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ContraPoints Spells the End of an Era for LeftTube

The winds are blowing a different direction.

A. Khaled
9 min readMay 13, 2019
Shared by Natalie Wynn on Twitter. Courtesy of the New Yorker, by Kate Warren.

ContraPoints was the very first creator I covered on my blog. Back then, it was still when Natalie Wynn was figuring out an identity for her channel-was it going to fit the stereotypical mold of LeftTube and just focus on idealist theory and response videos, or was it going to flip the script and focus more on instruction and teaching rather than shameful moralization? The alternative turned out to be a hybrid of both, but not in the way anyone would’ve anticipated it would pan out.

Natalie Wynn had started out when pioneers of the LeftTube genre had already cemented their presence as — if faint — sole resistors to far-right personalities from having an undisputed monopoly over political discourse on YouTube. Sargon of Akkad, Stefan Molyneux, Paul Joseph Watson — and many more befitting the mold of provocative far-right commentary channels — were basically dominating the field with no sense of rivalry looming on the horizon. A new generation of leftist political commentators have since made a concerted effort to change that, and by far ContraPoints has been the most successful, not only through sheer numbers, but also through her creatives means to instill a craving of knowledge in her audience regardless of political leniency.

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A. Khaled
A. Khaled

Written by A. Khaled

Internet culture scribe with an interest in the digital economy, content creators, media and politics.

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