Top Tens of 2017: #3s

Here are the third best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017:

#3 Podcast: Friends at the Table

I'm using Friends at the Table, here, in the broadest sense. 2017 has been a huge year for this scrappy, emotional, radio drama of an actual play podcast. The main feed is more or less the same as it has been since it started in 2014; Austin Walker, host and GM, tells collaborative stories with two groups of players. The year began with a holiday special set in Marielda, a town that was set up in the previous partial season, Marielda. Then there was the remainder of Winter in Hieron, the third season and a direct sequel to the show's first season, Autumn in Hieron. Once that wrapped up in late June, they have moved on to Twilight Mirage, a season set in the same world as the second (COUNTER/Weight) but far in the future. I establish all this to say that, like COUNTER/Weight, I'm not completely sold on Twilight Mirage just yet. I think both seasons have really fantastic premises, and do interesting work, but there's something that just doesn't quite click.

The reason I say in the broadest sense is because this year, they opened a Patreon and spun up a few new podcasts. A $5 pledge gives you access to:

• Bluff City: A monthly game using different roleplaying systems, all set in a shared city.
• Tips At The Table: A write-in heavy advice podcast responding to reader questions about playing or GMing tabletop roleplaying games.
• Live At The Table: A monthly one-shot with a different system every time, and no shared theme.
• The Clapcast: A short monthly outtakes podcast.

All of which are interesting in their own ways. Tips at the Table is my personal favorite, as an always simultaneously erstwhile & aspiring GM. Not just because it exists, but because the discussions often function as ways of saying: enjoy yourself and make hard decisions if you have to, and here is how that might happen. I'm also in love with Bluff City as a concept and often enjoy it quite a bit in practice, though I haven't dedicated enough mental energy to it to put it up there with, say, the Hieron seasons so far.

All of these nitpicks and particularities aside, listening to this group of people play tabletop roleplaying games is an edifying and instructive and exciting experience more often than not. Everything from the tiny, world-changing off the cuff decisions that players make to the exciting rules uses that Walker both makes and sells work for me.

#3 Film: A Taxi Driver

Another example of the political cinema coming from South Korea, this movie focuses on a titular taxi driver (Kong Sang-Ho) who, down on his luck, tricks his way into a fare for a German journalist attempting to bypass a blockade and document the Gwangju Uprising as it happens. He succeeds and, despite his opposition to any politics of resistance, becomes something of a minor hero among the students opposing - by direct action and insurrection - an incoming regime.

I don't know that I have a ton to say beyond that. It is the kind of movie that has compelling shots but not anything that necessarily lingers or changes your perception of cinema. It is slightly overlong, and the character development is often telegraphed in a way that lessens its impact. Bits and pieces border on emotionally manipulative, and others simply fall flat. But it's also a compelling document about insurrection, and a story that fundamentally revolves around the transformative politics of taking and being in space. For those reasons alone I adored it politically more than any other film this year, and that means a lot to me, so here it is.

#3 Album: Forgotten Gears by RoughSketch

I wish I had heard this album earlier, because while there is no way it could have taken the number one spot, it's likely that with some time I'll be able to articulate my feelings on it with more clarity. It's been a few years since I got super into J-Core for a minute, and RoughSketch's "Funky Neet (side note: I just got the NEET pun/relationship to lyrics like "no money, no job, worker is loser" and "I am parasite," nice) is still in many ways the song that I think best encapsulates what I loved about it at the time. The bulk of Forgotten Gears doesn't quite do the same thing as that song does - it is much more interested in building out little music-box phrases interpolated by the crunchy fucked drums than using those kicks around weird spinny truncated synths and anti-work lyrics - but it does still kick fucking ass.

#3 TV Show: Lady Dynamite (season 2)

Maria Bamford had a hell of a year. Old Baby, her standup special for Netflix, is almost certainly her best, is one of the best of the year (in a year where I watched a surprising amount of standup specials), and might well be an all timer. The second season of Lady Dynamite also aired and, despite it not being at all what I had hoped from the show initially, it turned out to be much better than I anticipated, and even than the first season.

There are missteps, of course. This season introduces a flash-forward storyline, and its first occurrence might have been the single funniest moment on television in 2017. Unfortunately that aspect also tends to contain the aspects of the show that fall flat most often.

#3 Videogame: Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

You can probably look to just about any games site to find out what is interesting about Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. It's a game where you cause the sparks that might set the revolution in a Nazi-occupied America. It handles tone-transitions in a way that games simply don't anymore. It has weird difficulty spikes, even for someone who plays a lot of games, that are kind of a bummer. It is, in other words, good in a way that games aren't supposed to be, with exactly the flaws that always make them insular.

If there's a thing to take away, though, it's that this game is targeted at Gamers. Not just in the sense that it was developed and marketed in such a way as to exclusively appeal to them; that would make it no more than most of this list. It is also targeted at gamers, in the sense that people who base their identity on this particular type of consumption are exactly the sort of people who will mindlessly struggle through dull challenge in order to prove themselves adept at their craft. The difference, and I promise that this is a big one, is that this game tells the opposite story. Instead of that grinding mediocrity being praised as hypercompetence, as it is everywhere else, The New Colossus recognizes it as part of a larger whole, which it then goes on to thematize and write around in a brilliant way.

B.J. Blaskowicz' father is one of the most important characters in videogames for this reason: shown at the top of the game as abusive, prone to domestic violence, racism and antisemitism, and being incompetent at business in a way that isn't flashy, he is ultimately a villain because these politics he holds allow him a comfortable mediocrity that only requires him to sell out his wife and child to the Nazi party. He is the image of mediocrity that gets sold as competence by games, and he is also a fucking Nazi.

Top Tens of 2017: #6s

Here are the sixth best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017 (there's spoilers):

#6 Podcast: The Giant Beastcast

There was a period, in late 2016, when I nearly gave up on The Beastcast. It was after Austin Walker had left, which was why I had started listening to begin with. They (Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, and Jeff Bakalar) had fallen into a rut of actually exclusively discussing the news and new releases of videogames. It was informative, and also deeply uninteresting. The joke I made at the time was that I would wait for Dan Ryckert to join, because I was interested in how he would switch up that dynamic. This year, he did join and did what I hoped, and they also exceeded my expectations.

Ryckert's gimmick is that he's someone who is ignorant of a lot, and is also more than happy to admit that and ask questions to attempt to rectify it. A lot of people find it grating, and I can too - especially when it seems like he's asking in bad faith. But when it does work, it does exactly the thing that was boring me at the end of the previous year: it derails everyone from acting like they are simply experts on the topic at hand, and starts them down a path that pushes them into an honest attempt to explain what they are actually trying to say.

Later in the year they also added Abby Russell, a new hire who has an improv background that has lead to being more explicitly playful in the discussions, which is surprisingly absent from most podcasts about, well, games. Plus she has become an advocate for smaller games like Dream Daddy and LOCALHOST, which is something the whole Giant Bomb team has needed for a while.

In a lot of ways, The Giant Beastcast is just my favorite example of the regular-ass videogame podcast format, which is something I spend a lot of time listening to. I'd probably appreciate it less without the sister podcast, The Giant Bombcast, which is much more interested in taking detours through games history, emulation updates, and other more niche interests that contextualize the current issues and releases. But choosing one, I have to go with the Beastcast for just having a cool year.

#6 Film: Anarchist from Colony

There's something about the way that South Korean cinema, in the last couple years at least, has been unrepentantly political that has had me incredibly excited. This comes, of course, with my acknowledgment that it is a cinema I am only familiar with by the accident of biography; that it is accessible to me only through particular channels of distribution that began just over a decade ago with Netflix (the DVD era); that it relies heavily on the whims and organization of translators both professional and amateur (primarily the former, though there does seem to be some of the latter lately, which is interesting in its own right); that also relies on my own parsing of that work to find those particular moments I am interested in. All of which could only precede a sweeping statement: between films like Dongju: Portrait of a Poet (by the same director) & Spirits' Homecoming from last year & this & A Taxi Driver from this, there seems to be a serious political reckoning occurring with the socialist past in Korea, at least if you assume the cinema at least subconsciously reflects the desire/ego of the country. I remain skeptical, no matter my Lacanian tendencies.

The reckoning itself I will get to later in these lists. What fascinates and infuriates me about this movie in particular is the way it seems perfectly positioned to be a reckoning through the first half or so, and the suddenly and thoroughly becomes what I can only describe as an apology. That is: the first half of the film is about a small group of Korean anarchists in Tokyo. They beat the shit out of reporters they don't like, plot to buy a bomb, and write literature. They're great. They're also joined by a Japanese woman who self-identifies as a nihilist, played by Choi Hee-seo incredibly. If there were acting awards, she should probably win one of them. This is the bulk of the film up until the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 hits, and a member of the government decides to rile up anti-Korean sentiment in Tokyo.

At this point, Park Yeol (the main character) and Kaneko Fumiko (Choi) are thrown in jail, with the government deciding to prosecute Park for treason in order to cover up the massacre of Koreans by Japanese nationalists in the aftermath of the earthquake, in part due to their being scapegoated. The rest of the film is then basically a courtroom drama, intermingled with shots of prison and a love affair. It is, in this way I suppose, realistic; all the kinetic energy of activism and revolutionary fervor is channeled by the state into the justice system in order to destroy lives, demotivate comrades, and intimidate or pacify the public. The problem is that watching the movie actually feels that way to the viewer as well, after a point.

#6 Album: Freedom Highway by Rhiannon Giddens

Heavily gospel-influenced, wheels around through the black history of the USA from slavery to police murder. It's an album that demands to be listened to through multiple times, and rewards doing just that. Plus, the banjo playing is just incredible. Some really gorgeous lines just sneak in or are highlighted here and there, as though it just makes sense that that instrument should sound like the prettiest one in the world.

#6 TV Show: The Good Place (season 2)

I was pretty skeptical of this show going into it, and I still am not entirely sold on the humor. Which is, I think, the real reason people like this. But I'm that dork that is mostly invested in the worldbuilding.

Because of that, I think the first half of the second season (second half to be released in 2018) is a pretty phenomenal half a season of a show. It does a good job of pivoting from the plot twist at the end of the first season (they're in hell, not heaven) to prioritize not that twist, but the way it can be used to develop the characters. Especially for Janet, the Siri figure who becomes maybe the best character in the show to this point.

#6 Videogame: Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is a fucking complicated mess that I spent a ton of time with and enjoyed nearly all of. It's a big systemsy clusterfuck, an enjoyable action game, and a parable about fascist tendencies that is definitely not told in the smartest way imaginable. It's also a weird patient zero in the political debate around lootboxes that spawned this year, which on one hand is good and on the other is some weak ass Consumer Rights bullshit.

I've been trying for months to articulate something about this game, and unfortunately it's not going to happen in this venue. But there's something to be said about how it takes the last game's central mechanic - mind-controlling/enslaving orcs to fight for you - and puts that in service of a broader loot grind. It's almost like this sequel to Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor sees its predecessor as primitive accumulation, and it is the full on capitalist experience. Juxtaposing that with the outright fascism of the elf ghost inhabiting your protagonist is a weird thing that I think says more than many people are giving it credit for, but I don't know that I'm quite willing to parse it out at this point without a paycheck.

Top Tens of 2017: #7s

Here are the seventh best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017 (there's spoilers):

#7 Podcast: Revolutionary Left Radio

In the year that gave us the Channel Zero Network, it seems like the question of a left-wing counterpart to AM radio - in the form of podcasts - was a central point of some organizing. For my money, Revolutionary Left Radio is the closest thing to that goal that exists. The host, Brett, conducts interviews with folks who tend toward an academic background on topics that are often focused on creating talking points for various leftist tendencies in order to bring them together. His role is generally to ask (clearly pre-written, which isn't a bad thing) questions and then follow up with something not unlike a soundbite.

I say all of this trying not to sound like I'm passing judgment; it's very much a podcast that I enjoy a lot, and one that I know a number of friends would probably dislike quite a bit. There are times where I'm not entirely sure why I enjoy it; I'm not in the organizing world, most of my actively political friends are anarchists who I rarely get into these kinds of discussions with (and even if I did, I wouldn't want to use talking points), and the kind of focus it presents is something I can appreciate but generally don't love. My podcast preferences tend toward long, rambly discussions that I can listen to in the background while I walk, commute, play video games, or work, rather than tight hours with specific takeaways.

The thing I generally come back to, of course, is that the podcast just leads to interesting discussions about leftism that take seriously historical background and theoretical developments. Which is the shit.

#7 Film: Raw

This cannibal/vampire/zombie horror film (I mean that in a good way I promise, I would also hate that description, it is meant as ambiguity not nerdish conflation) feels like a 2017 followup to Cursed or The Craft more than anything. It combines a story about family, featuring the love and conflict between sisters and the dissembling of parents, with a coming of age story about going full party girl, with a horror film about appetites, all set in a veterinary school. I described it at one point as "if Thirst was good" and I stand by that, even if I think Thirst is a pretty good movie on its own. It's just probably Park's weakest.

There's a scene in which our protagonist gets introduced at a party: the camera does a long, slow zoom through a red-tinted group of people dancing and making out and socializing. About a third of the way through the zoom we can see her sitting on some sort of table feeling herself. It's probably the best single scene in a movie this year.

#7 Album: The Autobiography by Vic Mensa

Mensa might be the best rapper out right now who doesn't have punchlines. "Mentally ill, fuck Dr. Phil / All these pills ain't Benadryl (Chiraq) / No oil but it's been a drill" is about the level, which isn't to say bad but, like, man. He makes up for it by telling politically-engaged and honest-feeling stories with a fascinating structure and a total lack of pretense.

Nothing here hits quite as hard as "16 Shots," but "Rollin Like A Stoner" still goes in. And the structure itself is reminiscent of To Pimp a Butterfly, albeit not quite as accomplished. The Autobiography focuses more on pulling out a single line or moment from one song and expanding it into a full narrative of its own in the subsequent, though, which works surprisingly well.

#7 TV Show: Land of the Lustrous (season 1)

Land of the Lustrous is, in many ways, the inverse of last year's Flip Flappers. Where that was a journey through psychoanalysis, this is the most straightforward single character arc of a season; where that was full of queerbaiting and fanservice, this is a straightforward story of a nonbinary society. Which is to say, in both good and bad ways. Ultimately, I had more problems with Flip Flappers but enjoyed what it did more; but I'd definitely recommend Land of the Lustrous more readily to anyone.

The big stumbling block is the animation. Land of the Lustrous is fully CGI, in a way that kind of ends up working but never isn't kind of unfortunate to watch. My suspicion is that the choice was made - if it was at all aesthetic, which I doubt - because of the ability of CG to render liquid dynamics better and easier than traditional animation. The problem, of course, is that CG liquid looks like shit.

If there's another parallel between this and another anime, it's Neon Genesis Evangelion. The monster of the week in both is celestial - here Lunarians, there Angels; the unsteady, vaguely queer-coded youth is called on against their will to serve; and more than anything else, both are shows that are fundamentally about loss. Both also pivot that from loss of an other to loss of self, and how that impacts a person. Neither are the most profound statements on it, but Eva at least has the benefit of being done, so it's easier to say that it tells its story well, given what it is going for, and experimentally in a way that reinforces it. Land of the Lustrous, on the other hand, may or may not go anywhere.

The strangest thing, I think, is that I can't imagine this season being appealing to anyone who isn't already invested in anime as a form - it won't convert anyone, I don't think - while simultaneously feeling more like American television than most anime I've seen. Primarily in that anime is often released in short form, while American TV is almost uniformly expected to run for multiple seasons, if not indefinitely. It's a strange thing that I'm interested in seeing more of.

#7 Videogame: Post/Capitalism

Post/Capitalism is a pretty good use of videogames as straight up propaganda. It looks a little like a citybuilder, plays like a puzzle box. In short: you have a capitalist city. Clicking repeatedly on a piece of it transforms it from something predatory into something less so. Certain transformations trigger others to revert. Connecting them together reveals the underlying issue that causes this reversion; clicking the revelation changes it to allow them to coexist.

Ultimately, you connect these underlying issues together to reveal what causes them to come into conflict, resulting in four ultimate issues that can be dealt with. Once these are dealt with, the miniature city isn't exactly utopic, but it is a world that prioritizes things like the "collective ownership of the means of production," "labour [being] given from each according to their ability," "value [being] determined democratically," and "production being directed to satisfying human need."

Most games that get understood as propaganda are primarily literary; newsgames and the like that exist primarily to cause you to interact to look at some current event or data points. What Post/Capitalism does different is to primarily propagandize through systems. Obviously the meat of it is in the words that are associated with the systems, which is where this seems like it could be improved upon, but linking systemic abstractions together in a medium which is literally a collection of systemic abstractions is a good step forward.

Charlie Chaplin and Anti-Comedy

Colin Spacetwinks has been sharing some of their old comedy writing/theory on Twitter recently, and one of the pieces that came up was this post about Too Many Cooks. They relate it specifically to the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast episode "Fire Ant" to talk about the technique of "dragging the joke out," and specifically to position it in the sort of "anti-comedy" popularized by Adult Swim. It's a good post, and its resurfacing is weirdly timely for me.

The Castro Theater just had a double feature of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I'd seen the latter a handful of times, though no more recently than a decade ago. The former I hadn't seen. It was, in fact, my first Chaplin movie period, I think. That's despite spending literal full weekends in college scheduling my sleep around what TCM was playing. I had a lot of fun in college.

The programming of that double feature was smart as hell in ways I did not anticipate. Even not having seen Modern Times, I knew the broad strokes made sense together. The short version is: they're both films about labor, featuring broad, iconic images of industrial machinery. The particulars were what I wasn't ready for. I didn't realize that, for instance, the opening shots are nearly identical.

Both films open on the face of the clock. They also both move from this into scenes of undifferentiated laborers moving to work. The main difference is a generic one: in Modern Times, the shift to the laborers is prefaced by a shot of sheep being driven forward. It sets up a parallel with the workers we are about to see. In Metropolis, the laborers move into the space of an elevator rather than directly into a factory. A title card then describes them as going 'deep below.' It's as concise a visual argument for the definition of genres -- comedy and science fiction -- as I've maybe ever seen. There's a whole essay there, but I want to talk a little more about Modern Times' comedy.

I bring up Spacetwinks' essay because one of the most striking aspects of Modern Times, to me, was how close it came to that kind of anti-humor. Plenty of it was the sort of humor I expected of Chaplin through cultural osmosis -- vaudevillian slapstick and mugging, underdog character work, &c. -- but the execution was surprising.

An early joke involves the boss testing out a machine that can feed laborers while they work. It's sold to him as a way to reduce the wasteful lunch break, and so he decides to have Chaplin give it a go. The scene is structured about how you would expect: everything goes well until it doesn't. Once it doesn't, it starts going worse and worse, quickly.

The thing, though, is that it isn't all that quickly. The scene itself lasts for, I'd guess, nearly ten full minutes. It's a funny scene, and it isn't structured like a Tim & Eric bit or anything; instead of languishing, it continuously escalates toward the conclusion. Even still, the scene itself struck me in a way much closer to that sort of anti-comedy than to a lot of the other jokes even within the film itself.

Another tangent that I'll note without diving into: I don't know that I've ever seen comedy theorized in a way that was anything but ahistorical. Comedians themselves are the worst about this, of course. But the rhythms of comedy change over time, and according to knowledge.

There is one other major scene that I read as anti-comedy in Modern Times. It comes near the end. Chaplin has been in and out of prison and work throughout the film. He is finally trying to make good by his ward, who has secured him an audition as a member of the waitstaff at a restaurant of Singing Waiters. Before the obvious joke, though, he has to actually wait on tables; in particular, on a gentleman who is furious that he has had to wait an hour for his roast duck.

About two thirds of the way through the bit, Chaplin is nearly at his table with the meal. The band strikes up, and he is immediately surrounded by dancers. He gets caught in their twirling and seething. The only part of him left visible his upstretched hand holding the plate of food. He does a full rotation of the floor, begins to walk forward, and gets caught up again. This is funny in its flouting of expectations. The scene seems to have played itself out, but it continues. It's when he gets caught again for the third time that it borders on the kind of comedy where "dragging out the joke" is itself the joke.

Unlike the automatic feeder, this sequence doesn't really structure itself by escalation. The thing that ultimately happens could have easily have happened the first time around with no great loss; the escalations are secondary to the act of languishing on the act of watching. At the time of the film's release, both scenes were, presumably, uproarious. They are not played like they are meant in some way as ironic commentary on comedy. But it's nearly a century on, and they feel that way now. To me at least.

Fight From Inside the Fandom

Back in December, I wrote that a leftist trolling would involve "litter[ing] the user-generated-content hell with strategic propaganda." It's a phrase that's stuck with me.

In the months since I wrote it, I've been digging through the My Brother, My Brother and Me archives. It's a comedy advice podcast. It's been rapidly growing in the last couple years, in large part because of how "good" the three brothers are; how willing they are to admit to mistakes of ignorance, to talk openly about their own growth, and to do their best to build their comedy with a foundation of inclusivity and understanding. Take this response from a TV Insider interview with the brothers, in response to the question "How do you build a brand that revolves around positivity and compassion in comedy?":

Griffin: You f--k up a whole lot when you start doing a podcast, and you hear from people who really, really, really like you, who let you know very politely that you hurt their feelings and ostracized them, and then you stop doing it. And then after enough of those, you kind of stop doing it to everybody, or you try your f--king best to. Literally, that’s it. I think it’s easy to get defensive, but I just always felt so miserable when I heard, “I’m a big fan of yours and you hurt my feelings."
Travis: When someone tells you, “Hey, what you just did hurt me,” you have two options. One is to say like, “You’re wrong, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” Or your other option is to say, “Okay, well if you feel that way, let me take a step back and really look at what I did.” Do that second one every time.
Griffin: I think doing anything that has a big enough audience these days becomes a lesson in empathy. The show and me, Griffin, a person, have gotten so much better since those lessons have come pouring in. I like having that relationship with our audience, and I genuinely think it’s funnier to not say no to s--t, or not slam people instead of getting on board with them. I think that’s the funnier thing 100% of the time.
Justin: It’s harder, but it’s always funnier.

It's a good sentiment, especially in the retrograde world of comedy. Honestly, I think that a lot of what is appealing about their work is shaped by the fact that they aren't Comedians. But that's a subject for another day.

Part of what compelled me to keep listening to back episodes of their show was the promise of the origin story of this development in their work. Because there's definitely an origin story that they reference for, like, a hundred episodes after it happened. I think it's explained fairly well in this piece for Brooklyn Magazine:

Justin told me, “I think we’ve always tried to be [inclusive], it’s just early on we didn’t necessarily have the tools or the understanding of how to be that way. I think mainly that’s because we grew up around people like us. So that was our default. But that expanded. ‘People like us’ has gotten a lot broader since we’ve had a much broader audience.”
The turning point was furries. It was around episode 30, not even in response to a listener’s letter, but to a Yahoo Answers question from a thirteen-year-old furry wondering about coming out to his family. The brothers’ comedy comes from escalation, each taking the previous joke farther and to sillier lengths. In this case, the joke—the “joke”—was about how freaked out and disturbed they were by furries.
The next episode, in the middle of answering another question—from a listener afraid of being made fun of for being in their school play—Justin segued into an apology. “Like, if you look at us. Last week we talked a lot of yay about furries, but to cover up the fact that we are all right now, as we record the show, wearing furry costumes.” Griffin said, “I’m a lynx.” Travis: “I’m a sexy cow.” And Justin? “I’m an apologetic tiger, because I feel bad to our furry friends.” Griffin chimed in, “I feel wicked bad!” He continued, “Let’s put this question on pause, cause we need to address this. I think that hatred comes from fear, and fear comes from misunderstanding.” And the brothers owned up to misunderstanding furries, and thanked the listeners who’d written in to set them straight.
As Justin told me, “Afterwards, we got these tweets from people who were like, ‘Hey, I’m a furry, and I like your show, and that sucked.’ I don’t know who we thought was listening, but we certainly didn’t think furries were, ‘cause we didn’t know any growing up. Once we realized that we hurt these people, we felt like garbage about it. So we were like, let’s make the decision to learn, and talk to these people, and celebrate them and become wildly pro-furry. What we realized is, isn’t it also a lot funnier to be wildly pro-furry. I think it’s funnier to be really into everything, permissive of everything.”
It’s not that they’re pretending to be pro-furry because being pro-furry is silly. The McElroys decided—and the success of MBMBaM proves—that actually being enthusiastic about everything opens the door to better comedy.

To recap: something like half a year after they started the podcast, the brothers went in on furries in a typical "this is funny because we are having an outsized reaction to a thing we don't understand (or want to)" style bit. The difference between them and 99% of other comedy is that, when pressed on the shittiness of that bit, they apologized sincerely and did their best to stop doing that.

Or, at least, that's how it's turned out in the long run. Part of the reason I was so compelled to get back to that incident is because, frankly, there are at least another couple dozen episodes of the show where they clearly haven't actually learned from that error, despite constantly professing to. They're repeatedly shitty to people during that time, except now in a way where they preface it by saying how much they learned from being shitty about furries.

As an origin, it's a pretty fascinating one. Partially because telling the story lead to its enactment; but also, for me, because it seems very much like an example of that kind of strategic propaganda I advocated for.

Even more, it suggests a possible addendum to my essay, another tactical opportunity. I more or less completely ignored fandom in it, despite my hovering on the periphery of a million of them forever. What that origin suggests, to me at least, is the possibility of a sort of dedicated left entryism; a program for people who are fans of things to guide them into pressing advantages on new or developing creators.

This could take a number of possible forms. One option would be something like a generally-accessible resource sheet, pointing out certain methods of approaching sympathetic creators. It could be completely straightforward, like "if you want to see responsive, growing creators do better, try this," or even in the style of those viral Tumblr/Twitter posts that treat everyone who doesn't act exactly how you just learned to as an incomprehensible asshole.

Another would be a centralized group who actively searched out burgeoning successes and deployed members to their fandom. An IRC would work for this, but something like a facebook meme page might actually be even more ideal and difficult to detect/subvert. Admins could point to creators who seemed sympathetic through an understood language within the memes themselves, allowing followers to integrate within the fandom and deploy targeted criticism/propaganda.

The goal, to be clear, would be to create a sustainable method by which we could repeat something like what happened with the McElroys. One thing that gets left out in their origin is any question of what happened to those furries; this is the sort of thing that requires some investment (to understand the norms of the space) but not an indefinite amount. Listening to a pre-Pitchfork-level band's album and patiently explaining its exclusivity in normal channels might take a couple hours over a week, and they're certainly going to remember it.

The possibilities here are, admittedly, a little harder to imagine with an economic leftist argument (rather than a cultural one), so I'm not breaching them now. Maybe if I have some ideas later, or if you do. I'd certainly be interested.