ContraPoints is an elegant, whip-smart middle finger to the putrefying swamps of the internet “Hail mortals, I come to thee from my fairy grove to bring thee tidings of great woe,” says a glitter-speckled woman flapping a pair of iridescent wings in the midst of a faux-forest, her otherwise naked body strategically festooned in butterflies. “Western culture is being destroyed — by cucks, and by gender bending, intoxication, and sodomy,” she intones solemnly. “You know, things that have never happened in Europe.” ContraPoints, whose real name is Natalie Wynn, is known for slick, moodily lit YouTube videos that draw hundreds of thousands of views, where she brings a leftist perspective to a variety of hot-button issues — things like structural racism, Marxism, transgender politics, and the alt-right. With a wink, she calls herself “one of YouTube’s leading B-List transsexuals.” For a time, Wynn pursued a PhD in academic philosophy, but she left when she found the academy too stifling and hidebound; in this light, ContraPoints is a gloriously effective act of revenge, redistributing the wealth of knowledge in digestible form. But her affect and persona are what made her brainy, insightful videos popular. More than most of her contemporaries on “LeftTube,” Wynn has a style; her editorial signature is an unmistakably ornate flourish. Her ContraPoints persona is decadent in the mold of Oscar Wilde by way of Weird Twitter: sexily confident and fearlessly indulgent, with orations delivered from plush chairs and scented baths. Her style extends to the postmodern rococo of her set design and the bewildering variety of costumed characters she plays on her show, giving us something like Platonic philosophical dialogues in the idiom of social media.
