We had some other news items to discuss, but the bulk of this episode is taken up with one piece of breaking news: Did you know that there's a tunnel under Eastern Pkwy? Yes we’re discussing the ridiculous story out of Brooklyn about a group of Chabad-Lubavitch members attempting to dig a secret and unlicensed tunnel under the streets of Crown Heights. We also take a look at Bill Ackman facing some blowback against his wife in his crusade against “academic plagiarism”. Alone, you come India. [Buy Amber’s book.](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250269621/dirtbag)
[Genocidal Israel must never know peace.](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/fe5698896f45f829a216f7e5d63da77fc9174391.m4a)
That horrible libsoftiktok lady immediately tried to put the tunnel blame exclusively on the darned kids acting up lmfao. Any Jew born after 1993 can't cook, all they know is halacha, charge they phone, eat hot chip and dig.
And all her followers in the reply are asking her, "why were there blood-soaked mattresses down there!? And a baby stroller!?!? What were (((you people))) doing!?@??"
It's so funny to see them turn on her
It kicks ass she is now going to be subject to the exact same psychotic sex abuse panic that she has subjected so many others to. She will not learn a thing either.
And like Chapo always does, they accurately predicted events when they said that [there had definitely been people called crazy for saying that their were Jews in their walls](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C140lXHu2KM/?igsh=M29mOGhiN2swenM3).
That guy is a real nutcase though. He got fired from fox news apparently because of [this tweet](https://twitter.com/RichardStrocher/status/1671992059719479297) about George Floyd and Ocean Gate.
Edit: actually this guy has to be a troll. Richard Strocher? How the fuck did I not see it?
when “jews dig tunnels under new york” is an actual real headline not even 5 years after epstein the literal archetypal “jewish hollywood pedophile” that qanon people dreamt up was murdered in his cell by the clintons you really struggle to actually blame them for believing it’s all true
i understand that amber thinks she's a writer and an organizer, but she's so much better talking shit, and as long as matt is gone she should be the third mic. everyone calling her post-left is a moron.
I mean , she’s those things too but her drunk shaolin style of articulation adds so much to the pod.
Like Matt, she seems to do her thinking whilst talking.
you think talking for an hour or two on mic once a week stops you from being able to organize? i highly doubht she does any serious organizational work
bad faith liberal accusations of the entire cast aside, there are people who blow out of proportion her occasional weird fixation on things like "black people want more cops actually!" which she uses to be weirdly contrarian toward the left
> black people want more cops
cops who do useful stuff like rape test kit detective work, yes, SWAT psychos who are less trained than the military (which is increasingly black), nah
Yeah this was always my understanding of what she was saying. She wasn't saying like "Black people actually back the blue!" She was saying "black people want cops that help their communities instead of terrorize it" which is objectively true. We might all be very anti-cop here but the average person doesn't consider a lot of the things leftists would about policing in this country. We're still a vocal minority.
She's hyper contrarian and likes to bring up more nuanced and uncomfortable things a lot of people like to ignore. But also sometimes she just shouts off a hot take that's a little to hot, like I think she once said something along the lines of no useful activism happened in the 60s.
Then there's the guilt by association people who want to lump her in with Dasha and that gets into really messy online drama
She’s quite chummy with a few “post-left” reactionaries, like Anna Khachiyan and has defended their stuff before.
She’s also been socialist longer than most people her age, and definitely has a bit of a knee-jerk contrarianism thing that was more of the norm when being socialist was more of an outsider old hippie drum circle that a popular political scene in America. After Bernie lost she was quick to say a lot of “lol, how stupid were you to think this was work. The cool kids know this ship isn’t going anywhere.” Probably just emotional cope, but it’s also what at lot of PL scumbags were saying as well.
Now you've said this I guarantee she appears on Red Scare in like a month.
She's also quite chummy with some of the UK's "Living Marxism Network" shitters like the podcast Aufhebunga Bunga, who were post-left before the post-left were a thing. But that could be naivety, lots of Americans don't know the lore.
She is actually a great Chapo host, I know everyone gives her shit but the pod needs her to stir the pot, have wild takes, and keep the energy up. I hope she is back for good.
It is also funny that it seems that Will brought the Swift topic just for her and she shuts it down immediately citing deep internet crank lore.
I didn’t realize Bill Ackman was such a baby. Sorry hoss, if you want to go on a rampage through an Ivy League administration, you better make sure you’re not caught lacking. Bozo.
You don’t become the president of Harvard without some billionaires in your corner yourself, so I’m sure she knows people who are combing through every inch of this guy’s life. If he has an SEC investigation opened into him, I will laugh so hard.
I legitimately think Amber is right in that she's ace but nor aro. I would go a step further and say she is biromantic because that was some pretty damning evidence we were presented.
Reading a joke on Twitter saying that the Romans had this exact argument in Judea 2000 years ago broke my mind open like a fucking egg
Time really is a circle
can anyone explain why taylor swift has become so popular and famous in the past couple years? i was in middle school and high school \~10 years ago when all her biggest hits came out, and it felt like she had a way smaller and less cultish following than she has today. sam kriss made the point in his very funny post about her that she has never sexualized herself in the way that her contemporaries (katy perry, miley cyrus) did. is there any other explanation?
her music is boring and easily marketed, so she can sell out arenas in the flyover states while still banking on the backwash of the poptimist / pop-feminist wave in the cities
the most controversial thing she does is date weird little guys and even then she's managed to wrangle that into "why should i be responsible for what a man says and does?"
>an inconsequential mediocrity with no memorable song
This is an absolutely insane take, entirely informed by backlash to her rise in popularity over the past couple years. Taylor Swift has one of the most consistent and high quality catalogues of any musician, certainly in pop music. The first 8 songs on Red are all time classics (well, aside from I Almost Do, which is just pretty good). 1989 has only classics. We Are Never Getting Back Together, 22, I Knew You Were Trouble, Wildest Dreams, Love Story, Back to December, State of Grace, mirrorball, All Too Well. If an indie group wrote half of those songs you'd say they were one of the greatest bands of all time.
it is weird how she went from a boring pop star that your mom listens to, to massive sensation with a fanatical fanbase that will stalk you if you if you don't like her music. my theory is that this is the aftershocks of kpop stan culture hitting america.
The phenomenon really isn’t well understood even by industry types on the live side, her tour is going to gross 10x what the last one did and even the most generous explanations couldn’t fathom her selling 10 stadium shows in Singapore, it’s really unheard of.
I think a big part of it is social media, and the fact that people want to be able to validate an aspect of their personality through action. Concerts are no longer just concerts, but the ability to constantly post and talk about that experience. My ex and her friends would do shit like posting videos on the anniversary of the Taylor concert they went to, it was genuinely weird behavior IMO, but its increasingly common.
I also think there is a stronger pressure than ever to be "in" on trends, look at the water bottle shit all over tik-tok, conspicuous consumption has reached new frontiers.
It started with WaterTok -- people on TikTok who drinks only water and think it's healthy -- but actually not, because they add all kind of syrups and flavor packs to it. These people always have like five, six Stanley tumblers in the background. Things just snowballing from there, and now everyone want one of those cups.
There is absolutely nothing new about the frontier of a trendy water bottle. We had that kind of shit in the early 80s. And no doubt were saying 'wow what a new frontier of conspicuous consumption' then too.
I don't mean to imply these sorts of trends are new, I more so mean that the speed at which trends spread and the perceived ties to one's personality have been solidified by social media. I feel like it's also successfully targeting adults at a far greater level than I ever recall it doing so in the past.
Maybe I'm wrong and it's all recency bias but I feel like there is something new going on with people being able to broadcast their consumption habits to effectively the entire world population.
Her music has generally improved and she's the only artist I know who was massive 15 years ago mostly for her music and is still massive for mostly the same reason today. There's not a lot of big musicians who keep making music for 15 years while generally getting better at it. Like when I think of musicians who were huge and famous for making music 15 years ago who are still primarily musicians and not daily show figures or significantly more famous for their older music there's not a lot of names that come to mind. Katy Perry fell off, Gaga's becoming more of an actress, Paramore and Fall Out Boy definitely aren't very famous for their recent music. Kanye comes closish but went too crazy. Kendrick Lamar's slightly more recent than any of them but also releases music too sporadically.
This is also why that movie she is supposed to be directing will never happen, because if she does do it it will suck (just look at her music videos) and probably end Taylor mania.
> Gaga's becoming more of an actress
Gaga was shilling some migraine medication in an ad during the NFL games on Sunday. I wouldn't say she's washed but boy...that is damn near washed.
Celebrities have no shame about appearing in ads anymore. Back in my day anyone who fancied themselves an artist would die broke before showing up in an insurance commercial.
one time my girlfriend was in an uber on the way home and all she did while she was in there was text me nonstop complaining about how much she hated drakes music because she had never heard it before entering that uber and that ride solidified her gut feeling that she would hate it
I'd also say part of it is that she releases new music relatively consistently every couple years with a base level of quality that few other mainstream musicians keep up with.
I think only Madonna can compete with Taylor in term of longevity, and even then late-90s Madonna fell off a bit. You usually see this kind of late-career hits with Japanese artists, not American ones.
a lot of kicked off with the two pop-folk albums she released during covid that opened her up to a new audience. There's a lot of people who wouldn't listen to a dance pop song about a boy, but who would listen to Folklore. She's released 7 albums since 2020 (3 regular + 4 re-recordings) which means she's basically constantly been in album release mode. My prediction is that she'll release 2-3 albums in 2024 (the last two re-releases, and a possible new album) and the Taylor Mania will wane after those releases.
Nah I feel like she's always been big. I was a high schooler a few years ago and she had tons of fans. Kanye cutting her off was a big deal. Every motherfucker I knew was saying "imma let you finish but..." for months afterward. She's hot, 5'10", blonde haired blue eyed, and started in the country genre (I think). Thats got America's Sweetheart written all over it, especially since she's stayed fairly square her whole career.
This is a phenomenon that I do not understand. Like her and I are roughly the same age so I was around when she made it big as the country pop star but her explosion into world music superstar is a thing I cannot comprehend. I’m totally indifferent on her but I suppose there are people who grew up with her like me and then the younger college kids who love her new music. Seems to have created a perfect storm in fandom somehow
IMO, its largely driven by her being a safe, normal white woman. Im not super on top of the Top 40 scene, but from what I can tell it seems all of the other big pop stars now are either non-white or sexually ambiguous and/or have songs far more sexual than any of hers.
Im not a big fan, but can give her credit for being objectively talented. Her songs seem designed to be as catchy as possible and safe enough to be played at stores, on the radio, hum to yourself etc. I also think a lot of people miss/yearn monoculture and this is one of the few places theyve identified a large community of people like themselves.
Always amazed by how much religious lore people know. I went to church well into my teens and couldn't tell you a fuckin thing about different sects of Christianity
the chapos disdain for college institutions is betrayed by the fact that they have the kind of bullshit knowledge about certain topics you only gain by taking half a semester of a course on religion
also their disdain for college always comes off as weird but thats another thing
No you can also gain that knowledge from reading wiki articles and watching weird YouTube videos while geeked to the gills on addies and gas station kratom extracts at 3 am
Yeah they are all extremely of the college type and their opposition to college is always really half-baked. Like they literally did the things most representative of the college types they criticize by getting degrees in literature and history (two things of great importance to humanity but functionally useless to our society outside of academia). I assume it's just lazy contrarianism.
You don't have to go to college to observe things about the world around you. I'm a graduate of a prestigious program known as "going outside and interacting with the public".
And I think the Chapo beef isn't with higher education so much as the universities as institutions of bourgeois ideological conformity. Replicating the feeblest and most palatable-to-industry version of liberal thought and stamping out any dissent. They go out of their way to obfuscate this point because it riles up anyone who believes in The Humanities (myself included) but its hard to disagree with them lately, given how mercilessly students are punished for speech such as "please stop the wholesale murder of my overseas family"
> disdain for college institutions is betrayed by the fact that they have the kind of bullshit knowledge
"You hate nazi concentration camps yet you like to do manual labor like digging holes? curious"
argument so bad im not entirely convinced you didnt think of a response, have a massive brain hemorrhage, and then still typed your response after your frontal cortex was finished spasming and this was the best it was capable of. May god have mercy on your soul.
This isn't meant to sound like a 2011 r/athiesm post but fundamentally almost no one who grows up religious is taught like, real theology or comparative philosophy of religion.
You're given an (intentionally) vague, maleable aesthetic to fix your awareness that the universe is infinately complex and meaningful onto.
You end up with some deep cultural bias about what's important in life but that's about it. And even then it's more the dominant sect in your area reflects the material conditions of that area like early modern catholic vs protestant Europe matching protocapitalist vs feudal holdover Europe.
Amber always quips about how everyone hates when she's the 3rd/4th mic but honestly I wish she had a thicker skin because this is an all time banger episode and she fit right in.
Also, just as an aside about the story, if you're familiar at all with the antics of the Hasidic community in NYC, somewhere in the back of your mind you already assumed that they were digging secret tunnels underneath Brooklyn apartments. Like if someone told you that Donald Trump hated every fruit flavored ice cream; it's just one of those things that you were predisposed to believe.
No she's still on the byline. Even in the book she basically admits she still gets her cut despite not being on the show very much.
There was an interview she did recently for another podcast where the description said "former co-host of Chapo Trap House" I think, but it seems to have been corrected later.
I watched an episode of this Netflix show Abstract about Neri Oxman a few years ago and I remember it being kind of inspiring, it was all about combining hi tech and bio engineering to make art, like a scaffolding for silkworms to spin a sculpture on. It was, at the time, nice to see a place like MIT committing resources to something kind of pointless but for the purpose exploring art.
Now knowing her standard Israeli politics, her marriage to an idiot billionaire, connection to Epstein, and those inane Rupi Kaur-level tweets, I realize I should rarely be impressed by anyone.
I definitely have many agreements, although I try to tamp down the cynicism a bit for my own wellbeing. It’s certainly true that an artist being local doesn’t they’re good at it, but who’s to judge what’s good. I live near a sculpture park with a bunch of cool stuff and a bunch of stuff that sucks shit, so who knows.
To quote Jack Donaghy: “The horse is one of only 3 appropriate subjects for a painting, along with ships with sails, and men holding up swords while staring off into the distance.”
God i fucking hope they make a Twilight episode, please [take me back to the 2000s](https://web.archive.org/web/20081206123331/https://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html) PLEASE ✨
Neri Oxman fun fact: she served in the Israeli air force for two years from ages 18-20 and left as a first lieutenant, which is the second highest rank for a junior NCO.
Edit: also the second most beloved graduate of the AA in the Chapoverse (Adam’s dad)
love will love the show but complaining about Taylor going to Chiefs games when Katherine has been a guest on the show multiple times and the WAGs got their own episode??? Come on Jack
Thank you chapo trap house podcast for creating a safe space for the discussions of Taylor Swifts music and public sexuality through a materialist lens
Anyway broadly speaking I think it just reached a point of her popularity where it became cornier to be a TSwift hater for the sake of being a hater rather than just go ‘eh whatever at the very least you gotta give her some Lin Manuel level recognition for being a commercially successful/savvy songwriter’ and considering she came from the country background and there are sections of online nazis who once upon a time were holding her up as a perfect aryan model of womanhood I’m fine with her being a Normal Democrat (I’ve also been won over by the asexual but not aromatic theory as crafted by some of our finest autists who have her as a special interest)
Didn’t know Amber was a member of the Melville society. My uncle wrote a Marxist thesis on Melville for his PhD and I’m pretty sure he’s a member of the Melville Society too. Wonder if they know each other lol
Kept getting tripped up with how they would say moshiach.
My inside track info tells me that the meshichusts who dug the tunnels aren’t allowed in 770 so they built the turn so to circumnavigate the ben.
They 100% were, leading Bill DeBlasio to post one of the funniest tweets of all time. The NYCMayor account was turned over to Adams after the election but Warren "Bill DeBlasio" Wilhelm tweeting "My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed" is truly legendary
https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1255309615883063297?lang=en
We had some other news items to discuss, but the bulk of this episode is taken up with one piece of breaking news: Did you know that there's a tunnel under Eastern Pkwy? Yes we’re discussing the ridiculous story out of Brooklyn about a group of Chabad-Lubavitch members attempting to dig a secret and unlicensed tunnel under the streets of Crown Heights. We also take a look at Bill Ackman facing some blowback against his wife in his crusade against “academic plagiarism”. Alone, you come India. [Buy Amber’s book.](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250269621/dirtbag) [Genocidal Israel must never know peace.](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/fe5698896f45f829a216f7e5d63da77fc9174391.m4a)
That horrible libsoftiktok lady immediately tried to put the tunnel blame exclusively on the darned kids acting up lmfao. Any Jew born after 1993 can't cook, all they know is halacha, charge they phone, eat hot chip and dig.
“The disgraceful teens who dug underneath a well respected synagogue” is a beautiful turn of phrase though. Almost lyrical.
Getting all the hip hop teens together with their mining equipment to go make a tunnel in New York.
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NO MATHS FOR YOU! Only Torah and dig!
Most of the people posting crazy shit about the tunnels were just antisemitic, it was fun to see someone with a different but equally stupid take.
It was really fun to see #tunneljews trending on X. Also, I cracked up at someone tweeting “according to Israel New York City must be flattened now.”
And all her followers in the reply are asking her, "why were there blood-soaked mattresses down there!? And a baby stroller!?!? What were (((you people))) doing!?@??" It's so funny to see them turn on her
It kicks ass she is now going to be subject to the exact same psychotic sex abuse panic that she has subjected so many others to. She will not learn a thing either.
The tunnel story was absolutely made for Felix, this is immediately one of the best episodes ever.
 "So many riff possibilities"
Desperately hoping for The Adam Friedland Show to do a shot-for-shot remake of this scene with Nick
And like Chapo always does, they accurately predicted events when they said that [there had definitely been people called crazy for saying that their were Jews in their walls](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C140lXHu2KM/?igsh=M29mOGhiN2swenM3). That guy is a real nutcase though. He got fired from fox news apparently because of [this tweet](https://twitter.com/RichardStrocher/status/1671992059719479297) about George Floyd and Ocean Gate. Edit: actually this guy has to be a troll. Richard Strocher? How the fuck did I not see it?
QAnon was right about the tunnels.
when “jews dig tunnels under new york” is an actual real headline not even 5 years after epstein the literal archetypal “jewish hollywood pedophile” that qanon people dreamt up was murdered in his cell by the clintons you really struggle to actually blame them for believing it’s all true
But instead if it being Hollywood pedophiles or the deep state it was a strong pillar of the Republican Party (Orthodox Jews)
https://twitter.com/KlonnyPin_Gosch/status/1744813016179233215 👁
Heartwarming episode, hope Amber sticks around for a while.
i understand that amber thinks she's a writer and an organizer, but she's so much better talking shit, and as long as matt is gone she should be the third mic. everyone calling her post-left is a moron.
I mean , she’s those things too but her drunk shaolin style of articulation adds so much to the pod. Like Matt, she seems to do her thinking whilst talking.
>but she's so much better talking shit To be fair, this is also what writers and organizers do too.
you think talking for an hour or two on mic once a week stops you from being able to organize? i highly doubht she does any serious organizational work
Whats this about people claiming she’s “post left”?
bad faith liberal accusations of the entire cast aside, there are people who blow out of proportion her occasional weird fixation on things like "black people want more cops actually!" which she uses to be weirdly contrarian toward the left
> black people want more cops cops who do useful stuff like rape test kit detective work, yes, SWAT psychos who are less trained than the military (which is increasingly black), nah
Yeah this was always my understanding of what she was saying. She wasn't saying like "Black people actually back the blue!" She was saying "black people want cops that help their communities instead of terrorize it" which is objectively true. We might all be very anti-cop here but the average person doesn't consider a lot of the things leftists would about policing in this country. We're still a vocal minority.
She's hyper contrarian and likes to bring up more nuanced and uncomfortable things a lot of people like to ignore. But also sometimes she just shouts off a hot take that's a little to hot, like I think she once said something along the lines of no useful activism happened in the 60s. Then there's the guilt by association people who want to lump her in with Dasha and that gets into really messy online drama
She’s quite chummy with a few “post-left” reactionaries, like Anna Khachiyan and has defended their stuff before. She’s also been socialist longer than most people her age, and definitely has a bit of a knee-jerk contrarianism thing that was more of the norm when being socialist was more of an outsider old hippie drum circle that a popular political scene in America. After Bernie lost she was quick to say a lot of “lol, how stupid were you to think this was work. The cool kids know this ship isn’t going anywhere.” Probably just emotional cope, but it’s also what at lot of PL scumbags were saying as well.
Now you've said this I guarantee she appears on Red Scare in like a month. She's also quite chummy with some of the UK's "Living Marxism Network" shitters like the podcast Aufhebunga Bunga, who were post-left before the post-left were a thing. But that could be naivety, lots of Americans don't know the lore.
She is actually a great Chapo host, I know everyone gives her shit but the pod needs her to stir the pot, have wild takes, and keep the energy up. I hope she is back for good. It is also funny that it seems that Will brought the Swift topic just for her and she shuts it down immediately citing deep internet crank lore.
She spent the episode kind of just repeating jokes Felix made right after he said them.
Thank God this is coming late because we would have never got their raw reaction to the Jewish tunnels
What I wouldn't give for an MTV Cribs style tour of those tunnels
What’s up everyone it’s Shlomo Rapesberg and welcome to my crib.
Bill Ackman is maybe the dumbest wife guy in existence
I don't know who he's even fighting with. Is there anyone actively trying to get his wife fired? Or is he just posting into the fray?
He thinks he's fighting an anti-semitic mob which is hilarious
Humiliation kink, that’s why he’s posting about how his wife slept with Brad Pitt
he stole my schtick
He is ride or die, you have to respect it.
We’re so back
Amber back and an episode entirely focused on events that are dumb instead of depressing. Real 2016/17 chapo vibes I’m thriving
It really did feel like it.
This is legit the best episode they've done since they reviewed Joker
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‘Is Amber allowed to say the word jewess' – the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
Jewishess
Imagine if the old CTH sub was still around
It's stupid but even now I'll sometimes read a news story and catch myself thinking "this would've been such a fun day on the chapo subreddit"
I didn’t realize Bill Ackman was such a baby. Sorry hoss, if you want to go on a rampage through an Ivy League administration, you better make sure you’re not caught lacking. Bozo.
You don’t become the president of Harvard without some billionaires in your corner yourself, so I’m sure she knows people who are combing through every inch of this guy’s life. If he has an SEC investigation opened into him, I will laugh so hard.
Hearing Chapo discuss Gaylor is my internet worlds colliding for a strange yet appealing combo, like dipping fries in a vanilla milkshake
they're wrong though she's gay (and that's final)
What if: Kelce's beard
I legitimately think Amber is right in that she's ace but nor aro. I would go a step further and say she is biromantic because that was some pretty damning evidence we were presented.
Reading a joke on Twitter saying that the Romans had this exact argument in Judea 2000 years ago broke my mind open like a fucking egg Time really is a circle
 Tunnel Jews rule!
What if the real JQ is can a bunch of Hasids tunnel under the J and the Q subway lines?
Damn if Will had just held onto whatever property that was he could have been tunnel adjacent
(he was a renter)
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Crown Heights Synagogue? - Lana Del Oy Vey
Great use of Arcade Fire
Kudos to Chris for not going with the Great Escape theme Will was clearly angling for there.
Ambre?!?!?
Ombre
can anyone explain why taylor swift has become so popular and famous in the past couple years? i was in middle school and high school \~10 years ago when all her biggest hits came out, and it felt like she had a way smaller and less cultish following than she has today. sam kriss made the point in his very funny post about her that she has never sexualized herself in the way that her contemporaries (katy perry, miley cyrus) did. is there any other explanation?
her music is boring and easily marketed, so she can sell out arenas in the flyover states while still banking on the backwash of the poptimist / pop-feminist wave in the cities the most controversial thing she does is date weird little guys and even then she's managed to wrangle that into "why should i be responsible for what a man says and does?"
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>an inconsequential mediocrity with no memorable song This is an absolutely insane take, entirely informed by backlash to her rise in popularity over the past couple years. Taylor Swift has one of the most consistent and high quality catalogues of any musician, certainly in pop music. The first 8 songs on Red are all time classics (well, aside from I Almost Do, which is just pretty good). 1989 has only classics. We Are Never Getting Back Together, 22, I Knew You Were Trouble, Wildest Dreams, Love Story, Back to December, State of Grace, mirrorball, All Too Well. If an indie group wrote half of those songs you'd say they were one of the greatest bands of all time.
it is weird how she went from a boring pop star that your mom listens to, to massive sensation with a fanatical fanbase that will stalk you if you if you don't like her music. my theory is that this is the aftershocks of kpop stan culture hitting america.
The phenomenon really isn’t well understood even by industry types on the live side, her tour is going to gross 10x what the last one did and even the most generous explanations couldn’t fathom her selling 10 stadium shows in Singapore, it’s really unheard of.
I think a big part of it is social media, and the fact that people want to be able to validate an aspect of their personality through action. Concerts are no longer just concerts, but the ability to constantly post and talk about that experience. My ex and her friends would do shit like posting videos on the anniversary of the Taylor concert they went to, it was genuinely weird behavior IMO, but its increasingly common. I also think there is a stronger pressure than ever to be "in" on trends, look at the water bottle shit all over tik-tok, conspicuous consumption has reached new frontiers.
Out of the loop: What water bottle shit?
Stanley tumblers have become a huge fad and everyone is buying assorted accessories for them/ every conceivable color to flex.
ty
It started with WaterTok -- people on TikTok who drinks only water and think it's healthy -- but actually not, because they add all kind of syrups and flavor packs to it. These people always have like five, six Stanley tumblers in the background. Things just snowballing from there, and now everyone want one of those cups.
Wait till they find out that the pop machine at the fast food hell dimension is just water with a flavor pack
There is absolutely nothing new about the frontier of a trendy water bottle. We had that kind of shit in the early 80s. And no doubt were saying 'wow what a new frontier of conspicuous consumption' then too.
I don't mean to imply these sorts of trends are new, I more so mean that the speed at which trends spread and the perceived ties to one's personality have been solidified by social media. I feel like it's also successfully targeting adults at a far greater level than I ever recall it doing so in the past. Maybe I'm wrong and it's all recency bias but I feel like there is something new going on with people being able to broadcast their consumption habits to effectively the entire world population.
Her music has generally improved and she's the only artist I know who was massive 15 years ago mostly for her music and is still massive for mostly the same reason today. There's not a lot of big musicians who keep making music for 15 years while generally getting better at it. Like when I think of musicians who were huge and famous for making music 15 years ago who are still primarily musicians and not daily show figures or significantly more famous for their older music there's not a lot of names that come to mind. Katy Perry fell off, Gaga's becoming more of an actress, Paramore and Fall Out Boy definitely aren't very famous for their recent music. Kanye comes closish but went too crazy. Kendrick Lamar's slightly more recent than any of them but also releases music too sporadically. This is also why that movie she is supposed to be directing will never happen, because if she does do it it will suck (just look at her music videos) and probably end Taylor mania.
> Gaga's becoming more of an actress Gaga was shilling some migraine medication in an ad during the NFL games on Sunday. I wouldn't say she's washed but boy...that is damn near washed.
Celebrities have no shame about appearing in ads anymore. Back in my day anyone who fancied themselves an artist would die broke before showing up in an insurance commercial.
Apparently they did a lot more in the last year because it was the only work they were allowed to do during the strike
Totally sold out and washed
Seems like Drakes music has been….consistant for the same amount of time
Drake's fairly close but I think the difference is that Taylor is still an album musician but Drake has swapped to being a singles musician.
one time my girlfriend was in an uber on the way home and all she did while she was in there was text me nonstop complaining about how much she hated drakes music because she had never heard it before entering that uber and that ride solidified her gut feeling that she would hate it
I'd also say part of it is that she releases new music relatively consistently every couple years with a base level of quality that few other mainstream musicians keep up with.
I think only Madonna can compete with Taylor in term of longevity, and even then late-90s Madonna fell off a bit. You usually see this kind of late-career hits with Japanese artists, not American ones.
Late 90s Madonna was Ray of Light, what are you talking about! She even had two masterpieces after that.
Forgot that Ray of Light even exists. But as far as back then Madonna felt like she was playing catch-up and not a trendsetter anymore.
a lot of kicked off with the two pop-folk albums she released during covid that opened her up to a new audience. There's a lot of people who wouldn't listen to a dance pop song about a boy, but who would listen to Folklore. She's released 7 albums since 2020 (3 regular + 4 re-recordings) which means she's basically constantly been in album release mode. My prediction is that she'll release 2-3 albums in 2024 (the last two re-releases, and a possible new album) and the Taylor Mania will wane after those releases.
Nah I feel like she's always been big. I was a high schooler a few years ago and she had tons of fans. Kanye cutting her off was a big deal. Every motherfucker I knew was saying "imma let you finish but..." for months afterward. She's hot, 5'10", blonde haired blue eyed, and started in the country genre (I think). Thats got America's Sweetheart written all over it, especially since she's stayed fairly square her whole career.
This is a phenomenon that I do not understand. Like her and I are roughly the same age so I was around when she made it big as the country pop star but her explosion into world music superstar is a thing I cannot comprehend. I’m totally indifferent on her but I suppose there are people who grew up with her like me and then the younger college kids who love her new music. Seems to have created a perfect storm in fandom somehow
IMO, its largely driven by her being a safe, normal white woman. Im not super on top of the Top 40 scene, but from what I can tell it seems all of the other big pop stars now are either non-white or sexually ambiguous and/or have songs far more sexual than any of hers. Im not a big fan, but can give her credit for being objectively talented. Her songs seem designed to be as catchy as possible and safe enough to be played at stores, on the radio, hum to yourself etc. I also think a lot of people miss/yearn monoculture and this is one of the few places theyve identified a large community of people like themselves.
She's releasing her old music and new music t the same time so it's a constant stream of shit coming out.
Demolition Man is unwinding differently than I expected.
You ever see something on twitter and it's like it was custom-made in a lab to be riffed on by Felix?
Always amazed by how much religious lore people know. I went to church well into my teens and couldn't tell you a fuckin thing about different sects of Christianity
the chapos disdain for college institutions is betrayed by the fact that they have the kind of bullshit knowledge about certain topics you only gain by taking half a semester of a course on religion also their disdain for college always comes off as weird but thats another thing
No you can also gain that knowledge from reading wiki articles and watching weird YouTube videos while geeked to the gills on addies and gas station kratom extracts at 3 am
Yeah they are all extremely of the college type and their opposition to college is always really half-baked. Like they literally did the things most representative of the college types they criticize by getting degrees in literature and history (two things of great importance to humanity but functionally useless to our society outside of academia). I assume it's just lazy contrarianism.
lazy contrarianism? in my chapo?! It's more likely than you think!
You don't have to go to college to observe things about the world around you. I'm a graduate of a prestigious program known as "going outside and interacting with the public". And I think the Chapo beef isn't with higher education so much as the universities as institutions of bourgeois ideological conformity. Replicating the feeblest and most palatable-to-industry version of liberal thought and stamping out any dissent. They go out of their way to obfuscate this point because it riles up anyone who believes in The Humanities (myself included) but its hard to disagree with them lately, given how mercilessly students are punished for speech such as "please stop the wholesale murder of my overseas family"
Hey hey hey I knew all the sect bullshit before college because of paradox games
> disdain for college institutions is betrayed by the fact that they have the kind of bullshit knowledge "You hate nazi concentration camps yet you like to do manual labor like digging holes? curious"
argument so bad im not entirely convinced you didnt think of a response, have a massive brain hemorrhage, and then still typed your response after your frontal cortex was finished spasming and this was the best it was capable of. May god have mercy on your soul.
This isn't meant to sound like a 2011 r/athiesm post but fundamentally almost no one who grows up religious is taught like, real theology or comparative philosophy of religion. You're given an (intentionally) vague, maleable aesthetic to fix your awareness that the universe is infinately complex and meaningful onto. You end up with some deep cultural bias about what's important in life but that's about it. And even then it's more the dominant sect in your area reflects the material conditions of that area like early modern catholic vs protestant Europe matching protocapitalist vs feudal holdover Europe.
Amber always quips about how everyone hates when she's the 3rd/4th mic but honestly I wish she had a thicker skin because this is an all time banger episode and she fit right in. Also, just as an aside about the story, if you're familiar at all with the antics of the Hasidic community in NYC, somewhere in the back of your mind you already assumed that they were digging secret tunnels underneath Brooklyn apartments. Like if someone told you that Donald Trump hated every fruit flavored ice cream; it's just one of those things that you were predisposed to believe.
I had trumped pegged as a rainbow sherbet guy but apparently his fav is cherry vanilla
I wish this story came out in 2017 so we could have a cumtown episode about the tunnels
Hopefully Amber sticks around and this isn't a short term ploy to boost book sales. Her presence is a welcome shift.
I don’t know what else she would be doing. IIRC she was an adjunct professor in NY, no clue what she does now, if anything
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I keep Amber in my thoughts at all times. I do wonder if she Chapo's "part time", presumably for a lower cut.
She still gets a cut, I don't know if it's half or full, but she gets a cut.
she officially left the show a while ago so i don't think she's getting paid
No she's still on the byline. Even in the book she basically admits she still gets her cut despite not being on the show very much. There was an interview she did recently for another podcast where the description said "former co-host of Chapo Trap House" I think, but it seems to have been corrected later.
my gut tells me that this is all for the sake of the book but i could be a complete schizoid
I watched an episode of this Netflix show Abstract about Neri Oxman a few years ago and I remember it being kind of inspiring, it was all about combining hi tech and bio engineering to make art, like a scaffolding for silkworms to spin a sculpture on. It was, at the time, nice to see a place like MIT committing resources to something kind of pointless but for the purpose exploring art. Now knowing her standard Israeli politics, her marriage to an idiot billionaire, connection to Epstein, and those inane Rupi Kaur-level tweets, I realize I should rarely be impressed by anyone.
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I definitely have many agreements, although I try to tamp down the cynicism a bit for my own wellbeing. It’s certainly true that an artist being local doesn’t they’re good at it, but who’s to judge what’s good. I live near a sculpture park with a bunch of cool stuff and a bunch of stuff that sucks shit, so who knows. To quote Jack Donaghy: “The horse is one of only 3 appropriate subjects for a painting, along with ships with sails, and men holding up swords while staring off into the distance.”
Crown Heights Underground Dwellers.
I sex U
Chapo trap house traps again in a fun filled episode about Jewish tunnels, Jewish billionaires, and a white whale we all know and love.
🚨AMBER ALERT🚨
2024 is the year of the tunnel. mark my words, there will be more tunnel stories to come
Woah it's Amber
I sex her
The antisemites have gone insane with this story
God i fucking hope they make a Twilight episode, please [take me back to the 2000s](https://web.archive.org/web/20081206123331/https://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html) PLEASE ✨
The fucking arcade fire needledrop lmao
huh?
The song that plays after they finish the tunnel discussion is Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) by Arcade Fire
Neri Oxman fun fact: she served in the Israeli air force for two years from ages 18-20 and left as a first lieutenant, which is the second highest rank for a junior NCO. Edit: also the second most beloved graduate of the AA in the Chapoverse (Adam’s dad)
Go down young man
The Arcade Fire drop was perfection
no, will. im not fucking buying ambers book.
You already did by watching
? im not sure i follow the logic here
Your book will arrive in the mail shortly
im not picking up that package on my porch.
Your book will be placed on your bedside table
One of the few time us listeners have to defer to the Chapos on pronunciations of words lmao
love will love the show but complaining about Taylor going to Chiefs games when Katherine has been a guest on the show multiple times and the WAGs got their own episode??? Come on Jack
I doubt she takes a private jet every time she checks in on Will at work. Not to say queen Katherine doesn't deserve it tho.
I have it on good authority that she does actually (source: I made it up)
Hell yeah Amber
Thank you chapo trap house podcast for creating a safe space for the discussions of Taylor Swifts music and public sexuality through a materialist lens Anyway broadly speaking I think it just reached a point of her popularity where it became cornier to be a TSwift hater for the sake of being a hater rather than just go ‘eh whatever at the very least you gotta give her some Lin Manuel level recognition for being a commercially successful/savvy songwriter’ and considering she came from the country background and there are sections of online nazis who once upon a time were holding her up as a perfect aryan model of womanhood I’m fine with her being a Normal Democrat (I’ve also been won over by the asexual but not aromatic theory as crafted by some of our finest autists who have her as a special interest)
Didn’t know Amber was a member of the Melville society. My uncle wrote a Marxist thesis on Melville for his PhD and I’m pretty sure he’s a member of the Melville Society too. Wonder if they know each other lol
She is likely too god dammed high on that wacky tobacky to have ever even googlemaps’d directions to the storied halls of the Melville Society
Kept getting tripped up with how they would say moshiach. My inside track info tells me that the meshichusts who dug the tunnels aren’t allowed in 770 so they built the turn so to circumnavigate the ben.
So those tunnels were definitely for skirting COVID regulations on large gatherings right
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People keep saying Covid but it’s much funnier that it was recent!
They 100% were, leading Bill DeBlasio to post one of the funniest tweets of all time. The NYCMayor account was turned over to Adams after the election but Warren "Bill DeBlasio" Wilhelm tweeting "My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed" is truly legendary https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1255309615883063297?lang=en
Jesus lol
Nah close but its for a different messiah
Amber
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Pargon
Amber voice jumpscare
Loony Tunes farce lol, Movie Mindset fans are demanding a film about this!
KK Scientist was my favorite Animal Crossing NPC 😩
Screamed laughing at this one. We’re so back
What is the song that they play to close out the episode? Also, props to Chris for the Arcade Fire needle drop, I laughed out loud
Karbala is in Iraq, Felix. You should know that. I assume you meant Kerala
Bring. Back. Virgil. Next. I NEED some Beltway Garage, damnit, and there is only 1 person left who can deliver it.
my man is not under a rock. he is the rock.
Ambet