Chapotraphouse

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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 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

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

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"

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?

I was in the gamergate muck and on the kia subreddit back in 2014, but I had been a leftist for a while then. I built some credibility in the community when it still had the thinnest veneer of being apolitical (lol) and did my best to keep people from falling into the obvious right wing reactionary pipeline. That was a losing proposition so eventually I pulled out.

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.

I have to admit the first time I watched a Jordan Lobster Peterson video around 2015 I found it funny how he made left wing liberals mad although I disliked his pseudoscience and anticommunism from the start.

What shook me out of my alt-right funk was poverty, rehab, and mental health issues, quickly made me realize that those people I had been shitting on? They were my friends not my enemies.

Let's seeee, I'm from a very conservative country, I was raised to be polite but that didn't mean not being racist or everythingphobic lol , kids pick up all kinds of brainworms from their environment, I had a lot of free time and I was a teenager, I loved gaming and having stuff to watch in the background on my phone, already a recipe for disaster.

Eventually I found all these conservative sloptubers who compalined about this and that being woke in gaming or in movies or comic books, and since I was already predisposed to that garbage I just went "yeahh that makes sense" I was watching all kinds of hogs like the Critical Drinker, a fucking loser who roleplays as a jaded alcoholic even though I bet a drop of rakia would instantly kill him, E;R, an actual staright up self-admitted nazi, other hogs who I don't remember the names of, basically none of them were good.

I was never into the more "presentable" talking heads like the Ben Shapiros and such (I thought he was a boring smarmy gay loser or something along those lines lol)

I never had a label for myself, I believed in a random mix or lib shit and unhinged nazi shit (a lot like the average American I guess) again I was a teenager and all that edgy garbage was very appealing to me (think old Filthy Frank and Idubbbz, also two massive losers), it was like a secret club of online dorks who weren't "afraid to offend anyone" you can clearly see why that would be appealing to loners with too much free time.

Oh and one more thing, there was never anyone to tell me no, be it family members, people irl (who were all extremely conservative and would easily agree with everything had I shared my thoughts) or my online friends at the time, who were a random mix of mostly Americans, all of them some shade of "apolitical" people or just straight up liberals

How did I get out? I'm not too sure, I think one day I was just hearing the same rediculous arguments on repeat, over and over again, I guess what was my limit and I snapped, I was genuinely too angry at these sloptubers and such for being too terminally online losers (even tho I was also one lol ) so I decided to look around for other slop to consume, this is where the libbed up Breadtubers came in, they were the other side of the coin, I was checking their dedicated subreddits and hearing ahh they are so good and smart, you GOTTA check this and that person out! (🚩)

Then I watched a fuckton of the "classic Breadtubers", I liked how they dunked on the conservatives, but when it came to their actual politics I was rubbed the wrong way, things just weren't clicking, I remember watching Contrapoints a lot (🚩🚩🚩) and if you know anything about what she's done throughout the years you'd understand why I was again feeling tired and angry (one example, the disgusting transphobic comments she made about another trans woman who was being recorded after yelling at a cashier for being misgendered, that was from the Cringe video)

I didn't want to believe that this was it, there had to be something more out there, and well in time after searching here and there I stumbled upon actual leftist spaces, took a bit to deprogram myself from both the hog and lib strains of

So who is to blame? Well I think that sadly a lot of things aligned in just the right way and I got caught up in the pipeline, my upbringing, the lack of different alternatives at a first glance, the YT algo pushing that garbage so much, nobody telling me no, and honestly I blamed myself a lot as well, but I'm bit happy with where I am now, took a while but I try when I can to nudge things in the right way by talking to people when I find it appropriate (be it online or rarely irl when I get the chance) I don't want to see young people repeating my mistakes, guarding against brainworms seems like a neverending process lol.

I guess the moral of the story is to never get too comfy and to keep on trying to improve yourself and learn new things.

I grew up in middle of nowhere white-ass suburbia and went to an engineering college, so for the bulk of my college career I was pretty stuck in that pipeline. That's when I discovered r*ddit, /r/atheism, and all the *InAction subs and it was all downhill from there for that first year and a half.

By late 2012 I was falling more into the liberal camp, still holding on to pretty regressive views especially about gender and such, but progress was being made, even if I wasn't aware of it. The Bernie camp in 2016 started moving me left for real, and a nasty breakup in 2017 (entirely my fault) was a wake-up call that I'd been a toxic piece of shit for all those years.

Fast forward to 2025 and now I'm a Marxist lmao. Didn't really do anything in particular to break out of it, just grew out of my 20's I guess.

I came out of the Bush years as a liberal atheist skeptic teen and voted for Obama in 2008. Obama disappointed by 2012 and the libertarian stuff seemed kind of appealing. After all I was a very rational, logical person and didn't understand why people in charge didn't want to do the rational, logical thing. By 2014 I realized the libertarian thing was another dead-end and went back towards something more liberal. Gamergate was not appealing at all. I hated all that shit being spammed on 4chan and reddit. It always came off as sexist and manufactured. I did struggle with the ideas about privilege but not enough to join that clown show. By 2015 I was with Bernie. By 2016 I was jaded. My material conditions degraded enough to make me very angry. Luckily it was also around the time there was plenty of socialist rhetoric in the right places. I simply got lucky in the internet social media paremovedo machine. I bounced off the right pegs to place me in a position where I wanted change and socialism could provide it.

Then I kept finding footholds on bits of theory and history, slowly learning more and more. Podcasts helped out with some of that. Thanks to Trump enough shit kept happening to provide ample examples of why capitalism and liberalism is failing. Then COVID broke everything and that was it.

I think watching the internet be taken over by social media companies and then this engagement through outrage machine being built is kind of like watching industrialization take over the world. One minute you're an artisan in 2003, in IRC, in AIM, on a php forum. The next you're on the street outside of the "this totally real issue that's really important and everyone should pay attention to because it's why your life sucks, not us" factory. In retrospect it's so obvious what all of it was for, even going back to 2008 and Ron Paul's meme machine. The game was rigged from the beginning.

as an european gamer in my late teens dealing with depression/burnout it was actually easy probably because it felt like a distraction. European being relevant to due this being sprung forth from Murican culture and I did not grow up on that wild shit, in the 00s the only social issues I spoke to about Americans online was stuff like gay marriage[In the netherlands it was legalized in 2002, so it always felt like common sense to me].

Ofcourse. due to this stuff I did end up learning a lot more about the history of these sort of issues both worldwide and the american kind and how the US was more racist than I though it was... Final nail was when Trump started being defended. Like what the fuck was I even thinking?

I'm really glad that I, in an attempt to internalize my own masking and deny any feelings of queerness or gender dysphoria by trying my hardest to "be normal", renounced most of those creators and their adjacent spaces because it was related to "geek culture". It also helps that I was raised by my mother, who, despite her many faults, taught me to always be compassionate and empathetic to other people. I was radicalized as a leftist in my early teens, too, so even when I thought I had "outgrown" leftism in my 20s, I still navigated the world with compassion and a perspective shaped by recognizing and acknowledging injustice.

Also, I had read some philosophy and psychoanalysis in high school and college, so when I read JP's drivel it just seemed at the same time self-obvious and nonsensical, so i never took him seriously.

I never did fall into it but I had a white gay friend who did, mostly out of internalized homophobia I assume and he ended up being very racist and transphobic, he seems to have calmed down now as an adult but still a conservative for sure, we barely see eachother anymore. His bf seems to share his views apparently.

I was definitely in the pipeline, being the prime demographic for this type of stuff as a socially awkward teenager in the suburbs and I ended up in some pretty awful online circles. There's a lot of different factors that all combined to get me out. One thing was the fact that I'm not white so I had to have this conversation with myself where I realized "Why the hell am I as a non-white person defending white people so hard?" Also, once I realized that these channels and sites were part of an entire industry that profits off of making people like me mad about things that don't really happen in real life, dismissing this whole thing as slop became a lot easier.

I like to joke that being an Undertale fan as a teen saved me from completely going down the pipeline but honestly it's kinda true. I think deep down, I was uncomfortable with the cruelty and the layers and layers of irony that people like Leafy covered their content in - I realized that punching down actually didn't make me feel that good and that browsing KiwiFarms always left me feeling really gross about what I had just spent the last hour of my life doing - and the games taught me that it's ok to be genuine and kind. I didn't really internalize those messages until a few years later, but having them in my mind helped.

Also I stopped being 16 and learned how the world actually works

I remember being subscribed to sargon of akkad for a little bit. Maybe I thought he was doing history videos because of his name? I was a hardcore liberal by the start of gamergate, and didn't know very much about the world as I was basically a child. I eventually realized his videos went against my politics and stopped watching. There was an intermediate phase where I watched 'breadtube'. By 2020 I was deep into the chapo/MR/TMBS/hasan ecosystem. Shortly after my views solidified into what they are today (correct about everything and grounded in reality of course)

Why is James Rolfe there?

Does anyone remember some guy that went by I think Louis the 8th or something with a picture of I'm assuming Louis The 8th (or some European ruler with long black hair) with those memey black pixel art sunglasses over the PFP's eyes? He was on YouTube around 2014-2015 I think, but he was pretty explicitly a Bernie bro/SocDem/welfare statist politics and that's the only guy I sorta' fell for because he was like "I'm actually a leftist and I hate game journalists, etc." Curious if that guy ever grew to ee how fucking stupid GG was or if he just became a bigger (social) fascist.

Edit: Might have been Louis XIV.

honestly 2015 is when "sjw" fell out of style and the bastardization of woke began.

The library.

Too old for that shit

i was a kid and was just starting to understand english, and fell through the pewdiepie pipeline. i don't think i sincerely believed anything it was just entertainment for me, but it was poisoning the assumptions i would hold about the world. anyway i stopped when i got recommended a video from paul joseph watson talking about 'no-go' zones in sweden and how filthy muslims are. safe to say after realising these guys are racist as fuck and how smug and pathetic they are i stopped following them.

i cannot say i was radicalised, but i was definitely passively consuming their bullshit narratives. i think the important factors for deciding to cut them off for my adolescent brain was that a. i realized how uncool and spiteful they are and b. i was part of the group they hated.

I guess it helped in my case that I found most if not all of the people in the image very repulsive when looking them up and in most cases, racists so I never really had interests in what they had to shit out orally. I was also in my mid 20s busy with grad school when anti-SJW became big online so I didn't need other distractions from those overpaid shitbags.

Yeah, this is bringing back memories. They got me a little bit, but I kind of had an out. The OG reddit atheists and the fact many online chuds just had the same opinions as the bottom 10% of any given school grade already soured me on conservatism. Plus, I always thought Americanism was “ugly” after being saturated in anime aesthetics like the weeb trash I am. Thanks anime for teaching me the world outside the US borders is a pretty great place.

I was duped about some people coming after me for revenge for a bit but nothing too serious upon realizing many of these “anti-SJWs” are committing the very crimes they say SJWs want revenge for. All it took was them flat out admitting they’re republicans and I saw them for the seppo yanks they were and noped out.

Representation matters, diverse media as a kid helped a lot personally and they wrote Freiza to be perfectly punchable so I never wanted to be like that Barney-went-to-Hot-Topic-looking-ass scumbag.

I read the Fountainhead some time last century before the Internet was widespread and, being a stupid white kid, picked up some annoying libertarian shit on account of it being the only real social critique I had ever been exposed to. It didn't take long before encounters with the Real World kicked my ass and made me realize that it was bullshit, however.

I grew up before that. I grew up in a conservative church household. That was more easy to fall off the pipeline. I have a touch of tisim so the programing simply failed to take. I don't think it is through any virtue of mine. Just like rascism is obviously wrong you know? In that the this new conservative movement exists, I dunno if I would have naturally fallen out as easily. It has much more market tested hooks. Some early anti-sjws were scientists and queer people. So my brian would have had to develop alot more before I feel out of it.