NEW CONTRAPOINTS - ENVY

[Dr Rock]

It's a legitimate criticism that I have watched 15 minutes and I don't have any idea why I'm supposed to be interested. I gather it's in response to some twitter drama, and maybe if I'd followed some of that it might be interesting,

It's not! It's about loads of stuff.

[evilcommiedictator]

She later says that the idea that dislike of the rich flaunting it is not always down to envy, often it will be people who just want a fairer world. So don't fret.

Excellent, saved myself 1h45 there

[Chriddof]

I really miss the days when a 10 minute Youtube video was considered long, and anything lasting two hours was just a loop of Phillips CD-I Mario saying "TOAST".

(This isn't meant as a slam against Wynn, but rather The Fucking Algorithm which pushes people into making stuff that's not exactly concise.)

[Mr Trumpet]

She's enraged the tankies with this one. She's gonna in deep shit when the revolution happens and they're in charge.

[Retinend]

I screwed up by not checking Picture Box before posting a thread of my own on this same video in Shelf Abuse. So here's my take, snipped from that thread, but cut down a little:


Her latest video is probably her best one yet, imo[nb]though now I think again, maybe "Cringe" takes it for being the more original set of observations[/nb].

She uses Nietzsche's master/slave dichotomy to compare how effective political engagement differs from ineffective (and toxic) political engagement: the emotion of jealousy, or "ressentiment" as Nietzsche would put it. She explains this philosophical concept really well, I think.

Wynn doesn't straightforwardly agree with Nietzsche, though. She criticises Nietzsche for the neglectful way he left his theory open to be interpreted by the nazis and also, amusingly, brands him an "incel", since he was a lifelong bachelor, whose only sexual experience had left him crippled with syphilis, and who had few real friends and almost no readership for his books, languishing in complete obscurity until after he went insane.

Still, she does respect the genius of the theory, and accepts the master/slave moral dichotomy, applying it to those on the left that she sees as just as resentful/jealous as those on the American right who whinge jealously about "welfare queens" and unearned "handouts".

This is a video that is sure to upset a lot of people, because she is essentially saying that her critics are jealous of her and that the reason for it is because they are weak. She's also calling the left impractical, in broad strokes - clinging to the tool of "critique" in order to create a cottage industry of resentment, instead of using critique to empower the powerless.

As I said, I personally think this is her best video yet. It had a sense of humour, a lot of positive self-awareness, and what she says is rigorous, informative and intellectually rich.  If I have any criticisms it would be of superficial things like the superfluous length of the format, the supposedly "funny" outtakes, or the uncomfortable-making, self-loathing moments. But overall, I really admire her more than ever for what she's doing to elevate a throwaway format like a YT video.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Jesus, don't take this stuff seriously. She doesn't know anything you don't or couldn't know after a quick wikipedia browse.

It's theatre. Couldn't get through this because of the framing of ressentiment as hatred of success or envy of someone having something that you don't. She's (unintentionally) repeating what is a very old saw in conservative readings of Nietzsche and didn't see enough to see where that's addressed later or whether there's a gotcha.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

It's good to hate the rich on a visceral, personal level. It's good to want their stuff and want to see it put to use. Nothing about this is slave morals or 'resentment' - slave morals isn't really seperable from the denial of desire or the denial of the love of desire for its own worth.

Never listen to a rich liberal telling you revolution is a morally suspicious idea.

[pigamus]

Jesus, don't take this stuff seriously. She doesn't know anything you don't or couldn't know after a quick wikipedia browse.

Oh come on, don't be silly. You clearly know a lot of theory, good luck to you, but there's no need to be so condescending.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Oh come on, don't be silly. You clearly know a lot of theory, good luck to you, but there's no need to be so condescending.

I'm serious. I think this sort of stuff is frequently disempowering for viewers and gives the message that one needs an interpretter or guide before reading serious texts. Which you don't. As I've said before I read a lot of younger peoples and students responses to this sort of content and I think people genuinely come away with the feeling that they someone else to interpret or give the 'right' view of something or what the best interpretation is, moreso that they did before. Which is very dismaying. I want people read sources themselves and engage directly, and not feel like they need famous mediators or peer group consensus. Don't underestimate how much the fear of being wrong hurts people, especially young peoples, engagement with ideas and texts - a lot of online content amplifies that fear because it attachs a social value ("cool" or whatever analog kids have today) to it.

She's got no qualifications, she's got no experience, she's unpublished and doesn't really understand what she's talking about more than any other layperson. Her only qualifications are the zeros after the dollar sign on her patreon. I think Contrapoints is very entertaining and used to be frequently incisive but there's nothing stopping you from reading the Genealogy yourself and getting something better from it than an e-celeb's hack job. 

You probably wouldn't come away from it with what is essentially A C Grayling's view of Nietzsche if you read it yourself.

[chveik]

It's theatre. Couldn't get through this because of the framing of ressentiment as hatred of success or envy of someone having something that you don't. She's (unintentionally) repeating what is a very old saw in conservative readings of Nietzsche and didn't see enough to see where that's addressed later or whether there's a gotcha.

the marie antoinette stuff is straight from french neoncons. i was too startled to find such arguments there to be annoyed

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I'm not annoyed, I'm just kind of dismayed when every few months you see the cycle of young lefties getting hyped for their favs new video drop then the next day seeing deflated posts because it made them feel stupid/wrong usually for spurious reasons.

Making young people guilty because they think revolution is rad and good, booooo to you. Boo.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Someone whose business model is subscriber count goes up bickering about slave morals: Suche Nullen! 

[Retinend]

Jesus, don't take this stuff seriously. She doesn't know anything you don't or couldn't know after a quick wikipedia browse.

Harsh words. I simply disagree - I think she does a great job of interpreting the book for a popular audience (hence your criticism?) and applying it where it is relevant to her own life.

I'm just kind of dismayed when every few months you see the cycle of young lefties getting hyped for their favs new video drop then the next day seeing deflated posts because it made them feel stupid/wrong usually for spurious reasons.

Making young people guilty because they think revolution is rad and good, booooo to you. Boo.

I can get on board with that criticism better. Still, I wouldn't underestimate the negative power of resentment either in life or in politics.

[chveik]

when you start going on about ressentiment the problem is that it's quite easily reversible. creating new ideals is what makes a 'master' mentality, not saying people should settle for less

[Retinend]

Someone whose business model is subscriber count goes up bickering about slave morals: Suche Nullen!

I had to search which quote you're referring to there, but I'm still not sure about what criticism you're making. You mean that, chasing subs, she is merely catering to her audience rather than being authentically herself? That can't be right, if you're agreeing that she is risking losing her audience by pivoting from criticism of the right to criticism of the left.

[sevendaughters]

i dropped the needle on a bit for 3 minutes and it just felt really immature and unable to see over the fence of a very narrow experience base, 'human nature is a toxic person', oh come off it, that is just someone who is online too much.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

when you start going on about ressentiment the problem is that it's quite easily reversible. creating new ideals is what makes a 'master' mentality, not saying people should settle for less

I agree, my take away is that transvaluation is available to all but the aim should be to will what is within one's will and not will what could have been otherwise. Or the notion that envying virtue is even worse than envying things or status.

Or the irony of the section castigating "spitting against the wind" and despising 'the rabble' immediately following 'virtue' in Zarathrustra. You could quite easily argue that Nietzsche's opinion is that master and slave morals are both constrained from transvaluation in different ways because they're both forms of self denial, or at least as refusal to change values when facing up to life as an eternal process. Creating new ideas is not part of any the higher/lower distinction.

[bgmnts]

I'm serious. I think this sort of stuff is frequently disempowering for viewers and gives the message that one needs an interpretter or guide before reading serious texts. Which you don't. As I've said before I read a lot of younger peoples and students responses to this sort of content and I think people genuinely come away with the feeling that they someone else to interpret or give the 'right' view of something or what the best interpretation is, moreso that they did before. Which is very dismaying. I want people read sources themselves and engage directly, and not feel like they need famous mediators or peer group consensus. Don't underestimate how much the fear of being wrong hurts people, especially young peoples, engagement with ideas and texts - a lot of online content amplifies that fear because it attachs a social value ("cool" or whatever analog kids have today) to it.

She's got no qualifications, she's got no experience, she's unpublished and doesn't really understand what she's talking about more than any other layperson. Her only qualifications are the zeros after the dollar sign on her patreon. I think Contrapoints is very entertaining and used to be frequently incisive but there's nothing stopping you from reading the Genealogy yourself and getting something better from it than an e-celeb's hack job. 

You probably wouldn't come away from it with what is essentially A C Grayling's view of Nietzsche if you read it yourself.

Long way of saying you hate fun mate!

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I like videogames and the Fall.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I had to search which quote you're referring to there, but I'm still not sure about what criticism you're making. You mean that, chasing subs, she is merely catering to her audience rather than being authentically herself? That can't be right, if you're agreeing that she is risking losing her audience by pivoting from criticism of the right to criticism of the left.

It's a pun. It means "add zeros" ie multiply by an order of magnitude but also "look for nobodies", he's saying that people who are in the business of amassing followers must necessarily look for people lesser than themselves and as a result treat people as fools.

[Retinend]

It's a pun. It means "add zeros" ie multiply by an order of magnitude but also "look for nobodies", he's saying that people who are in the business of amassing followers must necessarily look for people lesser than themselves and as a result treat people as fools.

Oh, like "nuls" ("losers") in French, I see.

Still, that's easy for a man who barely ever sold a book to say. Much of Nietzsche is covert autobiography.

[chveik]

well we won't be discussing contrapoints in a century

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Still, that's easy for a man who barely ever sold a book to say. Much of Nietzsche is covert autobiography.

It's not like Nietzsche had any complaints about being "untimely".

People who like to laugh should read Ecce Homo.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

With the political realignment going on right now, its interesting how overtly libertarian analogies ("cutting down the tall trees", "crabs in a bucket") are redistributing from the right to the liberal-social justice district of the political compass, there isn't a cohesive political ideology that reflects those values anymore and californian ideology has degenerated into either diluted Reaganism with pride flags or overt techno-feudalism.

I think its good that Contrapoints has always had a libertarian defense of success, beauty, feeling good, etc. There definitely was a time when political discourse was full of paranoia and suspicion about any values whatsoever - the only reason someone ever thinks something is good is because of oppression happening somewhere, beauty is only beautiful because some ominous social hierarchy grinding bones behind the scenes. But the very specific way that is translated into an opposition to class attrition and revolution is strikingly reminscent of um, Rush lyrics.

It is right to revolt.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I dunno, I think she has a point about people who talk about revolution but don't do anything. Ties in with her views in "Voting" where she notes that the Right are actually arming for violent revolution (and made a stab at it by storming the Capitol) while the Left... say "Revolution!" a lot but aren't doing anything to bring about a revolution. The bit at the end where she compares talking about the political utopia after the revolution to the belief in an afterlife got to me. I've felt for a while now that my generation is failing the under twenties, both in terms of what we're not doing and in the example we set - encouraging them to lie around and blame our parents (their grandparents) for fucking it all up. The kids and students don't have power, we the middle-aged adults have power. I do what I can - I chose an electricity supplier that utilises wind farms, I walk to do my errands when I can, I vote for the biggest environmentalists and communists I can find and I always, always vote. But is it enough? Should I do more? Do I join a political party and try to effect change that way? I get annoyed when I see people going "Well the world's fucked, yes it's fucked, nothing's gonna change", but am I any better? Am I doing any more?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I dunno, I think she has a point about people who talk about revolution but don't do anything.

To an extent this is always the backfoot position from "communism is corrupting our youth" when talking about Marxist academics and leftists in universities and media. Like, if you grant that it isn't bad to teach Marxism (or another radical political position) because it'll turn people violent, you say "well talking about revolution just stokes resentment and doesn't do anything anyway, it wastes energy that could go into reform" - co-opting a well-meaning centrist reformism but from a position that knows reform isn't going to happen on a large scale. We've seen this a lot with the fall out from the ecological protests over the last few years. A lot of people and institutions preaching incrementalism and reformism while cautioning against pessimism and revolt knew full well that those were already impossibilities.

Talking about revolution is good. Thinking about it and considering it seriously is always fruitful, its not just words and bad feelings. Not just politically but in science and art too. Talk about going faster than light, talk about impossible formal innovations, virtual reality, whatever. Young people gravitate to things like modernism, punk rock, Fuck The Police, gender subversion, raves, futurism, science fiction, radical critique etc. because they know it is right to revolt and because they're young they fear change less. The role of intellectuals with that sort of audience should be to affirm that, I think. Yes.jpg.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Or to put it another way, revolutionary politics recognises that our issues are material - ecology, class struggle, distribution of goods and wealth, the aftermath of colonialism, reproductive labour, etc. Reformism just sees kinks to iron out on the interior of a social system that is already as good as its going to get, and doesn't have a material exterior. It's ultimately more concerned with the meanings we attach to things and the discourses we have than the issues themselves. Needless to say, the latter is a bad choice in an era when problems that are indifferent to human social structures, and don't care about what meaning we attach to them, come crashing through the walls. A forest fire or a deadly virus doesn't care how "complicated" and "messy" our feelings are.

Dunno why I'm defending revolutionary politics in a thread about a youtuber. I feel right silly now.

[Pauline Walnuts]

It's not like Nietzsche had any complaints about being "untimely".

People who like to laugh should read Ecce Homo.

One of the best Julian and Sandy sketches.

It probably is, isn't it?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Me with a time machine: paying Kenneth Williams bitcoins to record Ecce Homo as an audio book.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

"where others would poison, you dismember" in that voice cmon.