It is because she knows that she has dodged the argument, but she has always lived to argue, and it is mentally devastating to her to be in the wrong, no matter how fringe the opinion is. I remember how she was pre-transition, back in the edgy atheist days, and she could argue circles around the theists, and had an unending appetite for debate with them and their cohort, no matter how obscure they were, particularly young earth creationists. And she got to be correct and rhetorically dominate them because, tbf they are literally the lowest rung on the totem pole in terms of American hegemony.

However, she cannot do the same to the far left, and it has been absolutely devastating to her mentally, as far as I can tell. We are a tiny minority with fringe beliefs, but we can argue absolute circles around her and she believes she is right, is convinced she is right, but cannot prove she is right. And that makes her the Young Earth Creationist. So she can only take refuge in satire, which is the loser's defense.

Edit: Also, it not less than 1%, it is closer to like 1.5% maybe 2%.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 24 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This feels deeply correct to me.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 20 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I will say it probably shouldn't, but I watched Contrapoints for an extremely long time, though she was never a favorite of mine. Extremely influential, sure, but I always thought she kinda reminincent of the BrowsHeldHigh guy or Hbomberguy, just with a more female affectation, but it was all very similar content at a similar time.

I was always more of a fan of the ThatGuyWithTheGlasses content growing up, which is kinda embarrassing to say now, but I still think they were doing the large amounts of theatre in your criticism thing at a way higher level early on in the online space. It was fun stuff, and it was cool to see Contra put on that level of performance, but that doesn't mean I found her actual insights on the nature of the political economy to be all that, well, insightful. Her trans stuff was extremely influential to introducing me to the trans space, and I cannot say she hasn't been extremely influenctial there. For better or for worse lol.

[–] Sneakytrickyyy@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It was mainly for the worse, introducing a young and impressionable audiance the the wonders of transmedicalism is not, like people say, cool.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago

I am happy that I never really picked up on those particular flavors, just that I always noticed that she had infinite sympathy and patience for conservatives and their literature, but none for the left, and her personal tweets were always extremely distasteful.

[–] Sneakytrickyyy@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

Dead on, you put it so well

[–] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Edit: Also, it not less than 1%, it is closer to like 1.5% maybe 2%.

Do you have a source for that number or is it just a guess? Because I pulled that number out of my ass I'll be honest

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's a guess based on the amount of people that I have talked to and general protest numbers/numbers that leftist videos and things tend to do, as well as the general recent polling around democratic socialists, that, even when it is positive to them, tends to skew everyone further to the right than they actually are politically because leftist tendencies are not even really recognized.

I'm not going to pretend that it is an ideologically coherent 1.5 to 2%, nor organized, but there are so many people independently coming to these kinds of conclusions because the evidence simply leads them there, it is just that there is extremely little that is actionable that they can do with that information. There are a lot of people out there waiting for a serious leftist direction, but I have no idea how exactly that forms into a coherent and cohesive political movement. But like, 6 million people across the U.S. yeah, absolutely. It is probably more than it has ever been historically, it is just paradoxically also politically weaker than it has ever been.