I grew up evangelical so I was just kinda raised to be that way. I fell into the Peterson self-help stuff as a 19 year old with no direction and some of his misogynistic stuff just echoed what I was raised with so I took it at face value. His vitriol towards trans people was what turned me off to him and the whole alt-right as a whole.
I had a trans coworker/friend in high school and the way he was treated in our town was horrific. I was a “I disagree with your lifestyle but I defend your right to do it”-type teenage boy. My politics could be summed up as “leave me alone” like a lot of young men and no one would just leave him alone. That was probably the catalyst for me not being a chud. It was all just too mean for no reason. I ran into him a couple years back and he is married and very happy.
I was raised to treat people with love and empathy and I really internalized all of that. So when I came of age and had to deal with the disconnect I chose my values of love and empathy over dogma. From there it was very easy to shift left. Solidarity with all marginalized people goes hand in hand with love and empathy.
My politics could be summed up as “leave me alone” like a lot of young men and no one would just leave him alone.
Sounds like perhaps your politics was “leave each other alone”, and I think that’s a huge difference. (Or am I projecting?)
Certainly could have been. I was a bit of a selfish little shithead so I don’t wanna give my teenaged self too much credit.
back in 2014 I used to be really mad about anita sarkeesian and feminism in general. Would religiously watch new atheist youtube channels like the amazing atheist and thunderfoot, who were all on the anti-feminism train back then. Wouldn’t describe it as a “pipeline” - I was just a dumb kid who thought being an atheist made him a genius
What made me change is, ironically, watching a few sargon of akkad videos. The guy was consistantly dishonest about what feminists actually believed which was clear to me even back then. Also he was an obvius right-winger despite claiming to be a “left-wing liberal”. I always thought of myself as a left-wing person and the prevalence of right wing grifters in the new atheism space made me question everything I previously believed about feminism
This was also when “breadtube” started to take shape and these people helped me understand why I was wrong about things I thought. To anyone who still remembers Libertarian Socialist Rants, Kevin Logal, Kristi Winters - you are my people
This was also when “breadtube” started to take shape and these people helped me understand why I was wrong about things I thought. To anyone who still remembers Libertarian Socialist Rants, Kevin Logal, Kristi Winters - you are my people
Shaun, too. The only breadtuber who has not posted cringe (so far)
Shaun was probably the “second wave” of breadtube. I still remember when breadtube was just a network of tiny channels - most of which were around 1000 subs. But yeah, Shaun is really good still
I’ll take your word for it, i really wasn’t plugged into video essay youtube back then. Too busy getting worked up about DotA 2 stuff or something.
I was kinda on the same train. What pulled me off was touching grass and growing up. It’s hard to hold those positions when you have people you know and love that directly disprove them.
I fell into the “New Atheist” “anti-feminist” pipeline a little bit in college, but I was also getting into academic philosophy at the time. This was a mistake of a different kind, but it did at least let me realize that those people had terrible arguments and that the feminists and commies were actually the ones making sense and putting forward reasonable claims.
Fortunately by that time, I already fell out of the libertarian pipeline, after realizing it was just fascism with extra steps. The rise of the anti-sjw stuff then pushed me away and made it clear they were never serious about supporting gays with guns growing weed.
Sidenote: It’s fucking insane how my early views on American empire were informed by Ron Paul. He was the only person who would bring up CIA coups in Guatemala and Iran, or how the US supported Saddam du8rring the Iran-Iraq war. He talked about the drug war, and how much violence that spread through latin america. He was the only person saying that Al Qaeda had political reasons for terrorism, it wasn’t just random anti-western violence. I learned the term “Blowback” from him. I think I even read Manufacturing Consent because of him. But I conveniently ignored all of his christofascist views, since that could be chalked up to “states’ rights”. Yes, I was dumb
I would browse the tumblrinaction subreddit when I was like 14 but it sort of radicalized me in the Tumblr direction lol. “Wait a minute they’re making some good points here” type shit. Then chapotraphouse turned me stalinist.
Tumblr SJWs did nothing wrong.
Stalinism doesn’t exist. It’s Marxism-Leninism. Only liberals, anarchists, and specially trots call it stalinism.
Yeah but it’s funnier to call it stalinism
Fair enough. I guess the new name for Anarchism is Choamskyism.
Choamskyism.nexus doesn’t have the same ring to it tho
I like to use “stalinist” to make stalinists mad
😠
i was raised in a polish catholic household. my father pointed at black people in public and said “look at that monkey!” - my father told me homosexuals are disgusting. my father midgendered a family member who transitioned at every opportunity with a mocking tone. i got severe brainrot from that and my underage ass had unsupervised internet access… you can figure out how that went. i had all these brainworms, was active on 4chan and posted stupid shit like “haha 13/52” - as soon as i turned 18 and experienced freedom i realized i was queer and was coping all my life. due to my job i also got a sense of community with people of different races and backgrounds. i never approved of my dads overt racism (thank god), so i didn’t alienate my new community. that’s when i realized the media landscape i surrounded myself with was against me and the people who positively influenced me. from there on it took like 2 years to get “healed”. i probably have skeletons in my closet and ongoing brainworms - but i learned to accept my past and my influences. and i learned to change my mind and question my own opinions. i’m not a saint tho but i’m willing to learn :3
as soon as i turned 18 and experienced freedom i realized i was queer and was coping all my life. due to my job i also got a sense of community with people of different races and backgrounds.
Said it before and say it again, not only is the “when you grow up and get a job, you’ll get conservative” trope wrong, it’s the complete inverse of what actually happens these days.
I think conservatism comes of having some sort of stability but knowing you could lose it. financially for sure but also in terms of your role, structure of life, emotional and social well being. Keep your head down and don’t screw it up!
In this case getting out into work world was liberatory because she was able to gain mental and material independence from the patriarch. But I don’t think it’s a reliable trajectory.
Old = conservative is stupid and has always been stupid. Lots of people get radder as they age.
Why is James Rolfe on there? Because he didn’t want to watch the ghostbusters reboot? He made one video saying he refused to watch it without ever mentioning SJW’s or the all-women cast being the main reason.
Then a bunch of articles and rants were made about it and during that time he never leaned into anti-sjw territory.
Only thing I can think of is that he recently did a speech for the anti-woke grift ”Real Game Awards”. It was cringe that he did it, but I highly doubt he’s an actual chud. He definitely was never involved in anti-SJW bullshit.
While I agree that it’s odd to have James Rolfe on this list (as he’s well known for avoiding politics and controversal topics), I do think there’s a separate discussion to be had about the people he keeps surrounding himself with.
Mike Matei is a perfect example of a friendship that raises some questions. Apart from sending unsolicited pics of his dick to his audience, he has a history of completely mask off racism that he has refused to apologize for when people found a bunch of his horrifically racist cartoons. James has never talked about any of this, but considering he and Mike are still close friends, I can only guess that he’s apparently completely fine with it.
James always seems to get a pass when his close friends or colleagues are deeply problematic, because of his “apolitical” external appearance.
James made an awful video on ghostbusters 2016 where he refused to review the movie and cried about muh politics. That video got 4.5 million views, many of his fans decided to sent death threats to the director and actors. Besides, he lied about the movie plot.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I guess that was him briefly going mask off to reveal his true self.
When you add all of these things together, it creates a clear picture of the guy. I don’t believe that his appearance at that anti-woke version of the game awards was some sort of an accident on his part, like some of his lib fans claim. He knew what he was doing. He’s not some random person who’s unaware of what’s happening in the gaming space. If you hang out with chuds, never counter any of the chud things they say, and then spout chud things yourself when briefly dropping the mask, you might as well be a chud too.
Because he’s James, he’s able to ignore every single controversy and pretend like they passively happen to him.
I think james is mostly a lib but he seems to have some reactionary brainworms from hanging out with people like mike matei.
I don’t think he’s a chud (I think people online said he voted for hillary and biden lol). But he does have chud friends, and work very closely with chud people.
Afterwards, famous YouTube reviewer James Rolfe posted a video detailing his refusal to see the movie, spoutingthat same fan entitlement. And some irrational critiques based on the two minute preview of a two hour movie.
“By using the name, it’s pretending to be original in its own right, and sweeping the first one under the rug as if it didn’t happen. To me personally, it officially ended with the death of Harold Ramis. Well, at east he didn’t live to see this sh*t.”
Rolfe’s video exploded, reaching over four million views, with plenty calling him out for judging a book by its cover. Made all the more ironic when Rolfe complained about his critics having not actually watched the his video (When Rolfe himself didn’t watch the movie). Nonetheless, the video was a lightning rod that sparked a wave of anti-2016 Ghostbusters sentiment on YouTube that still continues today.
I was fortunately already a communist and an
when GamerGate took off, so at that point I could immediately see through all the bullshit. 
But during the direct pre-cursor of that era, the so called New Atheism era (2004-2014), I did go down the “militant atheist” pipeline, which was rife with islamophobes and sexists. That era ended up spawning both the reactionary anti-SJW pipeline and the progressive ones that were in opposition post-GamerGate.
I think what probably helped me avoid the anti-SJW pipeline, is that despite considering myself a militant atheist and a progressive lib from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, I was still very critical of capitalism. I just didn’t know anything about socialism and communism yet, as I went to a few Occupy protests to show solidarity. I also remember spamming Facebook with infographics criticizing capitalist greed, and articles about the destruction in Syria at the beginning of the civil war, because the MSM was ignoring it. It took a few years before I realized I was not a
anymore, which coincidentally happened at the same time as GamerGate and the whole reactionary backlash to progressive politics began.So yeah, I guess I was lucky. It makes sense that becoming more class conscious and anti-imperialist helps you become more resistant to reactionary trash.
I was always at least economically left wing but those anti sjw stuff still had influence on me. I was like stupidpol people. then I found r/gcj and they made me realize all the stuff that was being complained about was bullshit. you should not need a reason to put minority chracter to a media
Also, everyone seemed so angry in those drama subreddits it turned me off from them, both left and right wing. /r/chapotraphouse and /r/FULLCOMMUNISM drew me in because of the funny leftist memes and overall feeling of camaraderie, while The_Donald was turning into an orgiastic circlejerk around someone everyone (at the time) agreed was a horrible person and “owning the libs” by being performatively racist, misogynistic, etc.
This has all been very embarrassing to type. I’m very happy I’m no longer this terminally online.
r/gcj
Thought you meant guitarcirclejerk there for a second lmao
Unfortunately I am g*mer
I realized they were racist and sexist
edit: for more info the thing that pushed me into avoiding that circle is them talking about Palestine, they kept saying Palestine was sjw cause, so I became sjw
I watched some anti-SJW garbage for a couple months when I was around 14. I didn’t go that far down the pipeline, I watched stuff like h3h3 and Amazing Atheist. I had literally no idea what they were talking about, I was 14 and had no context for politics, but I just saw other people saying they were good and funny and absorbed that opinion. Then I guess I realised pretty quickly that I didn’t agree with any of it
Same kind of. I thought people were making fun of actual extreme examples of SJW and agreed that accusing random people of wrongdoing based on their identity (like saying all men are evil) is weird and sometimes funny. But when I was old enough to critically think about these videos I realised that they were hyped up maliciously and actually not very representative of any social movement. It did make me very cynical for a few years because I was made to think that every social movement was somehow malicious and that progress was therefore impossible.
For a while I thought I was losing it, pewdiepie making a video paying people to hold up a sign that says death to all Jews and everyone being cool with it, same with the reaction content that was just bullying
I did, but sort of eventually just noticed that all the “jokes” were really repetitive and didn’t actually seem to be jokes. Plus I listened to one Sargon thing and was like “this guy is whiny as hell”, which kind of put me on the the fact that all these people were dorks whining endlessly about people (furries for example) who weren’t actually hurting anyone. Then gamergate happened and I was like “holy shit, these people are unbelievable no-lifes”
Looking back, that should have turned the right into irrelevant laughingstocks instead of being the “controversy” that SAVED the GOP.
You mean they want 75% of the global population dead and the remaining half to be a slave class because some folks on tumblr made jokes white men are the REAL inferiors? God they’re petty.
I’m proud to say I’m only familiar with the middle row+Rogan and Owens and I’ve never watched any of them. Who are the rest of these people that I definitely already hate without knowing who they are?
Its not the sjw pipeline or anything but back in the day I fell for ancient aliens until I decided to look up the shit they were talking about.
