sigh I take it america is getting kicked out then, fair enough

I was under the impression the CDU had worse social stances than dems except on immigration where they shockingly actually act like Christians are supposed to (that part may have just been a merkel thing)

If it makes you feel any better that discussion could’ve easily happened at a dungeon or orgy

Exactly. The comic strip questionable content contains artificial intelligences with quirks, foibles, personalities, and a social understanding that they’re people too. In it people and ais have relationships and even marry. It’s no weirder than a human in a fantasy setting falling for an elf.

In the real world these are fancy chatbots owned run by corporations. Anyways here’s a video about people falling in love with them, it’s more sad than anything

The wife and I have to set aside a whole night for every contra video. There are 10 minute stretches that cause an hour of discussion.

Ah yes, the time a youtuber hired industrial engineers to create simulations of a theme park

Additional creators I forgot or left out:

Lady Emily is Sarah Z’s cowriter’s channel. It’s definitely weirder but in a direction completely different from the way strange aeons is. She doesn’t care to make her content have mainstream appeal and so it winds up being an autistic woman making videos about stuff she finds interesting.

Innuendo Studios is someone I intentionally left out for two reasons: a lot of his videos are short and they’re very political. But they aren’t low effort ragebait political, they’re analyses of modern right wing rhetorical tactics. I’m including him now purely because he’s one of my favorite youtubers

Münecat is a long form video essayist who started with anti-mlm content and has moved into other topics like internet gambling and debunking evo psych.

I’ll add more comments if I think of more

Contra and Philosophytube are an excellent example of how two people with a lot of similarities can do the same concept and wind up with wildly different results even when both are excellently done.

It’s a video I loved, and I understand why some of his fans wouldn’t but a lot of people need to see it.

Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that’s powerful. Her video that’s absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.

Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He’s most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. “I don’t know James Rolfe” was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.

Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think

Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He’s largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax

Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.

Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She’s like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that’s generally respectful to them? She’s got you. In particular I like how she’s respectful towards weirdness when it’s not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.

Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He’s a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.

Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He’s a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.

Defunctland, listen I’m not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.

OK that sounds exactly made for me

Vegetable oil made to taste kinda like sweetened cream for coffee

Fascism is often a pipeline. Not everyone who votes for the far right is fully on board with everything they wish to do quite yet. They’re really good at making you think that the people more than a step or two right of you aren’t that big of a deal. They see the people waving swastikas as not a big group or a particularly influential one. Similar to how the center left sees the people waving black and red flags. I’d even go so far as to say that on both sides a decent chunk of political propaganda is pointing at the other side’s cranks and far [side] members.

The difference is aside from the crux of the ideology and inherent morality contained within that, that the far right has a lot of power over the right, while the left is routinely bending over to centrists of both the left and right. However, people are idiots. If they weren’t we wouldn’t be in this mess.

In 2017 in Charlottesville North Carolina, the American fascist movement made a bad call. In an attempt to shift the overton window to their acceptance, demonstrate power, and create a unified movement they organized a rally to unite the right. Images of swastikas, fasches, and angry young men in business casual clothing carrying tiki torches and chanting antisemitic slogans alongside a dead young woman who protested against them became the image of the far right for a time. Short attention spans, a global pandemic, the economic crisis caused by that, and sustained propaganda from the right (especially regarding left wing protests against police brutality) led to people slowly stopping thinking about it.

Right now America is a bit too divided and radicalized for this to impact us. But other countries are seeing this and us torpedoing international relationships and making clearly stupid choices and they’re asking themselves if they want to be associated with people who support the politics of Adolf Hitler and don’t believe in regulating food safety.

Plenty of French did. France was divided before the war, fought against Germany, and then had a government of the fascists instilled. If the UK had fallen something similar would’ve happened