Media Masochists

Let's discuss the latest episode of HBO's White Lotus Season 2. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss the show Loki on Disney+ as we continue our commitment to watching and reviewing Phase 4 Marvel. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

So Elon has officially bought Twitter. How does this affect your life if at all? What are your thoughts and predictions? How do you feel about how other oeoooe are reacting to this? Share your thoughts! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss Netflix's recent movie Blonde. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

There has never been anything like the She-Hulk finale. We have witness history being made. Talk to us about it. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

T and Q discuss the downward spiral of movies and TV shows that “aren't for you,” yet blame you for their failure when you don't tune in Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We talk about the discourse around Ime Udoka controversy and what we can learn from it. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We talk about the MSNBC recent segment where Tiffany Cross repeated the 2016 and 2018 and 2020 playbook of black political pundits blaming Black men and their traitorous oppressor envy for Democratic losses. Relevant clips for context: Original statement by Tiffany Cross: https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/1571881050900512768?s=20&t=0bsqqJ0HjMppcMU_UDJsvA Follow up response on her show by Jason Johnson after the backlash: https://twitter.com/crossconnection/status/1573691586873008128?s=46&t=wfZVsgnRgVzJDRgW5DVIGw Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Do you care about the culture war battles over changing races and genders in these new reboots? Share your thoughts. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss the Amazon Prime series A League of Their Own. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss the newest episode of everyone's favorite sitcom: She-Hulk Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

How are you liking She-Hulk so far? We discuss the first two episodes. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Continuing our plowing through Marvel Phase 4, we discuss the last Dr. Strange movie. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Last room got nuked so this is a continuation. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Trevor continue's to take on Q's challenge to live up to the “Masochists” part of the show name and watch all the big IP content out there that he's been refusing to for the past few years (Marvel Phase 4, new Star Trek, Disney+ Star Wars, Stranger Things). Today we discuss Wandavision. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Joe Biden and his White House have recently been accused of trying to gaslight America about the financial state it's in by “redefining” the meaning of “recession.” https://nypost.com/2022/07/28/recession-another-victim-of-democrats-rewriting-of-the-english-language/amp/ Wikipedia even shut down the editing of the term “Recession” following the White House statement. https://www.newsweek.com/wikipedia-editing-recession-joe-biden-rejects-claims-economy-1729065?amp=1 But what about your day to day life? Has the effect of recession been affecting your life in any way? Another thing we want to consider, given the name of this show, is how it will affect media. Many predict media companies are going to feel the pinch especially their employees https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/recession-jitters-are-making-media-execs-extra-cautious/amp. An age of austerity is already been predicted for streaming services too: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-07-04/the-age-of-peak-tv-is-ending-an-age-of-austerity-is-beginning. A lot of talk is about how a disaster is looming for Hollywood: https://youtu.be/iy-vwbq6GEM. Let's talk about it all. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss the new movie by Jordan Peele Nope. Join us and share your thoughts. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

In preparation for reviewing all the awful-looking Phase 4 Marvel movies and TV shows in the coming months, we're revisiting Avengers Endgame, which Trevor feels is bad and is the reason Marvel Films as a franchise is in decline. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Trevor and Q discuss the Tiara Mack's…performance on TikTok, and the broader trend of juvenile antics as a cheap knock-off for cultural and political substance. Link to the controversial video in question: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRr4L8TN/?k=1 Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We talk about the second half of the Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 1 and how we feel about the show in general now that the whole season is wrapped. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

The original room got nuked https://callin.com/link/nKqcpEezcX so here's the continuation Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Recently Sam Adler-Bell did an article critiquing modern woke culture entitled Unlearning the Language of Wokeness https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/unlearning-the-language-of-wokeness.html. It caused quite a stir with many people accusing it of being left-wing fascist apologia while others said it went as far as putting marginalized people in harm's way and endangering their well-being. One of the critical threads with the most traction on Twitter was this one: https://twitter.com/dnbrgr/status/1535386239297236994?s=21&t=7GACuP_Pn7olYBAKAdvwpQ. Also this one (although the author deleted a bunch of tweets from it) https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1535620271738060803?s=21&t=7GACuP_Pn7olYBAKAdvwpQ. Is the article as bad as people say, Is it good? Does the reaction to the article prove the article's point? Or is it proof the article is bad and victim blames? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Felicia Sonmez recently had a weeklong battle with her employer Washington Post after her coworker Dave Weigel retweeted a sexist joke. Her weeklong battle polarized a lot of people, with some feeling she was taking a stand against workplace toxicity, sexism, and misogynistic abuse, as well as apathy on the part of her corporate bosses to the plight of marginalized people in the workplace. Others saw her behavior as victim bullying, where she was using the language of social justice and her gender as weapons by which to terrorize and abuse her coworkers and employer. By the end of the week, she was fired, which polarized the discourse even more. Full breakdown here: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/inside-the-washington-posts-social-media-meltdown There have also been other examples, such as at Netflix, where workers staged walkouts over Dave Chappelle: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/20/netflix-employees-activism-walkout-dave-chappelle-controversy. A trans employee leaked a memo and was fired, which many found unfair: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/15/22728337/netflix-fires-organizer-trans-employee-walkout-dave-chappelle Also, some trans employees crashed an executive meeting over the Chappelle specials and got suspended and eventually reinstated: https://www.forbes.com/sites/teakvetenadze/2021/10/11/netflix-suspends-employees-for-crashing-meeting-amid-chappelle-transphobia-controversy/amp/. Throughout it all one of the transwomen continued to bash the company continually and as of this writing has finally been fired, which they seem betrayed by. Netflix also fired a bunch of minority lifestyle marketing bloggers they hired, and it was framed by said employees and the media as some huge moral betrayal of the antiracism movement https://www.thedailybeast.com/tudum-writers-cruelly-laid-off-by-netflix-speak-out-i-felt-like-adam-scott-in-severance. After years of these workplace activism battles Netflix announced to employees that if they don't like the content, they are free to quit: https://fortune.com/2022/05/16/netflix-culture-guidelines-update-for-employees-following-dave-chappelle-backlash/amp/ At Amazon an “internal activist group” staged a die-in outside Amazon headquarters to protest what they felt were the sale of transphobic books: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-protest-transphobic-books-2022-6?amp Plenty of other stories are abound in the media these days. What are the limits and distinctions between legitimate workplace activism and worker rights and unrealistic entitlement and cry bullying delusions regarding what one is owed as an employee of a corporation? Are these legitimate gripes that should be protected in a fair workplace, or an overstepping of labor rights that is beyond what any employee should reasonably expect? Let's talk about it. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

I wanted to discuss with people their experiences with trigger warnings and under what circumstances, if ever, do you ever find the beneficial? When do you find them beneficial? How do you proceed to consume a book, tv show, or opinion once you've been giving a trigger warning up front? Where are the places you think they belong and where do you think they don't? Are they an example of progressives embracing trends commonly associated with the right (warning labels, advisory ratings, censorship) but in a wokewashed way? And anything else you want to discuss regarding them. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Moses Ingram, a Black woman who plays Reva in Disney's Star Wars television show Obi-Wan Kenobi recently said in an interview that she was warned by the studio to expect racist backlash to her new role. Then as time went on she then announced on Instagram Stories that the racist backlash had begun and showed a handful of messages she got as proof. The Star Wars official Twitter account then publicly denounced the coming racist backlash and vaguely threatened anyone who dared troll Ingram, while series star Ewan McGregor also shot a video in his car denouncing hate. The media then ran with the story. This is a thread Trevor did on Twitter expressing his doubts on whether this controversy is real or not vs. a publicity stunt: https://twitter.com/ChampagneSharks/status/1529200838727581696?s=20&t=bXK2Y6BG0cWpFPflAxvDDw Now that Q. and Trevor have seen the first three episodes, they discuss whether or not the show is good and if they think the racist backlash is real or a marketing stunt. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

The second half of Season 3 of Atlanta has wrapped. What are your thoughts? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We talk about the Dave Chappelle incident with John Mulaney, the current liberal obsession with George Carlin, and whatever is on your mind. A link to the Chappelle story: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/stefficao/john-mulaney-dave-chappelle-anti-trans-jokes Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Stock market and crypto are crashing and racially motivated mass shooters are popping off in Buffalo? How is everyone holding up emotionally during all this? I want to know. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We have Sean Campbell back on to discuss his most recent story on Black Lives Matter, specifically the second story discussing the $6 million mansion, hiring private investigators to find dirt on their critics, and their claim of using the mansion primarily as an influencer house and content studio. We also see if any of Sean's views have shifted between writing both stories in light of revelations contained in the second story and BLM's responses to both articles. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Talking week in review and whatever is on your minds. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Tonight we discuss the new movie The Batman with Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright and Paul Dano, but we also discuss if we're sick of superhero adaptations in general. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

The new season of Atlanta has been polarizing so far, and the recent Donal Glover tweets and interviews haven't helped his goodwill with the public any either. Today we are weighing in to see how people feel about this new season. Is it still good? Has the quality dropped? If it's bad, is it bad in a way that makes one doubt whether it was ever really that good to begin with? Any and all opinions welcome! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We're talking about two things that had social media buzzing this week, the BLM article where yet another mansion was revealed, this one apparently intended to be a social justice influencer house, and Donald Glover's interview with himself in, appropriately enough, Interview magazine. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We are talking about the infamous Will Smith slapping of Chris Rock once again. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss Will Smith smacking Chris Rock Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

People keep asking us to discuss this show. We have been refusing (well mainly Trevor has been refusing), but since the show is called Media Masochists, we should back that up and try this show. Join us and share your thoughts. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

There is a new show on Peacock called “Bust Down” and the creator posted a clip of the show to get people interested and as you can tell by the replies and quote tweets it didn't go over well: https://twitter.com/langstonkerman/status/1501959262737633280?s=21. It seems like a lot of these new Black shows tend to be divisive among Black people in a way old Black shows didn't seem to be, but one thing we noticed when sampling Bust Down was how it felt like it was trying hard to be a white stoner cringe humor show with elements of It's Always Sunny, just with black cultural signifiers. Similarly, the show Abbott Elementary felt very much like The Office, Modern Family, or Parks and Rec and even used a veteran Office director for the pilot. Southside similarly had a type of tone as did Insecure where the humor arguably did not feel as “black” as some iconic black shows of the past but instead seemed to be aimed at being alternative or trying to prove that black culture is not a monolith. We wanted to discuss whether the humor of new black comedies is less “authentically” black somehow, or if that's even a valid question to ask, and if they are is that necessarily unfunny and a bad thing? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

So today is the Jussie Smollett sentencing. Now that all of it is over what have we learned? What was this case and it's impact at the end of the day? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

A tweet that recently went viral on Twitter had us wondering whether there is a backlash to the backlash on West Wing, and if so, why? Have the awful quality of and the damage caused by the West Wing been overstated? We're going to discuss the topic with Aaron Thorpe, Josh Olson, Dave Anthony and Luke Savage. Basically, the story is that last week Aaron Thorpe wrote this tweet about Jen Psaki saying West Wing inspired her to enter politics, where he blamed West Wing standom for so much of our bad current political climate: https://twitter.com/paradoomer/status/1496221105274634243. What was surprising was how angry and defensive people got, and it wasn't even just centrist liberal types. Even a lot of irony twitter looking accounts were suddenly acting very normie-ish and defensive of the show based on some of the responses that tweet got. The narratives weren't even always consistent. Many people complained that the problem was that leftists like Aaron were inventing a strawman by blaming the West Wing for awful people entering politics, even though he linked to an article of Psaki explicitly crediting the show with being the reason she entered politics. (An example is here, where this person says no one outside of leftist twitter even cares about West Wing, ignoring the fact that Psaki herself was the one who brought up West Wing and she's not part of leftist Twitter https://twitter.com/bidenbrunch/status/1496681071978725378?s=20&t=SADBiS21sopvVAL13e3Y4A). Another popular narrative was that Aaron was being "too online" and needed to "touch grass" despite the fact that he was citing something Psaki said in the real world (https://twitter.com/opinion_left/status/1496560154606813188?s=20&t=SADBiS21sopvVAL13e3Y4A). I'm not going to list all the weird bad faith arguments but you can get a sense of them from this sample of quote tweets: https://twitter.com/paradoomer/status/1496221105274634243/retweets/with_comments. Anyway, what interested us wasn't to simply litigate yet again how badly the West Wing sucks. We're more interested in discussing the backlash to the backlash. In a world where people are even waking up to the fact that Lin Manuel Miranda and Hamilton suck, one of the worst things Sorkin inspired, why are so many people, some of them even seeming to be irony posters or young people of color (one example I shared above was a 20 year old Black woman) being so damn defensive and angry about the show. Has the Sorkin backlash gone too far to the point where a pushback to the pushback is now necessary as a corrective? Or is this a sign that the scorn has not gone for enough? Show and weigh in! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

There have been a lot of media malpractice going on in the Ukraine crisis and much of it has been endangering innocent lives including those of the medical students who have been trying to escape. We'll discuss all this and more. Examples include Terrell J. Starr, FreeyourmindKid on Twitter, Kalera Stratton and more. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

This is an open session for us all to look back on the last 2+ years and look forward to and predict what's coming next. We are experiencing our second World War III scare (first Syria, now Russia). We are entering year 3 of COVID and it's variants and some form of lockdown. We have been in the middle of a redefining of work and career as we know it with remote work. Working from home has also changed family lives for nuclear families now forced to spend more time together than ever for better or worse. And for single people, dating and courtship has been upended How have you been holding up? How do you think society is holding up? What are you feeling inside? What are you seeing out there? Are we as a society coping well or are we cracking up worse than ever and just haven't realized the full scope of it yet? Are we entering a new normal or is this a temporary setback that's about to be over and that we can all look back at and laugh in 6 months? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We break down the new Bel Air show on Peacock and try to see if it's as bad as the trailers make it seem. We also revisit whether the old Fresh Prince was as good as we remember either. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Recently in response to Joe Rogan's recent controversies, comedian Whitney Cummings tweeted out the following paragraph: “Comedians did not sign up to be your hero. It's our job to be irreverent and dangerous, to question authority and take you through a spooky mental haunted house so you can arrive at your own conclusions. Stay focused on the people we pay taxes to to be moral leaders.” https://twitter.com/whitneycummings/status/1490312297117589504?s=21 In response to this Trevor tweeted out: “Serious question: When did comedians become the troops to themselves? Like when this did insanely high self regard of their own importance to society start?” https://twitter.com/champagnesharks/status/1490580749333970944?s=21 These are but a few of the questions we want to answer today. Why do comedians and their stans, both on the right and the left view comedians with the reverence that normies used to once reserve for the troops. Where does this expectation of “thank you for your service energy” come from, where we've gone from a few singular voices like Richard Pryor, Mort Sahl, Paul Mooney and George Carlin being treated as prophetic truthtellers to the creator of 2 Broke Girls and a podcaster who talks about getting stoned and immersion tanks seeing themselves as revolutionary heroes saving the culture from itself? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We're going to be discussing the New York Magazine article on Black Live Matter and their lack of transparency regarding their finances: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2022/01/black-lives-matter-finances.html. The article is titled “The BLM Mystery: Where Did the Money Go?” by Sean Campbell. We want to discuss the facts unearthed in the article and find out how people feel about Black Lives Matter, past, present and future. Were you a true believer but are now feeling betrayed and disillusioned? Did you always distrust them and just feel like this confirmed everything you always suspected? Did you believe in them before and still believe in them now and think the article is just a hit piece? Do you think they were always in it for the money or did they get corrupted along the way? Will these recent scandals be the undoing not only of the organization but of the individual founders' future careers in media and activism? Share all your thoughts with us on this episode! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We discuss how legacy or mainstream media has been appearing more and more superficial and uncritical in ways that mirror mindless Buzzfeed listicles and boosterism or Tumblr fan blogs (which Buzzfeed articles themselves are beginning to resemble more) that focus on the identity politic statements of a work over the actual quality of the work, as well as getting caught up in cronyism and agendas. We also discuss the clear obsession with preserving access to corporations and big stars that prevents a lot of legacy media sites from ever challenging the status quo or attempting any challenging or hard hitting investigating journalism, leading to “articles” that just seem like barely rewritten press releases. We also discuss how this has affected niche journalism like comic books, video games, television, film and even politics, and how even previously good sites dedicated to genres and hobbies get gobbled up by media conglomerates and become bowdlerized to the point where they just become the Buzzfeed of comics, gaming etc. We also want to discuss if and how independent media like podcasts and YouTube reviewers (both reactionaries and Breadtubers) end up filling the gap, and the pros and cons of those insurgent independent media movements. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

This episode is going to be about whether a disturbing trend exists in modern Black prestige television and movies regarding Black men being seen as expandable. This is especially true in Black media inspired by Black Lives Matter and intersectionality. We'll be using examples from shows and movies like The Hate You Give, Lovecraft Country, Candyman, Watchmen and See You Yesterday. Many have noticed and discussed the trend in recent Black activism where whole movements are created off the bodies of dead Black men. However, the people creating these movements often are not shy about the fact they hold straight Black men of lower socioeconomic status in utter contempt themselves, despite these usually being the exact type of Black men they rise to prominence ostensibly championing after they die. Despite protesting the police executions of these types of Black men after they die, they also tell us that these same men when alive are are violently dangerous to other Black people, hold back the Black community especially black women and queer people, and constantly center themselves and erase and minimize the contributions of others in movements. In academia we see a similar trend happening where even Black researchers are blatantly marginalizing Black men in their scholarship at the expense of other groups of Black people, then weaponizing dog whistles and stereotypes of violent Black men to defend themselves when called on it: https://twitter.com/kebroady/status/1481317407104847880?s=21 Now that we're seeing the activist, journalist, and academic spheres exerting more influences in the entertainment sphere, are these same values of hostility toward straight Black men showing up in these new shows as well? Weigh in whether you agree or disagree. Other examples are welcome also. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Today we discuss whether or not there is something inherent to social justice centered media (movies, tv shows, books, blogs, journalism) that inevitably makes it bad. And if it doesn't have to be bad, meaning we can find examples where something woke is high quality, then why exactly does so much of it torn out awful? Three shows we'll be talking about to start are Hulu's Woke, HBO Max's Love Life, and Paramount Plus's Yellowstone. However listeners are encouraged to bring up any examples they think are relevant in any media category as an example of wokeness done well. Relevant Articles: “The Woke Revolution Will End the Entertainment Industry” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10391261/Hollywood-barely-whisper-wokeness-kill-industry-PETER-KIEFER-PETER-SAVODNIK.html “Yellowstone: the smash-hit TV show that exposed a cultural divide” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/12/yellowstone-the-smash-hit-tv-show-that-exposed-a-cultural-divide Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

We talk about two recent topics: one is Alice Sebold, a white feminist author who was recently revealed to have played a role in sending an innocent Black man to jail for rape for 16 years, and we also discuss a recent scene from the Amazon show Harlem, run by Black writers, where Black barbershops were painted as abusively homophobic and misogynistic unsafe spaces. We ask the question: is the irredeemable threat of straight Black men the main thing white feminists and black liberal elites agree on? Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

T and the Black Male Studies crew tackle a controversial Twitter topic Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com