After 6 months of anticipation, Natalie Wynn (aka Contrapoints) has finally brought out another video. Her 1.38 million subscribers have been waiting for her to come back. The fervour-filled wait inspired tweets like this from her loyal fans.
This video called ‘Envy’ is the sequel to the Youtube video ‘Justice’ from September of 2020. This video covered punishment, abolition and how that intersects with internet cultures. In the typical humorous ContraPoints style, she delivered all of this with a bunch of jokes while dressed in a catgirl outfit.
Her new video covers envy, resentment-based politics, and how that specifically interfaces with online cultures. This is something she discussed a little in a Guardian interview she had in June: “The whole internet is about jealousy,” she continued. “It creates such animosity between people because it’s all about people envying each other. It’s so unhealthy in every possible way. I’m working on a video about this – envy – which is an interesting topic because of social media, which is all about promoting envy and making people unhappy with what they are and what they have.” She said she’d been reading up on Buddhism in preparation.
In Envy she particularly hones in on thinkers like Friedrich Nietzche, Andrea Dworkin and Aristotle, drawing very heavily on her philosophy knowledge. The production values are clearly heightened with her range of dramatic scenes and outfits ranging from a Marie Antoinette dress to the returning catgirl outfit from the previous video. She also imitates different styles of Youtube creator like make-up artists and Mukbang creators. This video also alludes to the times where she has faced both critique and harassment before, like for her inclusion of the controversial Buck Angel in a video, but never explicitly draws those links.
Wynn has been a large presence in the Youtube space, particularly in the colloquially named Breadtube – a loose group of left-wing streamers which includes creators like Hbomberguy and Lindsay Ellis and her absence from the space over the past few months has certainly been felt.
It has yet to be seen how fans will react, but given the gargantuan effort that seems to have gone into this over 100-minute video, it seems like she’s going take some time off to ‘touch grass’ so fans may have another wait ahead of them.
