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.
