lefttube, both as a concept (Shaun outright denouncing it as an idea while others defended it as a functional category, HBomb said he didn't want to consider himself part of it) and some vague drama seemingly about cancelling (Lindsay and Natalie were mocking the drama together, saw some people saying the group isn't effectively policing it's members when they do a bad.) I am already not clear on what brelefttube is supposed to be in the first place. For example, I don't know why Dan Olson would be considered part of it because his content is not politically/leftism driven and barely ever political/leftism at all for that matter. Bearing that in mind, do you have any insight into this? (Other than "please do your own research," which would be a fair thing to say.)

    We Are Legion.

  37. Why? You don't look of sound like him at all... I suppose you are both brown haired white men making intelligent left-leaning content but that's about where the similarities stop

    in response to Is people calling you Dan a thing that happens a lot?

    It's about 1/3 people getting confused because my last name is Danskin, 1/3 people mixing me up with Dan-O because we sometimes talk about similar stuff and I guess not appearing on camera makes it easier for people to get turned around, and 1/3 people doing it on purpose now that it's A Thing.

  39. Europe is a way bigger place than California, my man. That's kinda like saying, "many good ones are based in the United States," when I ask about why a lot of the Europe ones seem to be based in Scotland.

    in response to Why are so many YouTubers based in California?

    My point being: they're not all in California.

  40. If someone sends you a video they made asking for your feedback, how likely are you to take the time to watch and respond, and what factors influence that decision?

    If it's someone I in some way know, either interpersonally or knowing their work, I might give it a look. If it's a complete stranger I probably won't make the time.

  42. I don't have a question, but I'd like to offer this person an answer to *their* question. You should not preoccupy yourself with SocialBlade ad numbers, as ad revenue's not really reliably consistent anyway for most creators. If you must make your decisions based on numbers, I would give slightly more to smaller YouTubers who make less money on Patreon than others.

    Ultimately, though, don't fret about numbers too much, give as much as you can to the creators whose works you enjoy and/or find valuable.

    in response to hi man! do you think SocialBlade is reliable? it provides a huge range of estimated revenue from videos because it doesn't know how many ads are actually displayed, but I'm just trying to get a sense for which of my favourite creators I should support, because I have a limited budget and Peter Coffin said it was probably better to give a small amount to a number of creators rather than a large amount to one sorry if this is too invasive a question! I just don't know who to ask, and if you don't want to answer, I'll just operate under my best assumptions.

  43. Hey, Daddy. I've been seeing some fuss centering around bread/lefttube, both as a concept (Shaun outright denouncing it as an idea while others defended it as a functional category, HBomb said he didn't want to consider himself part of it) and some vague drama seemingly about cancelling (Lindsay and Natalie were mocking the drama together, saw some people saying the group isn't effectively policing it's members when they do a bad.)

    I am already not clear on what brelefttube is supposed to be in the first place. For example, I don't know why Dan Olson would be considered part of it because his content is not politically/leftism driven and barely ever political/leftism at all for that matter. Bearing that in mind, do you have any insight into this?

    (Other than "please do your own research," which would be a fair thing to say.)

    Hello my child.

    Let's back things up a bit: I feel a lot of things are being described hyperbolically here. Shaun did not "denounce" the idea, he expressed some skepticism and pointed out it was formalized by fans and journalists, not the creators themselves. Hbomb doesn't like the label, but that doesn't mean he feels no unity of intention or community with other people considered BreadTube. And Lindsay and Natalie snarking is not the same thing as saying the drama is meaningless. These are people who are have been lumped together and treated as leaders of a movement without their consent, please leave them room to be ambivalent about that.

    So... one of the pitfalls of BreadTube is that, being an ad hoc collection of people not formally associated with each other, there are several competing lenses through which they are affiliated. BreadTube is leftist YouTubers. BreadTube is also progressive YouTubers who aren't explicitly leftists. BreadTube is also people who work together: Lindsay Ellis is included even though her videos are mostly not about politics because she collabs with Contrapoints, Dan Olson and a bunch of the Chez Apocalypse crew are included because they collab with Lindsay, and so forth. BreadTube is also a particular aesthetic: generally scripted video essays, often with higher-than-average production values, where a lot of progressive YouTubers who do vloggier material are not considered part of it.

    These lenses get applied haphazardly, mostly by gut feeling, because, again, BreadTube is in no way formalized.

    Things seem to be heating up because there is increasing pressure on BreadTube to *be* something, though not necessarily agreement on what that something is. Some want us to be the propaganda wing of the American Left. Some want us to run for office. Some want us to lead the revolution. For a lot of us, there was no such thing as BreadTube when we started out, but now people say we have a responsibility to be the answer to the right wing YouTube pipeline. And it's not like that's a bad thing to be! But people act like setting such a thing up is easy, that it's some dereliction of duty if we haven't figured it out, and, once again: we never consented to any of this. Sometimes it feels like people are just venting their frustrations about the state of the world by getting mad at me for not having fixed it yet.

    Anyway, I've talked more about BreadTube here: https://curiouscat.me/InnuendoStudios/post/747198873

    I could go on, but Curious Cat has a character limit, so I'll close here for now.

  44. Have you played many traditional roguelikes? I feel like they compliment adventure games in a weird yin-yang kind of way. Both are outliers of a sort, niche genres with lots to offer the bigger name brand games.

    Anyway, if you have, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, an if you haven't, you might enjoy them!

    I haven't played any traditional roguelikes, I'm afraid. I'm going to get into Dwarf Fortress one of these days.

  45. do you think the politics of the MCU are predominantly liberal, conservative or centrist?

    A bit left of center, but not startlingly so.

  46. Do you see your (specifically political YouTube) work as a presentation of your own ideas (founded upon research), or a repackaging of the research you've done?

    Both, I guess. Alt-Right Playbook is largely informed by personal experience and reading books by other people, neither of which fits the definition of "original research." But I'm often applying other people's ideas in areas that I haven't seen them applied, and drawing a few original conclusions.

  47. hi man! do you think SocialBlade is reliable? it provides a huge range of estimated revenue from videos because it doesn't know how many ads are actually displayed, but I'm just trying to get a sense for which of my favourite creators I should support, because I have a limited budget and Peter Coffin said it was probably better to give a small amount to a number of creators rather than a large amount to one

    sorry if this is too invasive a question! I just don't know who to ask, and if you don't want to answer, I'll just operate under my best assumptions.

    I dunno.

  48. one concern a friend gave me about socialism is that they can't comprehend how Art as an industry is going to fit into a socialist society. and I don't know how to truly respond to that concern, because outside of my imagination my only frame of reference is the story of the guy who made Tetris and got screwed over by Russia for it. do you have any alternate references? thoughts?

    Why does art have to be an industry?

  49. the online left seems unwilling and/or uninterested in adopting many of the tactics that the alt-right use to inflate their popularity, artificially or otherwise, that you describe in many of your Alt-Right Playbook videos (I just watched the one on Mainstreaming and wondered, "if making bot accounts is so easy, why don't we just make a bunch of lefty ones to counter the righty ones?") Can you identify any particular reason why this is?

    Some tactics that the Right uses would be useful to us, and we should be ready to use them. But many wouldn't be.

    We are trying to be an effective alternative to the reactionaries, not to beat them at their own game. Their game is bad. Encouraging people to be easily swayed by low-quality, high-volume information coming from bots and sock puppet accounts ultimately benefits the Right, because their ideology relies on ignorance. Ours relies on critical thinking. So it is in our best interest to inoculate people against groupthink, not rely on it.

    The Right is always going to play the game of ignorance better than us. Play a better game.

  50. I've imagined a future where significant climate change reforms actually occur but volatile weather conditions continue to do be bad because we're already in the Too Far Gone period and merely hoping to mitigate damage, but this fact gets spun by the right into proving how climate change was fake the whole time and the Left just wanted to lie to get ahead. How do I stop making myself pre-angry for imaginary situations that have not happened and focus on real life instead?

    Make art about it. Sometimes it feels good to get it out there, and maybe it can have a slight influence on how things play out.

  51. You talk about how you’re unsure about which economic system should replace socialism, people often discuss socialism but how do you feel about anarcho-syndicalism, or syndicalism in general? Often times anarchists get guff from socialists because they still rely on markets to some degree in their vision of how things should work. However, as I understand it markets in it of themselves do not make an economic system capitalist correct? Are markets inherently bad and that’s what makes syndicalism untenable?

    I mean, similarly to how I wouldn't take a stand on socialism without reading more theory and history, I am even less familiar with syndicalism. Sorry, fam.

  54. Have you ever played D&D before?

    for like half an hour once

  55. Why are so many YouTubers based in California?

    most of the good ones are in europe

  56. Hello Dan! How does one get to have his foreign language subtitle approved by you?

    don't call me dan for starters

  57. There are a lot of internet-famous people out there claiming to be formerly liberal "if it weren't for the far left" or that they *are* "liberal" but being forced into conservatism by the left's "excesses". If you agree that this is a growing phenomenon, what can we do about it? It seems to me like a lot of the most notorious examples of this practice are conducting themselves in bad faith. It's certainly a different situation than the overtly/covertly alt-right, but these people can often (intentionally or not) funnel their audience in that direction.

    If you feel alienated by the Far Left while the Far Right is out murdering people in the streets and shoving kids in cages, you were never gonna be left.

  58. You among many others like Lindsay and Dan have inspired me to work on my first video essay. I'm thinking about doing it on how the Monsterverse addresses the weaknesses with the MCU and fixes them. Is there anything about the process I should know about?

    Oh, good luck!

    It's hard to generalize from my experience because my career has been abnormal. The usual advice is that your first video will probably not be seen by many people, but keep at it and you'll grow your audience with time. That's the mentality I came in with, but then my first video went viral, and for a long time my channel was tiny, niche videos with the occasional blockbuster. (Like, seriously: 2 years and 20ish videos in, This Is Phil Fish, Things of Beauty, and Why Are You So Angry collectively made up 92% of all my channel traffic.)

    But I think the larger lesson in "don't expect to blow up right away" stands: I highly recommend making the work *you* want to make, not the work you think your future audience wants. You may get big early, you may stay small, you may get big over time, but you're not going to know what will take off before you make it. In all likelihood, there are going to be many times where you ask yourself, "am I going to be happy I made this if nobody sees it?" And if the answer is "no," you'll probably give up before you get big. Where, if the answer is "yes," you'll take some satisfaction in the work even if you never get big.

    (And, for what it's worth, I've been at this 5 years and still can't predict what my audience will take to, and The Algorithm changes at random intervals, so, yeah, just make whatever you enjoy making.)

  59. If you could enchant/curse an item in your home with your soul, what would that item be? And what would be it’s enchantment/curse?

    I would enchant the front door so that my housemates couldn't leave without locking it behind them.

    Pet peeve.

  60. I am a bit (probably more than a bit) concerned with how *passionate* many people on the Internet seem to be about their """right""" to use slurs (with all the ol' tiresome talking points you've probably heard of already like freeze peach, dark humor, "reclaiming" slurs, yada yada) Do you think this is because of astroturfing anti-social teenagers or is the """right""" to be an asshole such important issues for many people?

    in response to So I am talking with my friend who is a ‘dirtbag leftist’ about how useful political correctness is. His basic thrust is it actually reinforces the social and economic hierarchy because it causes political impotence. Meaning a tendency to police language makes solidarity and thus direct collective action harder. He ostensibly understands the concept of ‘don’t use gay as a pejorative because it reinforces the idea that queerness is bad.’ But counters that we should instead try to find solidarity through vulgarity since It smooths over the tension of language policing and is a faster path toward dealing with these hiearchys. Basically Zizek’s main points. I am unsure of what the best method of response is here, since the thrust of my point is a coalition led by AOCs and Omars would put together the largest possible base of people, and that is only possible if we start respecting how people of those demographics prefer to be addressed but he seems to reject the premise to start with.

    Didn't you say messed up stuff when you were a teenager? What were your motivations then?

    When I was a kid, I started using the word f*ggot before I even knew what it meant. It was the lingua franca of my peers. Once I picked up on what it meant, I entered into a kind of silent consensus with my friends: "ok, we all know we don't *really* mean this, right? and since we all know that, no one's getting hurt." We were talking the exact same way our homophobic schoolmates were, but WE knew we didn't mean anything by it.

    Notably, none of my group was out as gay. It was thornier when we made "ironic" race jokes about our Asian friends. There was the early tentativeness, "if I make this joke, will my friend laugh or not?" But he did, so we pushed the envelope further. I recall telling a friend who wasn't part of my group one of our internal "Chinaman" jokes, and then awkwardly trying to contextualize, "oh... we don't really mean it... it's all just for laughs," and then being so relieved when he said he made the same kind of jokes with his Chinese friends at his old school. Ah, a white guy reassuring another white guy that racist jokes are OK!

    There's any number of motivations for this shit. Teens are mean, and they punish difference, and even the kids who don't believe in homophobia or racism speak the same slang, and they rationalize it however they need to. We keep it up as our politics evolve because our peers agree it's acceptable. If any individual decides it's not, they're putting themselves in friction with the group, and, especially in high school, you really *need* your friends. And if they're less willing to give the language up, you'll either keep using it, stop but tolerate them using it, or find a different group, which can be very difficult and painful.

    People defend their "right" to use this language because they don't want to lose access to their subculture. They defend it because admitting it's not OK means taking on guilt for how long they've been using it. They defend it because many are actual homophobes and racists who use "irony" as a smokescreen, and don't want that smokescreen taken away. They defend it because there's a pecking order and bigoted language asserts that they aren't at the bottom of it. And some defend it just because it feels dangerous to use forbidden words and they don't want to be told what to do.

    It's complicated.

  61. what is the worst ice cream flavor

    I dunno. The corner shop near my old apartment in San Francisco sold corn & cheese ice cream, but I never tried it. I'm sure it has fans.

  62. I'm sorry if you've already done this, but could you recommend some good Samuel R. Delaney books for someone looking to get into his work? I read Nova this summer and really loved it, and was just wondering what you thought were some good entry points/deep cuts that would make for a good read.

    Nova is probably the best of his early run of heady-but-traditional sci-fi. I like Trouble on Triton and love Dhalgren, though both are a lot more difficult and not very plot-driven.

    In reality, I've read a lot more of his nonfiction than his novels. His memoir The Motion of Light in Water is my favorite book, I really like Heavenly Breakfast, and The Jewel-Hinged Jaw was instrumental in the video about genre. I also found a lot of value in 1984: Selected Letters.

    Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand is supposed to be one of his best, but I still haven't gotten around to reading it. I also haven't waded into his recent work, which is best categorized as "literary pornography."

  63. You mentioned on Twitter that you think the things Hillary was/is criticized for in high volume are very odd, given her actual flaws as a candidate. Can you expand on that? The shortcomings of Hillary fascinate me while they can’t explain Trump’s win, can they offer us insights into the liberal penchance to, well, lose?

    My general sense of Hillary Clinton was that she was actually farther left than Obama, but was branded as more of a centrist than him. I know a lot of Obama's various actions to, for instance, protect trans people were authored by Clinton; she was more progressive than him on that front. But the reason the Democratic establishment favored her over Sanders was that she *represented* a move back to the center, where Sanders *represented* a move further left. There's a whole video I may or may not do someday about the differences between what a politician *does* and what they *represent*, and how Obama governed as more of a centrist he kept an air of leftiness from his campaign, and how in many ways Clinton promised a continuation of the Obama Presidency while Sanders promised a continuation of the Obama brand. Though Sanders was markedly to the left of Clinton in many areas - primarily economically - they were not as far apart as they were perceived to be, and Clinton was often more progressive than Sanders on social issues (i.e. Sanders has argued many times after losing the primaries that Democrats should compromise with Republicans on abortion rights, something Clinton was much more firm on).

    So I feel a lot of people hated Clinton for being more of a centrist than she actually was. Whereas her propensity to bargain with people across the aisle was often cited as one of her strengths, where I think, in the face of Trump, it was goddamn ridiculous to think it would be possible, and kept her from framing Trump as the existential threat to democracy he was. I also generally reject her incrementalist mindset, her hawkishness, and her half-measures on the economy, but even when people made these valid criticism there was a lot of misperception (and sexism) wrapped up in them.

    It's just... very hard to speak honestly about Hillary Clinton, because people either want to exonerate or crucify her, and she's more complex than that.

  64. How would you identify yourself politically?

    The only thing I can say concretely is "lefter than liberal." I think capitalism is bad but there's a lot of political and economic theory I would want to read before deciding what I think capitalism should be replaced with. So I tend to answer this question with "lefty" or "pinko" or "hovering in the vicinity of democratic socialism."

  65. If you make an impression while doing it, then yes I would imagine so. I can't imagine Carl came out of his effort without at least a nominal boost in his subscriber count and a few more people on board with his ideas.

    in response to publicity? Like, run not with intent to win the election, but rather to get attention for running and thus bolster one's platform after you've lost the election (intentionally)

    Why are you imagining something that's easy to check?

    A quick glance at Sargon's channel shows that his last year's videos are less popular than the year before, most especially the ones about UKIP. His biggest hits are still complaining about feminists, and his political campaign took time away from that.

    So, no, I don't think it has meaningfully boosted his career to have run for office and failed spectacularly.

  66. I honestly feel like one of those people. I'm gay, Latino, but recently I just decided I couldn't deal with it all anymore. I'm still threatened; ICE are still picking up and illegally holding people who look like me, but I can't do the rallies anymore. I don't have the energy for it. I write to elected officials every now and again, and I keep up with the discourse, but I'm so tired of how politicised my existence is, and I just can't deal with it anymore.

    It makes me feel shitty. Not doing anything, I mean, but it's also what I feel I need to do for my own (degenerating) mental wellbeing. And often, I get scolded about this by well-meaning (often white) friends as contributing to the problem. One of them told me that my inaction was giving Trump votes. I don't talk to her anymore, and I find myself increasingly alone because of how many of my friendships were founded + forged in politics...

    in response to I feel that, if you're keeping up with current politics, one of the most frustrating things is the amount of people who will declare, "I don't want to deal with politics" while the world suffers around them. This kind of attitude saps more energy from me than outright opposition, because opposition can be fought, physically and verbally. But how do you combat apathy? I'm not really sure how to deal with the knowledge that no matter how bad things may get, many people will "not my problem" the issues, even if asked for the smallest of actions (like voting). How do you parse this, as an activist? I realize this is always a difficulty for activism, but I'm curious how you deal with it.

    Your white friends should step up and become *more* active precisely because it's less draining for them, and it's the best way to support you while you take care of yourself.

    Balancing engagement with self-care is important, and if things have tipped too far in one direction for you, you need to tip the other way. We make ourselves useless to politics if we completely burn ourselves out. One of the functions of collective action is the ability to shift the labor around as needed; if one person needs a break, the labor they could do is shifted to other people, who each take on a little extra work because they can manage it. If you are in need, others step up their contribution. The Left needs to stop thinking of every individual as having to represent the entire movement and start thinking of themselves as collaborators with different needs and skills.

    Take care of yourself. <3

  67. I feel that, if you're keeping up with current politics, one of the most frustrating things is the amount of people who will declare, "I don't want to deal with politics" while the world suffers around them. This kind of attitude saps more energy from me than outright opposition, because opposition can be fought, physically and verbally. But how do you combat apathy?

    I'm not really sure how to deal with the knowledge that no matter how bad things may get, many people will "not my problem" the issues, even if asked for the smallest of actions (like voting). How do you parse this, as an activist? I realize this is always a difficulty for activism, but I'm curious how you deal with it.

    I don't. Maybe I should, but I don't know how to reach apathetic people yet. There are a tens of thousands of politically motivated, passionate, involved people who are prevented from voting, or who want to vote but feel they don't have a candidate who represents their interests. I am far more interested in elevating them than in arguing fruitlessly with people who've checked out of the whole affair.

  68. publicity?

    Like, run not with intent to win the election, but rather to get attention for running and thus bolster one's platform after you've lost the election (intentionally)

    in response to well, just because we wouldn't win, doesn't mean we couldn't try

    Does publicly losing an election bolster one's platform?

  70. What’s the answer to the Gamer question? Should we reeducate them, or should we follow the chairman’s example and just have them go work on some rice?

    Fix gaming and the gamers will follow.

  71. Do you think it might be possible for leftist internet personalities to directly engage with and/or even enter politics in the same or a similar way people like Sargon have?

    Possible, sure. But I think most of us have a better sense of our skills and electability than Carl.

  72. Asking "is a Hot Dog a Sandwich" feels to be getting stale in terms of Meme Discoursery. What do you think should be the new hit thing people every has to have an opinion on?

    The Incompatible Food Triad! http://www.georgehart.com/triad.html

  74. Should breadtube start a channel of exercise routines to better propagate defense mechanisms against oppressors. Kickboxing for Dismantling Capitalism. Yoga to Smash Your Inner States

    if someone could tell me that lowering my triglycerides is praxis that would be great

  75. Million Dollar YouTube Channel Idea: daily vlog of leftists taking back local political offices.

    I believe in you.

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