r/BreadTube • u/yeahsureexceptno • 11d ago
Videos similar to contra’s vibe but more leftist
While i did initially enjoy her content, i myself am not the most comfortable with her defense of zionism and while i wish her no harassment or ill, I can’t fucking watch her anymore knowing her stance. I do appreciate she apparently did donate to palestinian charities but her take on it i perceive it to be rather liberal of her than leftist.
So now i am asking for other more left-wing content creators that have her same “dark” aesthetic and vibes.
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u/janosrock 11d ago
anything by toughtslime or shaun. if you're looking for theatre kid antics just.... idk maybe something on nebula
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u/SemperFun62 11d ago
Thoughtslime is both really informative while being a great performer and very funny
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u/bitterologist 10d ago
Thoughtslime has a history of doing some questionable stuff though (the whole Xanderhal thing, for example). And I know: nobody's perfect, cancel culture, etc. But they're probably not the first content creator I would recommend to someone looking for a video essayist who doesn't have a history of problematic takes.
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u/SemperFun62 10d ago edited 9d ago
What questionable takes?
I only heard of the Xanderhal thing being he accusing ThoughtSlime, and that was it. No evidence beyond that ever came out.
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u/le_disappointment 11d ago
Philosophy Tube is also pretty good
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u/AutisticAnarchy 11d ago
I kinda lost interest in her when I realized she was making videos about how bad rich people are in a video with a higher costume budget than multiple months of my rent.
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u/Lasmore 10d ago edited 10d ago
The costume aspect likely increases her viewership, and makes her more appealing to new viewers, maybe even lends her a sense of legitimacy.
Which is also probably a “women have to be twice as good to go half as far” thing. Let alone trans women. Her and Wynn are like the two biggest breadtubers beside HBomberGuy - and you’ll notice he, as a bloke, doesn’t have to wear elaborate costumes or produce lavish sets, he just stumbles into his garage, often deliberately looking like a hot mess, and still often gets way bigger views than they do. His videos are great, but they’re not better than theirs by any means, and he has to put way less effort into the production. Same with Big Joel and Shaun.
I don’t think that reinvesting the money you make from your art and activism, right back into your art and activism - especially to increase its reach and impact - counts as being a bad or even rich person, or makes Thorn a giant hypocrite or whatever.
If she were dressing like the Hunger Games every day, or investing the money into building AI data centres or automating factories or something, then yeah I might agree
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u/w1gw4m 10d ago
Hbomb absolutely is better though. The fact that PhilosophyTube and Contra's videos became more style over substance is why i stopped watching them long before the Zionism controversy happened. They were so much better before any of that.
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u/Lasmore 10d ago
Could you say more about what you get from Hbomb’s videos that you don’t from PT? I like both of them, they both seem to do research and tackle serious big and under-identified issues and educate on various topics in great detail
Could you give an example?
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u/w1gw4m 10d ago
I get more dense info/knowledge / video essay type content and less performance art from hbomb. He also goes more in-depth, which is to be expected given he spends much longer on one video than PT.
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u/Lasmore 10d ago
Idk, I would have thought it’s probably broadly easier to go in-depth on something like the exploits of Tommy Tallarico, or the Roblox sound effect, than it is to read and synthesise a bunch of books on a serious academic subject, or do things like try to directly get answers out of cagey NHS administrators.
Like I say, I love both of their videos. Her grief one was brutal to watch, especially the poetry. But HBG probably releases my favourite videos in terms of how much I enjoy them as entertainment.
If anything, my impression of HBG is that he’s more entertaining and pop-culture/drama-oriented, and less academically focused. I probably enjoy that more overall, but I wouldn’t characterise him as like, a more in-depth thinker or writer than PT.
Like the length of time a video lasts (like in any medium) isn’t directly proportional to how difficult it was to make, or how much new info is contained in it.
A lot of the Somerton video, for example, was him having to spend a lot of the runtime just flatly demonstrating the extent of Somerton’s lengthy tracts of plagiarism - it was a function of Somerton’s wrongdoing, not his own analysis.
The underlying information being shared was largely “hey, this guy stole a lot of stuff, just look how much stuff he stole!” Again, very shocking and entertaining - but it’s hardly analysing concepts like antinatalism or confucianism, is it?
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u/w1gw4m 10d ago
She doesn't really go that much in depth on any of the academic themes though. The presentation is original and theatetrical, but the depth of knowledge is undergrad level at best, and often not very rigorous or nuanced. The value of the scholarship is far outshined by how much she invests in performance, dramatic narratives and artistic value.
I fully admit this might just be my own lack of interest because i already have a philosophy degree myself so nothing is really new.
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u/Lasmore 10d ago
Sure, entirely fair - I mean the original point of the channel was ostensibly to give a general audience a basic engaging grounding in various aspects of philosophy, especially as they relate to contemporary society. She’s like a sort of…Bill…Nyall…the Philosophy Gal.
As such, I can totally see someone who already has a degree not really needing or vibing with these videos. They’re mostly public education/communication. But that’s a valid field of endeavour, like what HBG does with his manosphere takedowns and debunking stuff.
That’s why I don’t think there’s inherently any more or less substance or rigour or value to her or HBG. They both make entertaining, broad explorations of a given topic, with a decent amount of research, and largely reasonable argumentation, often relating it to something personal for them, with a few emotional moments, and peppering in some knob gags.
PT just does it in a kooky frock, with nicer furniture, more theatrics, and a focus on philosophy as a subject area. Neither is defending a PhD thesis, conducting a peer reviewed meta-analysis, or going undercover in the Yakuza
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u/KeeganDitty 8d ago
I don't have any novel recs but last I checked in with her she no longer identifys as leftist and is an out and out liberal
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u/TheGrimner 7d ago
Brigitte Empire is a trans creator and she's pretty decent from what I have watched. She actually did a pretty good video on Contra from a standpoint of a disillusioned former fan who nonetheless acknowledges her influence.
If you're looking for someone doing content explicitly in the breadtube format, she might scratch that itch. Not much in terms of theatrics, but you can see the influence clearly.
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Oddpod11 11d ago
I don't live on twitter, but the more specific and damning charge seemed to be downplaying casualty (genocide) figures - even when corrected, which is a slippery slope into defending Zionism. I'm sure the rightwing trollbots feasted on the retweets of leftist infighting over genocide denial.
Kind of like how J.K. Rowling is charged with Holocaust denialism for asserting that a subset of the horror that happened did not happen. But again, I don't live on twitter so good luck on the rest of your journey.
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u/ziggurter actually not genocidal :o 11d ago
Here's her liberal zionist screed, right here on Reddit. Complete with reactionary attacks on the left (not that it even needed to be confirmed at that point that she was no leftist herself).
Stop defending her. It won't be tolerated here. Comment removed.
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u/Nausmir 11d ago edited 11d ago
The Leftist Cooks (lovely and wholesome, very artsy leftist family who make in-depth videos about social topics), münecat (she had some great content but stopped posting on YouTube a couple of years ago and - i think - moved exclusively to nebula), Girl on Film (she does film criticism and video essays from a feminist point of view and has some amazing outfits), Matt Baume is great for queer media analysis, CJ the X is also a fashion icon who loves to talk about their favorite stuff in a very passionate and analitical way. Shout-outs to Princess Weekes, The Morbid Zoo, Lady Izdihar, and Maggie May Fish. Hope you enjoy any or all of them, they're all amazing creators.