Wikipedia definition here, but saving you a click: a group of folks who post video essays on YouTube that critique media or internet phenomena from a leftist perspective, usually in longer-form video essays.

A hit list of relatively-recent videos:
- hbomberguy (Harry Brewis) on the origins of vaccine hesitancy
- Lindsay Ellis on the Omegaverse copyright lawsuits
- Folding Ideas (Dan Olson) on Flat Earthers
- Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorn) on Jordan Peterson
- Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) on Justice


I get watching a long-ass YouTube video is something that a lot of folks just will not go for, period, and some of these folks post things that are feature-length.
I really enjoy most of them, so NC from me.
WF: most of them could stand a little editing.

I like Contrapoints a bit. And the video/s on Philosophy Tube about Hegel were great for someone like me who is terrified of actually reading any of Hegel's books.

I'll have to give the other channels you listed a watch.

mrcancelled wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:17 pmsomeone like me who is terrified of actually reading any of Hegel's books.

Don't get discouraged! The difficulty many people have with Hegel, if I would guess, is that (1) he is moving away from the fixity of concepts and instead trying to articulate thought in continuous motion, as well as trying to conceive of a proposition and its opposite as belonging to the same reality (when you state what something is, you at the same time state what it is not, thus the "is-not" will remain even when the "is" is decided, and therefore cannot be wholly rejected, since it forms a part of this), therefore there will be no definite boundaries and no final conclusion, and (2) he is speaking very abstractly of things that one might not expect to be spoken of like that, e.g. talking about subjectivity as a universal principle (never as belonging to some particular person).

Some of this is of course a consequence of being used to e.g. speaking of things of in terms of fixed concepts, expecting to arrive at a final, summarizing conclusion etc., so YMMV depending on your disposition. As for the writing itself I actually think it is quite evocative and flowing. Should you decide to attempt it I would suggest to just keep reading and not try to understand it. Some sort picture will likely emerge even if you don't grasp every passage.

Really I wish people would spend a little less time talking about how difficult this or that writer is, because so much of that is just trying to talk oneself out of doing the work. And evidently it does more to intimidate newcomers. Anyway.


OnT:
Contentwise mostly not crap. Does get a bit memey and complacent at times but I guess that's just what happens, man. Significant in shifting the balance from the rightwing dominance of early youtube.

I like esp those vids explaining theory or history and (indirectly) how to read studies and so on. In so far as they inspire other people to do the same it's great.

Given the fact that every content creator is also a small business and are building a brand, competing for viewers and so on I wonder how this impinges on the quality of the content. I'm guessing many of them share followers and support each other and so on, still.

jason from volo wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 7:38 amSo here's the trouble (and I'll say this while intentionally trying to be apolitical): the people who really need to watch these videos never will, and the ones who do watch the videos probably already agree in principle with the content.

Not entirely true. For one, there are several statements from ex-redpillers/MRAs saying Contrapoints changed their view, and now that twitchstreamers are getting into the game meaning there are frequent real-time debates with prominent figures of the opposite camp, still more have reported the same from watching people like Destiny. So things are evidently more fluid than it may seem.

Also, educating the people already identifying with the community is an important part, as well as simply stating things that "everyone already knows" (as problematic as that notion is), letting people know that they are not alone - I know that you know that I know etc., basically how propaganda works.

The above leads me to a huge waffle with this format, which is the tendency for particular fanbases to form around towering personalities, resulting in intracommunity squabbles which are extremely tedious.

I've never heard of these, so I'll check them out this week.

One comment on Hegel - I hated reading that shit when I was in college. Existentialism was the most interesting class I took at the time, but I remember slogging through the Hegel and Kierkegaard sections, having to re-read pages over and over again to figure out what the fuck they were saying. I found the concepts really interesting when discussed in class, but when I would actually read the texts.......man. A fucking chore.

I just watched a video on the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that probably fits this category:



Youtuber essayist Shaun manages to come across as normal and even-tempered while gradually building to a quiet but forceful damnation of most of the main protagonists in his essay. I learned a lot from it: the extracts of what was said at the time and what the protagonists wrote later fill out the bulk of the video, and the arrangement and contextualisation of the quotes make the case.

NC. Most educational.

^^ agreed, for a 2+ hour video with almost no moving video, it was pretty interesting for me.

I forgot to mention two others:
- Maggie Mae Fish, who's done some amusing dissection of Zack Snyder and also Kirk Cameron's Christian propaganda movies. Her damning critique of "My Octopus Friend" here.
- Princess Weekes, who also co-hosts / co-writes PBS' It's Lit series with Lindsay Ellis. Her critique of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" here.

John Hinckley doing "This Land is Your Land" counts, right?

NC, for positive exploitation of algorithms.

kokorodoko wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 6:43 am

mrcancelled wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:17 pmsomeone like me who is terrified of actually reading any of Hegel's books.

Don't get discouraged! The difficulty many people have with Hegel, if I would guess, is that (1) he is moving away from the fixity of concepts and instead trying to articulate thought in continuous motion, as well as trying to conceive of a proposition and its opposite as belonging to the same reality (when you state what something is, you at the same time state what it is not, thus the "is-not" will remain even when the "is" is decided, and therefore cannot be wholly rejected, since it forms a part of this), therefore there will be no definite boundaries and no final conclusion, and (2) he is speaking very abstractly of things that one might not expect to be spoken of like that, e.g. talking about subjectivity as a universal principle (never as belonging to some particular person).

Some of this is of course a consequence of being used to e.g. speaking of things of in terms of fixed concepts, expecting to arrive at a final, summarizing conclusion etc., so YMMV depending on your disposition. As for the writing itself I actually think it is quite evocative and flowing. Should you decide to attempt it I would suggest to just keep reading and not try to understand it. Some sort picture will likely emerge even if you don't grasp every passage.

Really I wish people would spend a little less time talking about how difficult this or that writer is, because so much of that is just trying to talk oneself out of doing the work. And evidently it does more to intimidate newcomers. Anyway.

Thanks for this, this is all good to know! Yeah I don't know what it is about Hegel in particular that's kept me apprehensive, in my experience the writers/works that people go on about being difficult are never quite as bad as I end up convincing myself they will be. Is there a good place to start with Hegel, would you say?