never been in my head. Even my mother, my primary carer once I left the mental hospital, had to tow a fine line between trying to keep me alive and appeasing my illness, or else know that I would run away and kill myself.
And throughout the majority of this time, I KNEW I WAS DELUSIONAL. Knowing you are delusional does not make it go away. This is because, ultimately, none of us really live in the real world. We live in our internal world, which interacts with a perception of this external world. But the more delusional you are, at least for me and my experience, the less relevant or important the accurate perception of the external world is. What takes up far more of your attention is the cacophony of thoughts and ideas and abuse that originates from the internal world.
Getting better has made me very perceptive of the fact that most people have never had to do this. I believe that most people follow the assumption that if they strongly honestly believe something to be true, then it must be, just like I did when I was eight years old. I think that's the reason for religion, for fascism, for utopian communism. We have brains that are built for seeking patterns, even when they are not there. We have brains that are motivated to action, with less thought given to what the side-effects of that action might be. We have brains hard-wired for confirmation bias and egos that get hurt when we are wrong. We are desperate to feel accepted by society but need some way of rationalising the inescapable feeling that we are rejected from and victimised by it. Some, like me, are more susceptible than others, but we are all hard-wired for delusional thinking. There is no hard border between a healthy perspective and a psychotic worldview, other than what is socially acceptable.
I don't relate to a lot of the things that Natalie said about dualism. Maybe this is the result of the way their psychosis interacts with their religion for these people. Or maybe it's an oversimplification on Natalie's part. But it's fascinating to see that there is an infectiousness to conspiratorial psychosis. And it's also fascinating to consider the implications of its infectiousness- does it undermine electoral democracy? Are the structures of human psychology that enable conspiratioral delusions the very same that enable the existence of complex human society? Are there any ideologies that are completely safe from losing touch with objective reality?
https://redd.it/1jmovn9
@r_ContraPoints
I think Twilight was Natalie's best work to date
I think it's the sharpest and smartest piece of intellectual property she has ever put out, it's so well researched and well thought out it's basically a thesis on human sexuality in the form of a YouTube video essay and I love how she kinda broke out of the western philosophical tradition in it at times and brought out eastern influences too
https://redd.it/1jlzogp
@r_ContraPoints
What makes contrapoints stand out -- less sanctimonious self-righteousness, more recognition her own imperfection
https://redd.it/1jm0tkn
@r_ContraPoints
Audibly Cackled at This
https://redd.it/1jj0k5s
@r_ContraPoints
CONSPIRACY | Contrapoints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqkK0RLNkI
https://redd.it/1jiy41r
@r_ContraPoints
I need it
Omg i cant express how excited i am. And i also dont have much to do until tonight. So i cant wait.
https://redd.it/1jiqle3
@r_ContraPoints
Contrapoints coming up in real life. Legislature session testimony
https://www.youtube.com/live/cdpVrZCdLMU?si=6DwcwRKsoxmgTgRn
https://redd.it/1jirx55
@r_ContraPoints
Apparently Germaine Greer was super annoying
So I’m reading a book about the radical women’s liberation movement in the US and, as the tittle implies, the author is less then impressed with Germaine Greer.
My only knowledge of Greer was the quote of hers that kicked off one of the videos, so I kinda felt trepidation when I saw her name. But evidently the usefulness of her work to the movement was mainly the fact that her book was less radical then several others that were published before, and thus appeared more palatable to general American audiences.
The more you know
https://redd.it/1jidjps
@r_ContraPoints
We appreciate queen Mother 🙇♂️🙏
Just wanna say we are so grateful for Natalie. Truly no one does it like and i feel incredibly lucky to be alive at this time to enjoy Natalie's art.
Natalie if you're reading this, THANK you so much for putting insane amount of effort into making these videos, we truly appreciate your hard work 🙏🙇♂️
Sorry for the glaze but i feel like we've been a little annoying while anticipating the new video, we kept saying things like "oh it's taking so long" etc, etc, it's like we forgot how much work it's takes to make something as perfect as a contra video.
P.s: English is not my first language sorry if there is a mistake.
https://redd.it/1ji90i8
@r_ContraPoints
Feel like we all should have learned by now
https://redd.it/1jicjlq
@r_ContraPoints
bring out the fine china babe
https://redd.it/1ji2cc7
@r_ContraPoints
In the leadup to the new video, what do you think is one of Natalie's most underrated video? What video do you keep coming to again and again?
For me, the answer to both those questions are "Are Traps Gay?". I think its pretty underrated or at least underdiscussed in the community (which does make sense its pretty old). I really love the section on the experiences of trans women dating men because it exactly reflects my fears a straight trans woman who has yet to start dating. I just come back to it over and over again. Honorable mention to "The Hunger" which is one of the few modern Contrapoints videos using her socratic dialogue and honestly I miss that style. I understand her style has moved on and I do like her modern content but I find stuff like "The Left", "The Aesthetic", and "Tiffany Tumbles" much more intellectually stimulating than "Cringe", "Envy", and "Opulence". Love all those videos, i mean my favorite video is also in that style but the increase runtime of these videos have left characters like Justine, Tabby, and Jackie Jackson behind, who i miss dearly.
https://redd.it/1jhrofj
@r_ContraPoints
Good recent video essays to watch while we wait?
Since we have to wait until at least tomorrow before the new video, what are some good videos essays from the past few months that I can put on tonight?
https://redd.it/1jhlvay
@r_ContraPoints
Mother has spoken
https://bsky.app/profile/contrapoints.bsky.social/post/3lkyamzd5as27
https://redd.it/1jhdoak
@r_ContraPoints
Did You Know There’s A Mother Under The Ocean’s Blvd | ContraPoints
https://redd.it/1jhdqv0
@r_ContraPoints
The infectiousness of psychotic delusions. (tw mental illness)
I enjoyed the new Contrapoints video on conspiricism. I can't imagine the headfuckery it took to research such a topic, especially through such a sincere and sympathetic lens. Because that is the really unique part that took me by surprise in this video. The fact that she framed these people as victims, as much as perpetrators of the current political and cultural zeitgeist. The fact that she got me to relate to these people.
When I was young, my mind was rapidly consumed my psychotic anorexia. I don't know if it was because I was an autistic eight year old in a loving family that prioritised my happiness, inadvertantly making me equate expressing and spreading joy with virtuousness- or if this is the experience of every person, regardless of age and background, when they first decent into pyschosis- but it convinced me and everyone around me that it was extremely real. The illness, for a long time, wouldn't even admit within my own head that it's goal was to release me from the sadness and chaos of being alive that I had secretly longed for to some extent for as long as I could remember. All I experienced was the real world becoming increasingly hazy and phoney, whilst the internal world, controlled by the anorexic voices, playing the game, became more real and tangible. All I experienced was having extremely real panic attacks every time I tried to eat food, more and more time at the hospital as they tested me for cancer and diabetes and all manner of other physical causes for my rapid weight loss, all the while there was a certain peaceful relief in slipping away. Spending more and more of my time asleep and away from the turmoil as my metabolism shut down, my resting heart beat eventually being as low as 25bpm.
I'm going to skip over the really horrible decade that comes after that, because what is interesting is the loss of the self to psychosis, less so than the process of slowly and painfully rebuilding ones own mind to escape it. But imagine a story with multiple years in mental hospital, multiple suicide attempts, rights stripped away from me, relapses, no independence, near-constant panick attacks and a life that for over a decade was not worth living and that I did not believe ever would be. My consolation all that time was that one day, inevitably, I would succeed in my goal of escape.
My point isn't to get pity here but to explain how having experienced the mechanism of psychosis makes me relate to the conspiricists Natalie talks about. The psychosis did not allow my mind to question it's infallibility during the consumption. By the time I had lived in it long enough to wonder if it was true, it was already controlling everything I did. I was already screaming, "just let me die, why won't you let me die" while being restrained in a mental hospital. There was no longer the possibility of ever going back to the life of a little girl who likes drawing and tries hard in school and goes and plays fairies in the park with her best friend and climbs trees with her brothers.
I've spent most of my life with a delusional worldview, centred around beliefs that I was fundamentally not good enough, to be alive as me was fundamentally to suffer, others were willing to lie to me beacuse they did not want to confront that I would be better off dead, and that thinness, extreme displine and self-punishment was the best way to cope whilst being forced to live on. This, like the worldviews of the conspiracists was an all-encompassing ideology, and particularly that last point about thinness involved wild mental gynmatics to connect the most trrival shit into it, and that drew lines between invisible dots based on extrapolations of nuggets of truth. It was an isolating game of me vs them. Doctors and psychiatrists who didn't want to reinforce the worldview as a whole would deny even my nuggets of truth, or else I would infer that they were trying to, and this would undermine their influence entirely in my mind. There were liars. They didn't understand. They had
Conspiracy feels like a return to form
I’ve heard some somewhat mixed opinions on conspiracy, which I can kinda understand, but it feels like Natalie is embracing the YouTube video essay aesthetics that she popularized.
There’s a sense of whimsy in the presentation, her dressing up in drag-adjacent kooky characters, that I haven’t seen her do in videos for a while.
She’s discussing a deeply online phenomenon that actually has roots in non-Internet culture.
The set design, topic, costuming, and delivery all seem very Natalie.
I really enjoyed it.
https://redd.it/1jm2j6w
@r_ContraPoints
How can you be this stupid? [CONSPIRACY 2:19:13]
https://redd.it/1jm7lgs
@r_ContraPoints
THE VIDEO DROPPED THIS IS NOT A DRILL THE VIDEO IS HERE
https://redd.it/1jiy4hi
@r_ContraPoints
Opulence rewatch and Elon Musk
https://redd.it/1jiw44v
@r_ContraPoints
When did you guys discover Contrapoints?
As we wait for the new major motion picture, I wanted to know when everyone discovered Contra and started following her work? My first video was Cringe in May of 2020, during the thick of the pandemic, and I've been following her ever since. What about everyone else?
https://redd.it/1jitwyn
@r_ContraPoints
OVXX dropped the new music for the video
https://redd.it/1jiksc8
@r_ContraPoints
Nyatalie approved.
https://redd.it/1jil239
@r_ContraPoints
One more daaaaaay
https://redd.it/1ji3x24
@r_ContraPoints
I have been spamming F5 on this page for 2 hours now.
https://redd.it/1jhvd9g
@r_ContraPoints
Revisitting old topics
Would be cool if contrapoints reexamined older topics. Especially her stuff thats no longer available online. Also society has changed so much in the last 5 years that new perspectives on old topics would be really interesting. Like her fascism video is fascinating in how mask off the us has become
https://redd.it/1jhp7dl
@r_ContraPoints
Roll on Sunday
https://redd.it/1jhj1eg
@r_ContraPoints
New video drops tomorrow!
https://redd.it/1jhdqi2
@r_ContraPoints
What time do you think it’s gonna drop
https://redd.it/1jh6xeh
@r_ContraPoints
