After the 2016 election, I kept seeing a bunch of references scattered around reddit politics boards where they were discussing the sub like boogeymen, and looked it up just to figure out what they were whining about. I realized it was the kind of sub I was looking for amid all the russiagate madness of libs trying to come to terms with trump, there wasn’t just a bunch of impotent hand-wringing and panic, they actually had a sense of humor about how fucked everything was - which when you’re feeling powerless can be therapeutic, instead of the 24/7 onslaught of doom-posting that’s become the new normal (but wasn’t quite normalized yet by that point). Even all the humor shit I typically enjoyed (or at least used as politics junk food) was just destroyed by Trump’s win, cause their only jokes were ‘orange man bad’. None of it was funny and it only made you angrier.

I voted bernie in the primary but didn’t hear about chapo until summer of 17, so after a few weeks on the subreddit I looked up the podcast. After downloading a few episodes for a long drive, including the post-2016 election one, and hearing the felix cold open about dale earnhardt, I was hooked for a long time - I probably hadn’t laughed that hard in six months, since before the election at least. Was always leftist-adjacent in sensibility but I was ignorant enough that I didn’t know too much of the intricacies or specifics of leftism, so learned quite a bit while shitposting, too.

I don’t follow the podcast as close these days, because it’s kind of babby’s first socialism and I’ve kind of just moved beyond them - probably the closest I’ve got in months to listening to chapo is watching a few of matt’s streams - but the sub was its own free-for-all with a unique culture even among leftist spaces, a beast all its own that was extremely different from the podcast.

The fact that it was as irreverent as 4chan, while espousing a compassionate worldview, had just as many sincere posts mixed in with the shitposts, and was one of the most trans-friendly subreddits anywhere on reddit that weren’t specifically trans-oriented subs created by the trans community, was what kept me around long after I stopped paying much attention to the show.

First time I’d seen a Chelsea Manning post and no one misgendered her.

It was when people would post incredibly racist and transphobic things on Reddit. CTH users would ping them with terrible, nasty insults and demand that they show their dick. It made me feel appreciated for being a POC. It was a different and refreshing look at diversity. I didn’t think about politics after being disillusioned by Obama’s administration because I knew no alternative besides the right with their obnoxious ideologies. It was somebody being mean online on my behalf that got me to start listening.

/r/chapotraphouse showed up on /r/all and it looked like a funnier version of /r/fullcommunism but everyone was into feet.

I found the sub only after it was quarantined. Somebody, i forgot who, always posted these contrarian, snarky, but kinda interesting comments on /breadtube, so i went through their post history to see if they were arguing in good faith or a concern troll. Turns out they were based af and posted a ton on CTH.

I liked about the sub that it was more active and funnier than other leftist communities, that it wasn’t a typical fan sub (never really got into the podcast before or after finding the sub) and that it occupied a very unique niche ideologically, in that it was both intersectional and class conscious af, that it included both anarchists and MLs, that it was against the lib left without tolerating any form of reactionary bs - it basically did everything right that other left online spaces do wrong in one way or the other. So i stayed until the ban, joined the discord after that and now i’m here to continue the shitposting.