Talk:Chapo Trap House

Controversies

This section was added which links to tweets that contain sound bites from the podcast itself:

"On their podcast the group called for Sanders supporters to harass the supporters of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to "force them" to endorse Senator Sanders, saying "Warren supporters, they're weak, very weak, so weak!"; one of the Chapo hosts said of candidate Warren, "I regret having sex with her every f*ucking day!""

This part was deleted as allegedly violating the rules for Wikipedia: Reliable Sources, specifically: Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

However, the references go to soundbites from the podcast itself, so it is reliable.

The content was inadequately sourced. The issue not just reliability, it is notability. We rely on 3rd party published sources to establish that specific content from a blog/podcast/twitter feed is notable. Chapo Trap House has hundreds of hours of content. Highlighting any specific podcast content without 3rd party sources that cover that content is likely to be WP:UNDUE.Dialectric (talk) 19:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@71.62.227.79: Sorry, I accidentally rollbacked you without an edit summary. Generally Wikipedia shouldn't use Twitter for pretty much anything per WP:RSP#Twitter, unless it's something like an uncontroversial self-description. If any other source didn't pick up the tweets (which were GIF reactions), then it's also likely undue information here. --Pudeo (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

References

• Neither of the incidents listed here really seem like "controversies":

The first paragraph is based on a critical report in the NYT and then one Vox article calling this a controversy. It just seems like these are just opinions of two separate reporters rather than a specific controversial incident. I would suggest that the arguments from these sources are absorbed into the "Reception" or, probably better, "2020 election" section.

A reddit fan page being deleted doesn't really seem to be a controversy related to the podcast. The hosts of the show have even criticised the reddit page and had nothing to do with it. I recommend this is removed altogether or moved into a different section.

"Controversies" sections are generally unhelpful but this one seem especially so. Maybe there is a little bit of WP:POV on behalf of the editors who inserted this section. For a podcast whose Modus Operandi is controversial and "eschews civility", a section like this seems redundant. Thoughts? Vladimir.copic (talk) 04:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

The article in question was written by Nellie Bowles, who is the wife of Bari Weiss, and has IDW adjacent opinions. She has actually moved to her wifes blog now, "Common Sense", and you can see there her political opinions. Which are, like much of the IDW, harshly critical to the point of hysteria of the left, socialism, and "wokeness", universities, activism, while making a token attempt at coming off as centrist by lobbing a couple of soft balls at the right. This is also supposedly a humor column, despite being one it the most unfunny things written by a human hand.

Should it be surprising then, that her article for the NYT was essentially written like an opinion piece? Not even the barest attempt at neutrality, the show and its audience are depicted as essentially monsters, taking things out of context, exaggerating, and using vague unjustified accusations that I can only assume her source for are tweets from yet IDW Twitter buds. You can listen to the podcast she supposedly sat through, it is literally just a Bernie rally. If it is anything, it is saccharine in its earnestness, begging the audience to do what they can to support this candidate, and abandoning the usual irony drenched nature of the show. Many of the events she described aren't in the podcast, and she is the only source for. The events she describes were not, to a large extent, what that show was actually about. The actions are always presented as unanimous on the part of the audience, when who knows it may have just been a dude sitting next to her. The title is also, completely hysterical.

It just be pointed out that this article was also released during a time period when it appeared Bernie was winning, and the msm was in a collective panic just unleashed an unbridled torrent of smear articles and abuse directed at Sanders and his supporters. Over $100 million in paid negative news coverage against Sanders in this period, which is pretty much unheard of. The acerbic nature of the article may just be an influence of this "overheated" environment.

It's also worth mentioning that Bowles previous article before the CTH smear one was an incredibly banal article in which she reported on members of some conservative university organization, and, again in typical IDW fashion, came to the conclusion that watcha know these guys are all right, if only the universities and wokeness would stop oppressing them so. Let me say, it requires an incredible talent to investigate a bunch of gen z right wingers and fail to encounter hordes of blatant racism and nazi larping. While simultaneously attending a saccharine fundraiser more or less for a Democratic presidential candidate and somehow some away with the impression that you have attended an incredibly ominous reprisal of the Nuremberg Rally. That's the "centrists" of the IDW though. Their judgement is blind, but only in the right eye.

Also, what is the reality of being a conservative university student? Imagine just being handed money constantly, and shuttled along prestigious career paths those with much more merit, but not ideologically right wing, could only dream of. Constantly being given a leg up over university students of different ideologies, and lavished with attention from the numerous obsessive right wing billionaires who flood there programs with cash. All the whole the msm just publishes piece after piece about your supposed oppression. The intellectual environment in the US is overflowing with talentless right wingers parachuted into positions of influence purely because of their ideology. The *liberal* intellectual environment is itself flooded with talentless "liberals" who strangely seem to spend all their time criticizing liberals. This is always positioned as incredibly brave behavior. Even though it's the tack of basically every NYT and WAPO columnist and most television talking heads in general. It was the tack of Bari Weiss, who bravely rode it into being parachuted into an NYT editor position. Her oppression was the oppression of the teachers pet. And eventually she has to self-cancel and fire herself, and that was super brave, I'm sure she encountered innumerable difficulties in finding investors willing to fund a blog dedicated to exclusively to concern trolling liberals, surely they did not just hand her a blank check just because they knew her propaganda would undermine the left. It's really crazy if you think about it right, in the United States profit only matters if your media organization if your leftist, if it's rightist profitability literally could not be less of a concern, constant cash is thrown down your maw. The advent of crowdfunding has enabled a number of leftist figures to emerge where previously there *nothing*. Previous arrangements inevitably required partnership with various business interests who would inevitably interfere if the message went too far to the left. The only business model that works for the left is just a bunch of small donations. Bernie ran on small donations, AOC was able to ride small donations this into the house, and use her donations similarly to fund leftist candidates elsewhere. Numerous socialist podcasts and other news sources have emerged relying on a freemium model, as they would not be able to obtain advertisers normally. This way, they escape the inbuilt censorship in our system. The reaction to this phenomenon, it is clear now, has been hysteria. Seemingly the left has become public enemy #1. The leadership caucus is seemingly more intent on crushing leftist primary candidates than fighting the Republicans. Can people just calm down? The left has a right to exist. They seemingly are unsatisfied with anything besides total silence.2601:140:8900:2070:3C41:3334:FF5E:C2DB (talk) 22:45, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

The subreddit was in reality banned largely because the Donald was banned around the long time. When reddit bans a major right wing subreddit it is common for them to also offer up a leftist subreddit in a play at neutrality. The_Donald was a large right wing sub so they had to offer up a large left wing sub at the same time. Reddits statements on this subject aren't trustworthy, they of course pretend as if their decision was based on the utmost objective criterion. And news reports to a large extent did nothing but reiterate the reddit press release on the subject. It's true the sub had long differentiated from the show and turned into sort of a general leftist meeting place and meme subreddit. The show would frequently be criticized actually. The hosts quickly dissociated themselves after the ban, but all they really knew was all these people screaming about how the denizens of the sub apparently ate babies, and of course lazily just didn't want the association.2601:140:8900:2070:3C41:3334:FF5E:C2DB (talk) 22:45, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to leave this unchallenged. This is whitewashing on a grandiose scale, the majority of it is pure speculation and almost provably false. (For instance the r/chapotraphouse was banned not for having a balance of politics but because they regularly called for violence including killing politicians). JSory (talk) 20:11, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Allegations

I don't think the sourcing is good enough, yet, to mention the allegations that are laid out in this Daily Dot article. As always, we should be cautious when it comes to living people. So far The Daily Dot seems to be the only reliable source to cover this, and they are largely just repeating things from Twitter. Also note that WP:RSP#The Daily Dot says that editors should Consider whether content from [The Daily Dot] constitutes due weight before citing it in an article. WanderingWanda🐮👑 (talk) 21:22, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Also being reported here: https://meaww.com/virgil-texas-chapo-trap-house-former-host-sexual-grooming-16-years-teenage-girl

And by "repeating things from Twitter", you seem to mean "directly citing the words of the alleged victim". Is that correct? natemup (talk) 01:19, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I think there are 3 aspects to this:

1. There are big WP:BLP considerations for such serious allegations so sourcing needs to be water tight.
2. The two secondary sources are not especially reliable and allegations made on Twitter are not appropriate sources for our purposes (see WP:SOCIALMEDIA).
3. The allegations were about an individual and these stories/allegations were published after he left the show. So no clear cut reason for inclusion here. Vladimir.copic (talk) 11:44, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Biographies

is there really no reliable information out there to write a paragraph or two about each host? For project pages where the individual people dont get their own articles thats usually the norm. Just basic stuff like birth dates, where they're from, which college they went to, work for other publications etc. --jonas (talk) 18:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

The only host with enough publicly disclosed information is probably Will Menaker, son of Daniel Menaker. Most of the other hosts are pretty private, though InfluenceWatch has some brief biographies on Menaker, Biederman, and Christman. Die Kunst Der Fuge (talk) 20:46, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Departure of Frost, Miniseries, and Current Hiatus

I feel this information should be included, and attempted to source it with neutral sources. Frost's departure is not elaborated on, though the reason being her political memoir/essay collection is sourced from the publisher and a number of media sources. No mention is made of the supplementary podcast miniseries that have received a fair amount of media attention, including Entertainment Weekly. The current hiatus seems appropriate to mention, though is not sourced beyond show sources and social media reactions from media professionals. BrintTuggleJr (talk) 21:02, 25 September 2023 (UTC)