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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44943 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Did the Right lose the terminally online by emphasizing consuming rather than communing?

Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced. You find this on Twitter and Discord. While there’s a fair amount of complaining typical of online spaces, leftist spaces are unique in saturating their mutuals in compliments and praise. There’s an oversaturation of positive feedback, and negative feedback is seen with suspicion. Anything from an uncreative tweet, a poorly conceived thought, an unlikely empowering experience, whatever is usually met with pats on the back snaps (sensory issues!) and good boys persons. While this oversaturation leads to an over-sensitivity, not to mention some bad behaviors and creations, it also means that the online community forms strong bonds and is only associated with positive emotions.

In contrast, Right-oriented spaces are less keen on compliments and engage in more stressful catastrophization. They consume too much news and complain too much about the news. Culturally right online spaces are more socially stressful and have less bonding. They are critical of the liberal-coded heaping of compliments and empathy, and consequently miss out on a lot of the power and energy that’s present in Leftist spaces. There’s also an optimism deferential, with Leftist spaces generally more optimistic despite performative lamentation, and Right spaces more pessimistic, at least since ~2018.

This is a poor example, but imagine watching Contrapoints versus Jordan Peterson. This is a poor example by necessity — the Right does not have any counterpart to Contrapoints. You can watch Contrapoints and come away without any argument or evidence — but then you would be missing the point; the point is that you’re having an endearing and charming parasocial relationship with the person, and the outfit changes and odd social contextual changes simply work to increase the emotional affect, like a dozen playdates in video format.

There’s a phenomenon online where hobby spaces get “taken over” by more progressive mod teams in a variety of domains but especially terminally online spaces (video game modding, illustrations, speedrunning, etc). We see this on Reddit too. One possible reason for this is the uniquely reinforcing culture of online Leftist spaces. Someone becoming a mod on an otherwise unknown speedrunning discord community is something that would be praised in these communities and an earnest mark of reputation. And maybe they are right to do so — in any case the effect is that these small positional advancements can be a source of continual reward for the Leftist enjoying their quasi-lovebombing, while at the same time advancing the cause day after day.

This is interesting because I believe that studies have shown progressives relatively unhappy and often mentally ill. Their myopia the causes them distress in service of the cause, but allows them to rack up political wins. The grill pillers otoh are on the periphery making little political impact, but generally content and mentally well.

I have anecdotal evidence in support of what you're saying however. In my job there is an emerging team leader who is MtF trans who rallies everyone and engages in all the pats on the back and mutual positive reinforcement you speak of. Real girl power stuff. Of course my team is about 75% female, which helps.

See, counterpoint to ContraPoints, let's look at the man who did more than anything to make JP hit it big: Joe Rogan is the biggest positivity merchant active today. He introduces his guests universally as either "my friend X" or "the great and powerful Y." He rarely challenges his guests on personal grounds, occasionally on political or technical ones but never "Mike Tyson, I love you champ, but did you really rape that girl? Do you think that's forgivable?" He's about self-improvement, about talking to great people about how you can be great too, Joe thinks we can all be heroic athlete-warrior-comedian-mystics who take DMT in the sauna to commune with the aliens after dining on elk meat or whatever. When I listen to Joe Rogan, I feel like an insider, and the negativity all feels directed at someone else. The criticism that he levels against the lazy, the fat, the improvident, the snowflakes, the fearful feels like it doesn't include me; even if I suspect that I could do with a little more Goggins and a little less Taco Bell in my life. I've never felt personally offended or attacked by anything Joe Rogan has said into my right airpod while I worked out or did the dishes. I guess it doesn't meet the technical definition of "hugboxing" because it can have negativity directed vaguely outward, but if you feel like the ingroup for Rogan and his guest it does nothing but butter you up.

Where when I listened to Slate's DoubleX Gabfest or whatever they call it now, I constantly felt my ego under attack. I'm a 30 year old straight white man who looks like a 90s romantic comedy antagonist. I'm male, pale, and probably getting stale too. I'm clearly Slate's putative outgroup, the boogeyman that every bad thing that happens to the proud Queer/WOC hosts of the podcast can be pinned on. I'm responsible by identity for the economy, every bad sex partner the host has ever had, every bad meal the host has ever eaten, and human suffering more generally. If it made her cry, she'll find a way to pin it on "CIShetero white republican men." And when I KNOW I'm a CIShetero white republican man, it's a pretty negative experience to be the "THEY" in a conspiracy theory.

Compare, as you did below, to Q. You talk about Q as being negative, but I think Q is successful because it boosts the egos of its followers. When I think about conspiracies I think about my friends who are very into them, and one commonality among the Q/Infowars/MyPillow types in my life is that they've had hard lives, largely through things they more or less perceive as out of their control. Bad things have happened to them: a son addicted to drugs, a daughter seduced by a much older neighbor, working hard and having talent but never getting ahead because of divorce and confusing tax laws. As Scott argued cogently in Epistemic Minor Leagues, Q gives you a sense of importance and control for people that lack it day to day. Q might be negative to adrenochrome-addled pedo elites, but simply by listening to it you're among the righteous. The great day of the rope is always understood by the follower to be a day of ascendance for the follower, and destruction to the follower's enemies. Which is just a more extreme and explicit version of the same ingroup-positive/outgroup-negative flow of a Slate podcast or of Joe Rogan. Slate might not openly dream of herding cishetero white men into camps, but it doesn't hugbox them either.

He introduces his guests universally as either "my friend X" or "the great and powerful Y."

This is just a particular manner of talking though, it doesn't really mean anything.

He rarely challenges his guests on personal grounds, occasionally on political or technical ones but never "Mike Tyson, I love you champ, but did you really rape that girl? Do you think that's forgivable?"

This just describes podcasts generally though, the hosts and the guests are always buds and just chatting and don't really fight or even disagree much.

Also, I can't tell if this is a joke or not? "I am ingroup for right leaning podcast. I am outgroup for left leaning podcast. Therefore, left leaning podcast is mean and toxic, and right leaning podcast is cuddly and beautiful and universal love". Like, you explicitly point out that "The criticism that he levels against the lazy, the fat, the improvident, the snowflakes, the fearful feels like it doesn't include me;" - because it ... doesn't include you - and similarly, a straight white leftist male listening to the slate pod understands that they aren't "CIShetero white republican men", and that they are the friend and they're criticizing someone else?

(also: criticisim and dislike is good, because there are flaws that need correcting & very flawed things that need to be gotten rid of)

I assume due to the date that you found this via the AAQC roundup, read the parent comment I'm replying to. He posits that Leftists are nice hugboxers and Rightists are hard meanies and that impacts their popularity. I'm pointing out that depends where you stand, I don't really see that.

Joe Rogan is wonderful about being generally optimistic and positive - absolutely. He's also not a rightist, nor does he lean particularly left. He seems like the kind of person with much better things to do than argue for any political side, and really, doesn't fit well within any political tribe currently relevant on the scene.

Are lefty spaces actually that positive? I was under the impression that SJW and adjacent spaces were cesspits of internecine nastiness which tended to cause depression issues in members.

It varies! There are a lot of lefty spaces, as you'd expect if 'the woke dominated culture' or anything. Some are "positive", some are "negative", most are in between or something else. Same goes for righty spaces. And positive isn't necessarily better than negative, it wouldn't improve themotte if every post ended with affirmations about how none of these disagreements really matter and we're all just wholesome chunguses.

From what I have seen, there are pockets that are overwhelmingly positive, which makes it jarring when they suddenly start discussing the soul-rending drama happening elsewhere that they're mostly all aware of or to some degree involved in.

As someone who's been in part of multiple internet communities spanning across a decade-plus, it seems that serious-matter-induced emotional whiplash is all too common when some scandal or happening rocks said community.

This is a poor example by necessity — the Right does not have any counterpart to Contrapoints. You can watch Contrapoints and come away without any argument or evidence — but then you would be missing the point; the point is that you’re having an endearing and charming parasocial relationship with the person, and the outfit changes and odd social contextual changes simply work to increase the emotional affect, like a dozen playdates in video format.

I haven't watched more than five minutes of Contrapoints, but the description you give here sounds like a fair bit of the Youtube I do consume, much of which is pretty damn right-wing. Is the heavy politics and theory emphasis particularly part of the point? Does Brandon Herrera or GarandThumb count?

Brandon Herrera maybe, Garand Thumb I'm not sure about. There's also InRangeTV, but I think Karl is probably more purple/alt-blue/grey.

I think this is inevitable result of the fact, that modern leftism from its philosophical foundation leans much more into pathos/ethos as modes of argumentation as opposed to logos. It is considered valid to accept that there are "other ways of knowing", things like "lived experience" are okay form of debate and affiriming/celebrating various identities and rewarding proclamation of excess privilege give one more social points. However this can also create a very stressful environment in case of infighting or disagreement. As much as conservatives talk about "cancel culture", the phenomenon exists even more strongly inside the movement.

This is where ethos type of persuasion comes in, being on the other side of critique for insufficient commitment can be highly damaging psychologically, compounded by potential loss of all the whole support network to boot in case you get banned/ostracized. As an example one can use latest kerfuffle around Young Turk's Anna Kasparian for her comments on violent crimes, but there are other stories of let's say detransitioners and other pariahs from the movement now living outside. The thing is, that once you are booted from the movement then you are marked as "rightist" which keeps the movement pristine and happy place at the first glance.

Also as somebody else mentioned, this behaviour exists on the right in form of religion and in case of various specific subgroups. I am sure that let's say if you waded into some MGTOW message board venting your frustrations, you will find a lot of support and positive reinforcement over there. The difference is that these spaces are mostly marked as "extremists" and pushed to the darker corners of the internet as opposed to let's say and outright misandrist radical feminists which are fully mainstream.

usually met with pats on the back snaps (sensory issues!) and good boys persons.

This is a really condescending way of mocking your outgroup. The rest isn't really better, adding up to a real hand-wringing over how much leftist spaces must suck. Adding a paragraph about how Both Sides^TM of the terminally online have flaws doesn't really make the smears any more charitable.

With the obligatory tone policing taken care of: I think you're making a bit of a homogeneity error. Observing melodrama and overreaction on leftist Twitter is something of a pastime of this sub. The outrage machine is not driven by good vibes and hugs. People have been "literally crying and shaking rn" for years.

You may well be correct to observe that leftist hobby communities are more likely to be positive. I'd credit this not to an evangelist reward cycle, but to evaporative cooling. Leftist spaces are less likely to make people feel uncomfortable enough to leave. Whether this has anything to do with "big tent" politics, inclusive language, microaggressions, pronouns, or the much-maligned hugboxing? I couldn't say.

Free speech absolutism is arguably shooting itself in the foot here. The first message I got upon signing up here was an ALL-CAPS question from an offensive username. As I looked for a report button, I realized, "shit, we don't have a ToS here, do we?" Did I actually have grounds to request deplatforming this guy merely for posting slurs and, I'm told, using a NSFL profile banner? The answer is obviously yes, as he was a walking rule violation, but I wouldn't have even asked myself the question on a more left-wing site.

(If this happens to anyone else, please send a mod message to Zorba. He's confirmed that such accounts will be banned; there's just no report button yet,)

A subset of the right wing has staked out "being allowed to use slurs" as their Gadsden flag. That circle is near-completely contained within the circle of users who value "owning the libs." As long as this is true, sane moderation is going to have a left-wing bias. To some degree, this must go out the window in extremist left spaces. I'm not going to claim ChapoTrapHouse was a bastion of reasoned debate. It's the hobbyist Discords and niche interests that live and breathe on niceness, community and civilization.

If you want to know what the happy, affirming, not-so-para social group looks like for right wingers, go to a church picnic. Maybe Baptists or Presbyterians, maybe LDS. The Pentecostals get up to some absolutely wild group delusions, but they seem to be having a pretty good time with it. This is the power of community, of cohesion--and it comes with its own set of strictures.

As a final note, while Contrapoints really, really isn't my style, I wouldn't call it vacuous. Not in the same way that I'd label something like a mukbang. I'm under the impression that she puts a lot of effort into the scripting as well as the presentation. It's especially an ironic comparison given that Contrapoints and BreadTube were explicitly designed to drive Peterson-style engagement.

I'll stand by the first statement, and qualify the second.

Moving my response to the current CW thread here.

I’ve check out these spaces, as well as the IRL parallel to the spaces (leftist Unitarian churches in college towns). They switched to snapping from clapping and they would take umbrage with any gendered speech, so they said y’all instead of you guys. A pat on the back would be a no-go especially male to other-gendered. The LGBT-oriented leftist spaces on Twitter and Discord are really this hypersensitive about language, and the point explains how hyper-sensitivity is a corollary to hyper-positivity.

Contrary to being “leftist places” suck, I was concerned I was too hard on right wing places! The leftist places have thriving activism, which for the sake of ideology propagation, means they don’t suck.

Maybe it's not particularly cozy, but judging by people leaping to his defense when he's dissed on reddit, I suspect plenty of people have a parasocial relationship with Peterson.

I've had exactly one roommate who was really into him, and it was definitely parasocial.

I'd agree just going off the father-by-proxy stuff

it also means that the online community forms strong bonds and is only associated with positive emotions.

I can't speak for the rest of the population, but the lack of hugboxing on the Right was exactly why I turned right-wing back in Ye Olden Days of approximately a decade ago. The consistent hugs and kisses and emotions from left-dominated spaces in the early 2010s was exactly why I, and I suspect most online right-wingers, didn't like them. They were incredibly easy to bully and seemed to have not a shred of a spine, and that kind of behaviour is just innately appalling to politically agitated young males.

Nowadays, the online left is a lot more vicious and willing to persecute its enemies to the bitter end. And as much as I disagree with their values, I can at least respect that they've transformed themselves from limp-wristed victimhood to arguably successful political agitators.

Contrapoints is an odd example for trying to paint online left content creators as mainly serving vacant, vibes-based parasocialism. There's a lot of argument construction in her vids, and she posts far too infrequently compared to the people you usually think of as living or dying off of relationship simulacra.

I will contest this. There is actually no argument creation at all going on.

The aesthetics of it are there, fancy words, conjunctions, etc. But if you actually examine the content she says nothing.

It's what I find most infuriating about the schtick besides the horrid aesthetics. It's all darkly hinting and citing left philosophers without ever embracing a concrete position. Which is key to her survival of course because any breadtuber that embraces a position is doomed to be called out for it at some point by his peers.

But I mean maybe I'm wrong.

Can you name the novel insights and philosophical arguments made in these long form pieces she isn't just repeating from someone else and would stand behind as true? Because I got nothing.

I think she's been building an interesting thesis with Envy/Opulence about the difficult relationship the left has with material success -- both on the aesthetics of wealth and how social mores may have developed around flaunting (and then how those aesthetics are reappropriated and recontextualised). Confronting the extent to which snark about McMansions or Fyre Festival or Trump or what have you is some Nietzschean cope (I may not have wealth, but at least I have taste) among the intellectually left/online is imo a pretty interesting observation, as is extending that to a critique as to how our current online moment is so toxic in general. Someone needed to update Distinction for the very online era and she's well-placed to do so, even if her take is a tad nihilistic.

I guess that would count. But what is her position on that? Concretely speaking. What is the thesis? Or an application of it.

I mean not to be glib but it just seems like that quote people love to cite from Road to Wigan Pier about lefties being mainly about hating the rich. Is there more to it than that?

2016 era The_Donald had a lot of power and energy. People were making Trump inspired music videos, there was a lot of positive feeling that lasted up until he got inaugurated. Things seemed to be going their way with Brexit and Trump.

Then Brexit got bogged down for three years and hasn't significantly reduced immigration. Trump lowered taxes and built half a wall. He was 'monitoring the situation' rather than protecting his supporters, reducing immigration and crushing the left.

"Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is an electoral victory... if you're unable to win?"

Curious how you mentioned failures internal to the right, but you didn’t mention The_Donald getting banned from reddit.

True, there's also that. But isn't that an internal failure of the right? Imagine being a sitting president and getting personally banned from twitter, a company in your country! Imagine having your supporters booted off major platforms based in your own country. Trump should have been able to protect his supporters, as I said. He should've been able to use state institutions to impose costs on these sorts of behaviours. DeSantis is doing it in Florida and he is less powerful!

Basically you're complaining that Trump should have been the dictator he was accused of being. Maybe... but it's not a legitimate point of view for his opponents to hold to excuse their actions.

This is completely tangential, but I cannot watch Contrapoints. The Venn diagram of the content I am willing to watch and her videos looks like OO. It's like eating olives: I cannot understand why that taste/presentation is supposed to be appealing.

Lighthearted shower-though about olives, skip this paragraph if not into olives

I'm not a hater of olives, but I am not a lover of then either. If there is anything in the world I am truly neutral about, its olives.

I was lately thinking about how the cuisines of The World would change if certain ingredients would be made to disappear. Some of them will be missed greatly, some not so much. But I think brined olives, not the oil, is just about something that shouldn't exist as a food item at all, its wasted time and resources. Literally not a single person I can think of likes olives. And by that I mean likes them enough over any of the other ingredients that can be used as a substitute, for e.g capers.

A utilitarian could make the argument that the existence of olives are a net negative, because some people really really hate them and some people are indifferent to them. And I wonder how many other products like that exist. I can't think of anything else that I don't at least marginally like.

Edit - Okay I get it, some people like olives !

Not olives / Contrapoints

"Hard" Agree.

I find Contrapoints unwatchable. And that is putting it lightly. I would consider is mild psychological torture if I was made to watch Contrapoints for any length of time. That might be a strong statement and I better at least know from where within me that is coming from, but I have a hard time articulating why I dislike these types of videos so much.

A very surface level intuition I have is that these videos give me the same feeling I had being in a classroom in high school (fucking hated those times). Being TALKED AT not TALKED WITH by some self righteous yet passive aggressive young woman. Contrapoints gives off that same "energy" for lack of better phrasing.

You will take cored olives from me over my dead body

I'll go a step further: I hate olives. I think they are one of the nastiest things people eat (not as nasty as mushrooms though), and I have no idea how anyone tolerates them. I can imagine the taste of an olive right now and it's just.... eugh. Seriously, every food with olives would be better without olives.

What do you eat on pizza if you don’t like mushrooms and olives?

No veggies at all. Meat only, or if I can't get that for some reason then plain cheese. Veggies ruin pizza, imo.

...maybe you actually get a different taste than the rest of us? I heard a story once about a guy who was allergic to peaches; they tasted like needles and pain to him, but he kept eating them because everyone around him kept saying how good they were.

It's certainly possible. No idea how one might verify that, though. I'm pretty awful at describing what something tastes like, or why I enjoy/don't enjoy things. So it seems like a gap that would be tough to try to bridge.

The best recipe I've ever personally made was a Mediterranean olive-bean-and-greens pasta.

Girlfriend also makes a mean olive bread, but that's probably driven by the focaccia rather than the weird, briny fruits.

Losing olive oil would be a tragedy.

Do you have a link to a recipe? That sounds fascinating and delicious.

I fucking love olives. I would eat them all the time if they weren't so expensive.

Kalamata olives, olives stuffed with garlic or pimento, olive bread, olives in greek salad... holy shit dude

Olives are delicious

Olive bread is fantastic, yo.

I like olives, but you're right that they don't work well as ingredients. Brined olives are best served alone.

what do you have with a glass of wine with friends over while dinner finishes cooking? Olives have a pretty indispensable niche as ready-to-go antipasti, regardless of their utility as a briny ingredient.

Olives are peerless as a snack with drinks and they make martinis fun!

Salami, cheese, pickled vegetables, nuts?

The only thing I like about olives was putting them on my sister's fingers when we were kids, turns out she didn't like them either.

Olive oil is great, though.

I, for one, enjoy olives - black, or green, or stuffed with pimento. I put them on pizza more often than not, and this seems to be a popular arrangement since it is offered by major American pizza franchises - and I don't see them offering capers. I think they're more popular than we realize.

I'll sit down and eat a handful of olives as a snack. Especially if they're stuffed with something fun.

You're forgetting that reality has a left wing bias.

Consider the keffals drama: if it was a rightoid vying for a rightoid cause, they would not have enjoyed the success that keffals did. Keffals manages to represent the mainstream, popular interest, and thus with minimal effort on her part she can succeed in her goals. While keffals instigated and pushed forward the situation, she only managed to do so because the broader world was prepared and receptive. Compare something like the Ottawa trucker protests. Possibly due to the police being supportive of their cause, they managed to dig their heels in and create a protest that seemed to actually be challenging the powers that be. Gofundme was allowing them to receive donations. The media was altogether against them, the house of commons passed the emergency act and started freezing bank accounts and arresting people, and suddenly their whole movement was fucked. Keffals, while she might seem the underdog in a given matchup, enjoys the support of the cathedral, while the truckers, while they may have seemed to momentarily have the upper hand, didn't.

The relative penetration of either side on online platforms just reflects the inherent bias of those platforms. Fun, playful rightoid youtubers either got taken down, or completely shifted their politics towards leftoidism to protect themselves. Very serious and careful, usually quite milquetoast, rightoid youtubers are also still around. The result is that it seems like only leftoids can be playful, when in fact the platforms themselves filter away playful rightoids.

I don't see any meaningful way in which the "the Right [lost] the terminally online". Many terminally online people are rightoids. You don't usually see them on reddit or twitter, because they get banned on reddit or twitter. Or they attenuate their views there to avoid being banned.

You are conveniently forgetting Q and all that sphere exists. Or the entire edifice of religions and various right wing ideologies which are still around and well.

I don't blame you, the platforms do everything to show you contra and not the competition but it's there.

You're right in that the right is correctly identifying they are under attack and losing, and signing up to that cause isn't fun, so it doesn't attract the people who do it for those reasons. But what's there to do? The fun tactics of the right (a little trolling) are met with strong repression and getting banned from everything everywhere.

Q is a stressful, antisocial phenomena and was from the get-go IMO. It didn’t promote bonding, praise, or positive emotion. It promoted rabbit holes, paranoia, and subscriptions to Q analysis. I actually considered some years ago that it was an Intel-job specifically to neuter the activism of the Right, because it prevented pretty much anything but conspiratorial rabbit-holling and conjecture. I suppose there is something to be said about the belief that you’re one of the chosen supporters who knows the real truth, but this is of modest benefit compared to the alternatives of community participation.

I don’t think winning or losing factors in to this so much, I mean you have MAPs trying to make the same community as Transgenders, and MAPs are going to lose no matter what. I also don’t think the Christian Right has communities as vehemently positive as Leftist communities, at least I haven’t heard of them.

The Christian Right has a lot of communities that are incredibly positive. They’re just IRL. And far right wingers mostly going to irl for their bonding and community needs explains a lot of the difference, honestly.

new age Q-ists are pretty big about bonding, praise and positive emotion. Lots of yoga teachers and what not.

Lots of people had bonding and praise in Q threads. They were originally excited and would heap liberal praise on those who interpreted the various cryptic clues and symbols.

You could say the same for scientology.

I don't think it is necessarily one or the other. There are still anti-vax rallies every now and then here despite many of us now going months at a time without thinking of COVID any more. It may be conspiratorial, catastrophising, and paranoid, sure, but also a lot these people just like being a part of something, formed a bit of a social group they find meaningful and just want to keep the vibe going (even if it seems a bit anachronistic to the rest of us). The protest is less about the protest qua policy influence than the chance to see all your like-minded friends.

My uncle fell hook line and sinker for it. He is a nuclear scientist for GE. He is all about new reactor designs. But god damn he has become a full Q, space laser retard.

I've long thought that while the thrust of the criticism "The Left Can't Meme" is true, the smug certainty of that criticism has become overblown. When the Left memes, people listen, even if they, like ContraPoints, aren't funny.

I'm starting to accept that there just isn't a place for people like me who think the left has to be opposed strongly and swiftly from within mainstream politics. From the reception of my previous comment, I'm gathering that people here don't tend to believe that Trump can be that person in mainstream politics. If not Trump, then who? If all of the shenanigans pulled by Biden et al over the past three years can't be held to account then where are we as a culture?

I guess I'm feeling defeated. Once again the establishment gets to tell the story exactly the way they want to tell it.

One (grim) possibility is that, if the American government is ever made to answer for its crimes, past and present, it will not be at the hands of Americans at all.

Yeah, for some time I've wondered how the people throwing the "Left Can't Meme" thing around tend to be the sort of edgy contrarian young extremely online right-wingers who have created such a refined and self-referential meme culture it's actually fundamentally useless for anything expect getting yuks and reinforcement going on in small, extremely edgy contrarian young extremely online right-wing. At this point much of right-wing internal lingo seems about as incomprehensible to anyone outside of the bubble as anything equivalent leftist activist spaces have produced. On the other hand, the same people generally acknowledge that leftist memes (well, the ones that aren't wordy or otherwise too weird) spread around widely and have cultural cachet, ie. actually function as memes.

While this is not really a leftist meme - more like a centrist meme, in a Western context - I've been lately interested in the whole #NAFO ("North Atlantic Fellas Organization") thing. If you haven't encountered it before, it's basically an ongoing online fundraiser for the Georgian Legion, one of the foreign units fighting in the Russo-Ukrainian War on Ukrainian side. It's associated with "fellas", simplistic doge avatars that donators get after donating, and there's a lot of other memetic culture going around, basically based on recycled "NATOwave" slogans and the sort of phrases associated with doges back when doges were actually a fresh meme trend.

Of course I'm extremely online enough to find the whole thing extremely cringe, even if we don't account for the fact that the Georgian Legion might have committed war crimes. At the same time, it's obviously working; there's tons of people donating to this obscure military unit that they possibly might not have never heard of or even thought about otherwise, and it's giving a new identity to online Ukraine supporters. They've even got a clear signal that they're doing something right; the other side is making knockoffs (even when this sort of a thing is done ironically or as a parody, it always tends to strengthen the original meme, from what I've seen).

Currently NAFO is getting pumped by US congressmen and the Ukrainian government, which raises questions as to how organic it is, but it seemed to have a fair bit of organic spread even before this happened. Even if it's all some sort of an intelligence-originated OP, those still need some sort of a fertile soil online and some success in getting the memetics to work just right to get going.

If not Trump, then who?

That's a terrible line of thought. «If not Putin then who?!» for 20 years straight is how Russia got into this mess. Authoritarians like to exploit the sense of existential anxiety, the limbic, system-1 dread: it makes the electorate desperate to hold tight to the closest semi-viable thing they can feel, let it even be a straw; and then the aspiring Führer's only remaining task is to always be close. It's not a hard one too. The second part of Putin's formula is «never swap horses while crossing the stream». The stream never ends.

Trump's no Putin or Xi or Erdogan or even Orban, but he's certainly circling the same attractor.

«If not Putin then who?!» for 20 years straight is how Russia got into this mess.

That's availability bias. The fact that the person in this category you remember the most was terrible doesn't mean that such people are, in general, terrible. And your caterory is pretty weird anyway. Exactly how do Trump and Putin get put in the same category?

No, this is not availability bias, this is calling out a crude rhetorical trick with an obvious example, and also a reasonable heuristic. A platform based on the purported indispensability of some clearly unexceptional man makes him suspect beyond his other shortcomings. There always is a «then who», often a step away from the Great Leader. In Putin's case, Medvedev had been portrayed as a bumbling liberal seat-warmer, but he had presided over arguably the most prosperous and nicest period in all of Russian history, and one of the less contentious military triumphs. Why would he deserve less credit? If he deserves equal credit, why would it be catastrophic to stick with him instead? (And yes, of course he was a seat-warmer. That's part of the point).

Exactly how do Trump and Putin get put in the same category?

There are meaningful similarities in presentation, if nothing else. However, I am referring to the fact that «If not Trump, then who?» is literally one name-swap away from the slogan Если не Путин, то кто? (If not Putin then who?) which was, in this exact form, the symbol of faith of nascent Putinism.

In fact we could say that Trump is worse than Putin a priori, if we leave Putin's consequences out of it. Trump's only unique selling feature now is his brand, and even that's not clearly positive because a) half the country loathes him and b) he has not converted his appeal into a competent team and network that'd allow him to pursue his policies, and is clearly satisfied with toothless adulation from the rallies and online fandom. Everything he has done (like appointing Justices) would have been done by another Republican in his seat. I believe that from a red triber's perspective, DeSantis is unironically a better bet, because he's not that despised and is a savvier operator, while sharing many of core ideas of Trumpism.

often a step away from the Great Leader

I don't want someone elected president who is a poor leader. There's an extremely fine line between a great leader and a Great Leader and you'd have to be better at articulating the difference before I'd seriously consider that a claim that someone is the latter to be anything but a boo light. (And if by "Great Leader", you mean "a lowercase great leader, who is divisive", I'll laugh.)

I am referring to the fact that «If not Trump, then who?» is literally one name-swap away from the slogan Если не Путин, то кто? (If not Putin then who?) which was, in this exact form, the symbol of faith of nascent Putinism.

This is a poor argument. Similarity of slogan proves nothing.

And you can't have a slogan "one name swap away" in another language because your ability to word the translation differently gives you an extra degree of freedom when doing comparisons.

because he's not that despised

Trump is not despised in a vacuum. He's despised because any red who had a noticeable chance of winning and took too many red positions, in the age of social media and leftist control of conventional media, would be equally despised.

And this is the political equivalent of the heckler's veto. It makes no sense to oppose someone because his opponents hate him.

And you can't have a slogan "one name swap away" in another language because your ability to word the translation differently gives you an extra degree of freedom when doing comparisons.

I testify that this translation is exactly word for word, and the phrasing is not tortured into this form in any way.

Even I know that it can be phrased using the word "whom", or have the word order changed.

That would fall under torturing the phrasing.

I'm sure there was some advocate of secular dictatorship in 1790s France who remained staunchly opposed to Napoleon all the way through 1815 because "Well not like that"

You only live once and you if you wait on principle you'll come to your grave having spent your life waiting. You dance with the girl at the ball.

I'll grant that you only live once [citation needed], however Americans have presidential elections every four years, with dozens of grifters to choose from in the primaries, and there is such a thing as the optimal stopping theorem. Stopping too early can be catastrophic.

I understand the desperation. Trump was the only one in a long while who threw the right-wingers a bone. But 2016 anti-establishment sentiment, roused by decades of cruder deceit, was demanding meatier concessions.

The thing is, the regular state of those elections is choosing between red puppet and blue puppet.

Trump and populists in general represent an alternative to that. The possibility of a drainage of the swamp, if you will.

Those are not supposed to be available in "democracy". By design. So people will cling to the rare opportunity, however doomed it was from the start

Is it really a sign of leftist hugboxing when you say "That's pretty cool!" to a discord friends' mediocre blog post?

Not on its own certainly, but that's why it's also called lovebombing - the sensation of love is so constant and so overwhelming that you forget about how miserable you felt before it (the term comes from abusive relationships, I'm not implying every leftist is miserable if not for the affection of their peers).

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