If you aren’t a fascist (or fascist affiliate), this has been a great week. If you are, well, a) kinda crazy that you’re reading Aftermath, and b) hopefully you've learned some hard lessons. Turns out, no amount of reverse-engineering fandom from first principles or listening to the deranged ramblings of a racist roach king could salvage a truly dire midterm slate. How did the online right so badly misread the room? On the latest Aftermath Hours, we discuss.
This time around, we celebrate the stunning series of midterm wins Democrats picked up across the country, but don’t worry, this is still a podcast about video games and other nerd stuff, so we keep things close to home: Why did the right (or at least, brain-poisoned X users) think memes about Anakin Skywalker and a gender-swapped version of Draco Malfoy would turn the tide in their favor? And what was the end result of right-wing media spending a full election cycle fixating on Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer, instead of their own candidates?
Also, less significant but still funny: How did we end up in a situation where Halo composer turned sexist, homophobic asshole Marty O’Donnell lost an election while former Dragon Ball Z composer Nathan M. Johnson won a separate election? Lastly, Chris extols the virtues of Queen’s Domain, and we talk about our favorite video game secrets.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. You can also watch it on YouTube. If you like what you hear, leave a review (or sub to our YouTube channel) so that we don’t have to become composers who ultimately pursue a career in politics.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Nathan: Hasan’s stream attracted over 200,000 concurrent viewers, and meanwhile you had Asmongold—who for the better part of Trump 2 has been at least in terms of raw viewership (with bots included) beating Hasan—at 50,000. That’s a big number on Twitch, but he was dwarfed by Hasan’s coverage of all of this.
I think there are a few reasons for that. One is definitely the vibe shift away from Trump. His second term has been a miserable disaster, and a lot of people are jumping ship. But the other part is that Hasan has been deeply involved in a lot of these campaigns and actually goes outside and does political activism at this point. In so doing—and because of the way he’s been treated by mainstream media and by Republicans and Democrats alike—he’s become kind of a main character in this whole news cycle as well.
So of course people were like “How is he going to react to this?” They weren’t just watching purely for coverage; they were like “He’s one of the characters, too. He’s firsthand.” If you look at how things played out on election night, Hasan’s viewership was second only to, like, NBC, which is absolutely crazy, but also demonstrative of how things work now.
Gita: He also had amazing guests on his stream. He had Ro Khanna on there, and he was talking directly to people who were about to win or just won. That’s content. What was Asmongold doing? Fucking malding for eight hours in his decrepit house.
Nathan: Which is what he always does, and that gets old. Even if you’re looking at people like Hasan as entertainers, [his broadcast had more entertainment value]. I think he’s transcended [the label of entertainer]. For a long time, if you asked him, he’d be like “I’m a political entertainer. I’m not a political figure. I’m not running for office obviously, etc.”
Chris: He wears a suit now.
Nathan: He does wear a suit. But I think in terms of the extent to which he and his community have gotten involved in political campaigns, you no longer can make the argument that he’s purely an entertainer. But even on that basis, I would say that he’s more entertaining than someone like Asmongold, because Asmongold just sits in his house all the time and doesn’t really do anything beyond complain and play video games.
Chris: The joke I made is that the rat on his windowsill got up and started doing “Hello! Ma Baby” like Michigan J. Frog [in Looney Tunes].
Nathan: The rat’s woke now, too.
Chris: The rat’s awake. The rat is dabbing on you.
Gita: Asmongold has been eaten by rats. All the rats are sick. They’ve thrown up all over.
Chris: The rats are gay, too.
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