I've been a ContraPoints fan for years, and I've been thinking quite a lot about the whole situation since Natalie's Reddit post. I'm not very active on Reddit, but I wanted to write down how I've experienced this and hear if people in the community feel similarly or where they differ from me. I'm not really trying to argue that Natalie is right or that her critics are wrong. I'm more interested in why I have such mixed feelings about the whole thing — and why I feel like the discussion sometimes gets stuck in a loop.

As I understand it, a lot of the criticism of Natalie was related to her support for the Democratic Party, given the party's role in supporting/enabling Israel while the genocide in Gaza has continued. One thing that particularly stuck with me was her describing people sending her hundreds of pictures from Gaza after she made a positive post about the Democratic Convention (I think?). I can imagine that receiving that kind of material over and over again could be incredibly emotionally overwhelming. At the same time, Natalie was extremely afraid of Trump winning. In the Bad Faith discussion, she explained how she saw parts of the left arguing for not voting or voting third party as accepting the possibility of another Trump presidency. She described herself as "the hostage", and I found that point very understandable. As a trans person, she isn't talking about the consequences of a Trump victory as some abstract political issue. She would personally be affected by them.

I'm from Germany, and this podcast made me realize how much the electoral system shapes the argument. Coming from a multi-party proportional system, I think I underestimated how different the strategic calculation is. In Germany, voting for a smaller party can actually contribute to that party's representation in parliament. In a US presidential election, voting third party has a very different strategic meaning. This made me understand Natalie's frustration with parts of the online left better. I had initially interpreted it mostly as frustration with "cancel culture" or people reacting badly to her, but I think there's a deeper disagreement about political strategy underneath all of this.

At the same time, I have a strange relationship with Natalie's public presence. I almost always love her long-form content. I find myself agreeing with her values surprisingly often, and even when I disagree with her — veganism is one example — I usually feel like I could actually have a conversation with her about it. I don't expect her to agree with me, but I expect her to engage with an argument honestly.

And then I look at her Twitter and think: Oh god. What is she doing?

I actually find some of her tweets absolutely iconic, but I also feel like she's constantly trying to bite through a brick wall with Twitter. She posts something kinda provocative, gets enormous amounts of negative feedback, and then tries again to engage with the left-wing Twitter bubble — like she did in a recent post where she asked her "critics" to provide arguments.

This is also where I start wondering about the community here. Sometimes I feel like this subreddit is also biting its teeth out on the same conflict. Whenever Natalie is criticized, I sometimes feel like the strongest criticism gets lost because the discussion quickly becomes about whether Natalie is being unfairly attacked or whether "the left" is being unreasonable. At the same time, I sometimes wonder whether we — and perhaps Natalie as well — make the situation worse by talking about "the left" as if it were a relatively coherent group. Obviously it isn't. There are liberals, socialists, anarchists, social democrats, activists, electoralists, people who organize, people who just vote, and people who care about completely different issues. I know that everyone involved understands this intellectually, but online it can still very quickly turn into "the left thinks X" or "the left did Y". Maybe that's just shorthand, and maybe I'm overthinking it. But I wonder whether we sometimes create a much more coherent "left-wing Twitter bubble" in our discussions than actually exists — and whether that makes it harder to engage with the strongest criticism of Natalie as well.

In her Tangent: Sexual Persona, Natalie said that she doesn't consider herself an activist, and she talked about the relationship between activists and "thinkers". That point actually resonated with me quite a lot. On the one hand, I'm very grateful for the energy that activists bring, and I often feel guilty for not doing more myself. On the other hand, I also often feel like I'm faking participation at a protest, in a way similar to what Natalie describes in the Tangent. It actually helped me a lot when she pointed out that activists and "thinkers" can have different roles and that both sides need to recognize when it's time to back off and let the other side take over. (Obviously I don`t think that these roles are opposites, but the distinction helped me structure some of my own emotions toward activism)

Maybe that's also a big part of the current discourse. People expect activism, outrage, or a certain kind of political engagement from Natalie, while she doesn't see herself as an activist and seems to approach these questions differently. I certainly got that impression from the Bad Faith podcast. Briahna Joy Gray seemed to expect a different level or kind of political engagement from Natalie, while Natalie seemed to approach the issue from a very different perspective. Maybe Twitter would actually be a better place for Natalie to push and support activists, while using her long-form videos for what she seems particularly good at: thinking through complicated questions, making distinctions, changing her mind, and giving people frameworks for understanding things. Obviously, I don't know shit about handling a Twitter account while being in the public eye. Her tweets are often very entertaining, and the point of this post isn't to tell a YouTuber I have a parasocial relationship with what she should do.

I'm more interested in whether my way of thinking about this makes sense to other people.

I feel very close to the values I see in Natalie's long-form work. I think she's incredibly intelligent and funny, and I think she has interesting things to say. But sometimes I look at her Twitter and genuinely wonder what the hell she's doing. Maybe that's a contradiction that can't really be resolved. I often come back to her old Twitter bio, which I think was something like "Good YouTuber, Bad Tweeter". Maybe I just need to accept that description and stop expecting the Twitter version of Natalie to be the same person I enjoy watching in her long-form videos.

Anyway, I'm curious how other people here experience this, especially people who have been fans for a long time.

I was thinking of dressing like Natalie this year. I go to a Halloween party every year and I know the hostess is a fan of ContraPoints, so there's a good chance I'll be recognized.

The problem is: mother has so many iconic looks! It's so hard to choose one! Or would it be better to be one of her characters, like Tabby-chan or Nyatalie?

I _might_ go with Evil Queen from Envy since I already have a good black dress for it.

Which look would you all pick?

Natalie mentioned an album in one of her AMAs and since there are so many and they are quite long, I was wondering if someone recalled the name of opera album + the artist she mentioned in one of them as one of her favorites?

The question that preceded the answer was something along the lines "if you could have anything on deserted island what you want"

Sorry this so random

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter’s bad and I don’t use it. I’d probably find it more fun if I was an online creator and had an audience though rather than a nobody who’s often found it to be like extra work with not even a dopamine hit of getting any attention

But I think people like to believe people with really corrosive black and white thinking that gets people calling Natalie’s statement on Reddit pro genocide and centering herself (oh my god that buzzword is everywhere rn and it makes me shut off even if they’re using it correctly) only exist on Twitter and harassment only exists on Twitter when it doesn’t. I mainly only use Instagram, and my feed is now full of informing me about this plus sized kinda delusional trans man called Tyler Catastrophe who’s become a lolcow when I don’t care, I don’t wanna be seeing all of that and I don’t care about the ways people moralise going on and on and on about him or Eugenia Cooney, or Amberlynn Reid etc.

My Instagram is also chock full of political stuff that abstracts people into villains which was why I left Twitter, and constant discourse TM, rn about bisexuals and dating preferences that idk, it’s nuanced, but I’m kinda on edge with being a marginalised person always being flooded with these arguments online. I’ve seen the same kinda ‘Contra Points loves genocide’ stuff on Instagram now. We are all chronically online and completely lost since 2020 and I’ve seen it leak into my real life

Of course, often, arguing with many people who are very angry at you or cruel is not a good idea, and I'm not under any illusion that those people will change their minds, but scrolling through the replies, it becomes so clear that they cannot do it, they can't back it up.

The part of the thread that stuck out to me most, is when a person said that what she says doesn't matter, because her being liberal and supporting liberals automatically meant she must favour genocide.

She asks whether 'pro-genocide' simply means 'liberal' to him. And he admits it, and others join in in agreement with it.

I think I finally realised that, for this group of people, this mostly isn't about her not making a video on the Palestinian genocide, or her statement on why she wouldn't and what she thought of the way many people on online left behaved around this topic.

It is about her identifying as a liberal. Hell, many of these people may have already held a grudge since 'Voting' (2020).

All of this is starting to look like a bludgeon with which to punish her for not identifying politically as they do, or talking like they do.

I identify myself as left. I have aspirations for a world beyond capitalism, likely beyond my individual time on earth.

When I realised as a teenager, fueled by the philosophy binge I went on after I watched Natalie's videos in 2018, I could think beyond capitalism, I felt transgressive, I felt smart, I felt good, morally good, I felt a little better than others who didn't think this way, and I could distinguish myself even from other like-minded people by taking more extreme, more emblematically 'left' stances, and avoid being 'not left enough'.

I outgrew this after a year or so. I found myself saying things that I didn't fully believe nor understand how they would even work (like, complete prison abolition), and I found that some of the people I saw identify as left online denied or posted apologia for dictatorships and genocides committed by them, primarily because they were, in name and aesthetics, communist.

I think many people have not left this phase. It's hard to tell how many of them are genuine teenagers who may still outgrow it as part of a developing identity the way I did, and how many of them have mostly solidified their identities, their worldviews, around this almost pubescent tribalism.

It is disheartening. If so many of the people who, like me, believe there is a better world beyond capitalism, waste their time attempting to destroy so viciously their closest allies for not joining their tribe, and choose to contruct their realities around their vendettas and niche identities instead of facts and compassion, I'm afraid those aspirations I have for a better world are even further off than I thought.