Cum Town Podcast

[Sin Agog]

Red Scare, from my brief exposure, seems like the worst dead-eyed, vacuous hipster shit- like a podcast some of the characters in a Larry Clarke movie might make a few years down the line.  Chapo's probably only interesting if you're into socialist activism.  It certainly shouldn't be seen as reflective of any of the MGTOW crowd some of the establishment media have it muddled up with.  They've all got good hearts, but I haven't really bothered with it since Bernie dropped out.  Time for me to turn inward.  True Anon, never listened to, but Nick's conspiratorial side always was a bit of a comedic dead end, and usually comes during a manic onset, such as the one he had recently which forced him to miss a couple of Cum Town episodes for the first ever time.

As to the spin-offs/guest appearances, I think Stavvy's advice show is definitely the best of a bad lot.  He's maturing quite a bit.  He used to come across to me like some kind of epicurean frat satyr, but he seems like a really nice guy in reality.  Woke without being the least bit smarmy about it.  He and Nick had some good appearances on Robert Kelly's podcast (who I enjoyed calling Nick out on his resting shark face). Really liked Sydney Washington's appearance on yesterday's Stavvy Solves Your Problems (https://youtu.be/BuadZWtSLQg?t=3382).  i can't imagine the other two having as good a rapport with a gorgeous, funny woman like that.  Nick either retreats into himself or talks all over them.  Unfortunately, whenever Nick guests on something, it's usually some pod by a libertarian cementhead like Louis Gomez.  Maybe he finds people like that easier to chill with, but they're too close to the grotty Anthony Cumia crew (Cumia arguably helped launch Cum Town, by the way) for me to not feel a little icky about them cackling in my cochleas.  Adam I've only heard on a couple of Chapo episodes.  Dunno if he has the personality to be much of a solo draw, but he really stepped up on the last couple of Nickless eps.  If you've just started Cum Town around the time of the Coronavirus, well frankly this is not the best time to be a fan.  I'm glad they're all together again in, I think, Stav's house, though, and I'm sure it'll rise again.

[C_Larence]

Trueanon is a good follow on twitter, but I haven't got round to listening to their podcasts yet. Brace comes across as a truly unhinged sort, but has a good way with words and fought in Syria.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Definitive survey of "dirtbag left" podcasts

Tier 1

Trillbilly Workers Party - Best of these podcasts. Has a ramshackle quality that is endearing, and the show benefits greatly from the hosts being in Kentucky rather than New York City. Highlights include any discussion of local politics. Actually has a decent fanbase?

Street Fight Radio - Probably the most genuinely left wing of these podcasts, insofar as the hosts are two Dads who make fun of shitty bosses every week rather than trying to muddle through discussing scientific materialism. Call-in shows can be hit or miss, but they actually seem to have a decent fanbase.

Tier 2

Chapo Trap House - Would be excellent if you have some type of sophisticated audio masking technology that can mute everyone other than Felix and Virgil. Does tend to have the highest comedic peaks of any of these shows, when everything aligns (and Amber is not on the show). Very large fanbase but the most vocal elements seem to be horrible in a way that is unfair to the hosts, who are not horrible.

Red Scare - The two co-hosts are almost unbelievably insufferable, but their frequently wrong contrarian takes do have the merit of being somewhat interesting to hear. Fanbase should be placed on FBI watch list.

Tier 5  - Hazardous Waste

TrueAnon, Cum Town, etc. - Terrible, awful, unfunny, do not listen.

[up_the_hampipe]

The clown bit in this clip is some sort of nightmarish art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnBD1GPP4Yw

[chveik]

Trillbilly Workers Party - Best of these podcasts. Has a ramshackle quality that is endearing, and the show benefits greatly from the hosts being in Kentucky rather than New York City. Highlights include any discussion of local politics. Actually has a decent fanbase?

I couldn't agree more. really worth a listen.

it boggles the mind that Red Scare has any success.

[evilcommiedictator]

Trashfuture has on a lot of guests and is British, which helps even-out the ALL-AMERICA podcast world. They're better when they've got something to deconstruct though, rather than when they have random guest mates on

[Sin Agog]

Just saw this on my podcast feed. It's just an interview with Will, but I'm kinda fascinated to hear Wallace Shawn's cameo in the Chapoverse.  They have got some good names over the years.

[kitsofan34]

Chapo was my starting point with leftism and it holds a place very dear to my heart. I haven't really listened since the Sanders campaign, which looking back at was a rather odd time. The show had always worked from a place of punching up and despite having some influence in the campaign, I feel the hosts got slightly too carried away during Sanders' ascendancy and it created this rather weird vibe within the show. I'm not sure what the future holds for Chapo, I suppose it could adopt the "Hellworld" angle and revel in the sheer mindlessness of a Biden/Trump campaign but I don't know how that would feel after the brief flirtation we had of genuine change presented by Bernie's campaign. I also get worried when podcasts are aware of their own mythology, and am worried Matt Christman, who is by far the most articulate of the crew, is buying into his own hype. Wearing his own merch, doing hour long instagram live's on an almost daily basis, I dunno.... It would also be a tremendous blow if Felix left, as has been long speculated for the last year or so.

It's nice to see Virgil back, however, and the definitive ranking of Chapo hosts is:

1. Matt.
2. Felix.
3. Virgil.
4. Will.
5. Producer Chris.
6. Amber.

[iamcoop]

Is Amber that bad? Everyone slags her off on Chapo but I've always thought she was quite good whenever she's guested on Cum Town.

[Old Nehamkin]

Is Amber that bad? Everyone slags her off on Chapo but I've always thought she was quite good whenever she's guested on Cum Town.

Amber is the chapo who should be a cumboy just as Adam is the cumboy who should be a chapo.

[kitsofan34]

Is Amber that bad? Everyone slags her off on Chapo but I've always thought she was quite good whenever she's guested on Cum Town.

Contrarian for the sake of it. I remember one time on a live show during the primaries everyone took turns to talk about how powerful this moment was and how much it meant to everyone. Almost all of them were sincere, except for Virgil but hey what do you expect, but Amber did this bizarre, five minute joke about Jews, a reoccuring trait of hers.

[Old Nehamkin]

I think that Amber is quite similar to Nick in that they both seem inordinately informed by online culture war grievances and are reflexively contemptuous of twitter liberals to the extent that they often end up bending over backwards to give lame "well actually" defences of various dipshit conservative takes for the sake of contrarian point-scoring. I've never listened to Red Scare, but based on her twitter feed Anna Khachiyan also seems to embody this mindset.

Having said that, I think Amber can be very good when she's talking about nuts-and-bolts labour issues, workplace organisation etc. and I do think she's perfectly correct in her wariness of identity politics being employed by liberals to stifle and obfuscate leftist goals. But her constant anti-woke posturing is pretty exhausting.

Incidentally my favourite Chapo host is Matt.

[evilcommiedictator]

Amber is loved by Spiked

[marquis_de_sad]

Amber is loved by Spiked

Loved = one article.

[iamcoop]

Where's a good entry point for Chapo? Never really bothered trying to get into it due to the sheer amount of episodes.

[Sin Agog]

Where%u2019s a good entry point for Chapo? Never really bothered trying to get into it due to the sheer amount of episodes.

Don't think it's really that kind of podcast.  It's more like topical talk radio.  Might want to look into some of the interviews with peoples like Alan Moore, Larry Charles and Adam Curtis as they're usually pretty general.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Is Amber that bad? Everyone slags her off on Chapo but I've always thought she was quite good whenever she's guested on Cum Town.

The thing about Chapo Trap House (in my opinion) is that it's primarily a comedy podcast. I'm not particularly interested in their political hot takes, and Amber brings very little comedy to the table while constantly derailing with said hot takes. (From what I've seen she does seem much better in writing.)

[Old Nehamkin]

Where%u2019s a good entry point for Chapo? Never really bothered trying to get into it due to the sheer amount of episodes.

These are a couple of Chapo episodes that helped me get into the show:

Episode 58 - We Live in The Zone Now - released just after Trump's election, a very cathartic and comprehensive takedown of the Clinton campaign and the modern Democratic party which earned the show a lot of attention at the time as a refreshing counterpoint to the feeble liberal excuse-making that dominated the mainstream reaction to the election result.

Episode 141 - Chapo Cartoon Cavalcade - more of a silly, knockabout one in which the hosts summarise and review a bunch of shitty conservative comic strips - some of them extremely demented - and talk more generally about the tropes and stumbling-blocks inherent in conservative conedy.


Their reading series segments where they go through Ben Shapiro's shitty dystopian novel are also fun and can be found on youtube.

[Garam]

Girls Chat was a great but sadly short lived pod that would discuss LGBT issues and sex work and stuff and would have lots of controversial twittersphere guests on. The entire archive is here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TWj9_EsLmL8Cb2OgOJTrzvfpD8z0WfKx

Guests are John McAfee, Ian Miles Cheong, Roosh V, Aimee Terese, Street Fight Radio guy etc. Jake Flores guest on Cum Town was on a couple times too. Def one of the better comedy finds i've come across lately.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

John McAfee, Ian Miles Cheong, Roosh V, Aimee Terese,

[Garam]

i wouldn't rush to listen based on those guests either, but it's a good show

[peanutbutter]

Nick either retreats into himself or talks all over them.  Unfortunately, whenever Nick guests on something, it's usually some pod by a libertarian cementhead like Louis Gomez.

This might be correlated? I can imagine Nick being someone who would get extremely self conscious if he doesn't have the freedom to jokingly shit all over the people he's with without knowing either they won't take offence or that he can just dismiss them as pricks a bit.

I think it probably is a bit overstated how heavily improvised cum town is, it does always seem like Nick has a ton of ideas lined up.

It's nice to see Virgil back, however, and the definitive ranking of Chapo hosts is:

1. Matt.
2. Felix.
3. Virgil.
4. Will.

I feel like I'd rank these in a totally different order every time I try to. I think Amber is generally okay but she seems to be way less close to the rest of them and the dynamic has gradually just gotten kinda weird. To some extent Felix feels a bit divorced from it all too these days, but he's capable of being extremely funny so it's easier to ignore.

The episode where they went to that republican convention thing was really good, iirc; pretty sure it's episode 294 but not 100%.
58 is definitely the breakout episode though, in terms of capturing a particular mood in that moment it was extremely effective.


Red Scare is a bizarre thing, there's definitely something interesting about Anna beyond just being obsessively contrarian, feel like in another podcast she could be really good, but her and Dasha combined is just way too much of one specific mood.


Stav's definitely managed to lose those vaguely douchey vibes he used to have and he's been really thriving with it. I do wonder how much of it was just that 90% of the photos of him online around the time I started listening were like this though

[Dog Botherer]

i like TrueAnon a lot but Brace is carrying a lot of dead weight with his cohost. i find Liz very similar to Amber, too often contrarian and too rarely funny. Young Chomsky's musical efforts are top notch though.

the quoted above ranking of Chapo hosts is correct, Felix is by far the funniest but Matt is more endearing and generally the smartest of the bunch.

another couple of leftyish pods i don't see mentioned much are Struggle Session and Yeah But Still. SS talks more about culture from a left perspective, while YBS is Hollywood centric. Felix is always on YBS, and i think nearly every Chapo member has been on SS.

[Ornlu]

i like TrueAnon a lot but Brace is carrying a lot of dead weight with his cohost.

that's kray-see. Liz is ... well fuck, I like Liz. I think she's very informed and endearing. Her and Brace have a lot of chemistry I find.

I wanted to give Struggle Session a go but I just can't lend that Jack Allison any credence. Hate the smarmy right-on bollock.

[Dog Botherer]

that's kray-see. Liz is ... well fuck, I like Liz. I think she's very informed and endearing. Her and Brace have a lot of chemistry I find.

I wanted to give Struggle Session a go but I just can't lend that Jack Allison any credence. Hate the smarmy right-on bollock.

i mean she's fine on twitter generally, dunno what it is about her delivery that makes her sound so smug on the pod.

Jack is for sure the weak link for SS, when it's just him and Leslie it's not great but JA tends to keep quieter when they have guests on, which is often.

[Famous Mortimer]

that's kray-see. Liz is ... well fuck, I like Liz. I think she's very informed and endearing. Her and Brace have a lot of chemistry I find.

I wanted to give Struggle Session a go but I just can't lend that Jack Allison any credence. Hate the smarmy right-on bollock.

If you enjoy slop like Cumtown and your first criticism of Jack Allison is that he's too right-on, just say you hate his politics. Fewer words.

[C_Larence]

To be fair their first criticism was that he's smarmy, and I totally agree. Followed him for a while on twitter but in the end got sick of seeing 10 posts as many minutes from him all saying the same thing just with slightly different words. Also a Snyder Cut loving, Last Jedi hating bore. Was funny seeing him get dunked on for giving up weed, drinking some white claws and immediately throwing up.
https://twitter.com/lancethewound/status/1260047588264259585?s=21

[Dog Botherer]

yeah his politics are fine he just needs to fucking chill

[Old Nehamkin]

I followed Jack Allinson on Twitter for a while and, while I can't fault his politics and admire his tenacity, the man seems bloody exhausting.

[Ornlu]

If you enjoy slop like Cumtown and your first criticism of Jack Allison is that he's too right-on, just say you hate his politics. Fewer words.

I didn't mention anywhere that I enjoyed Cum Town. But you're right, I do love it. Whatever dude this shit's boring who cares.

Was funny seeing him get dunked on for giving up weed, drinking some white claws and immediately throwing up.
https://twitter.com/lancethewound/status/1260047588264259585?s=21

hahah I'd forgotten about this. it's so beautiful when someone who generally avoids being dunked on due to their politics gets a resounding chorus of mockery.

anyway. now I've unironically used 'dunked' in a sentence, I'm going to go and walk into the ocean.