60
Matt is back on latest chapo ep
(hexbear.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
60 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13967 readers
600 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
while i know it's been made clear he won't just "become the old Matt again", you can tell he's using his big broken brain's neuroplasticity to rewire stuff.
he's basically learning to process language in parts of the brain that don't normally do it. if he's trying to convey more complex ideas he does this kind of word association. it's not grammatically correct obviously but you can tell what he's trying to convey. and then sometimes he'll associate one word with another, poetically, in his "strokes of genius" poem style.
as weird as this sounds it's like he's learning to conversate while peaking on a hallucinogen (this will make sense only to those who have experienced it)
he's still young and incredibly smart i think he will eventually weave these new pathways together into a crazy jumbled mess that works. just like how individuals have lost entire brain regions to trauma and eventually other regions replicate the original function.
compared to his first appearance on the show (post incident) though he's recovered amazingly
you will never get the old Matt back, but a new one will be reborn!!
(i am just a wistful hypothesizing nerdy girl please if i'm way off base or this seems ableist let me know)
it's what the old matt would have wanted and also seemed to spend a lot of time dreading
i agree. i only watched a few cushVlogs but i was aware of what he was feeling.
maybe during his explorations he tapped into some subconscious, autonomic function that knew there was an issue.
too bad our bodies don't have built in diagnostic systems, instead you just get "vague sense of impending doom after doing acid"
paradoxically he may have trained his brain for this exact thing, by both exploring these alternate pathways and supercharging his neuroplasticity.
I think you're good, though I think it also depends a lot on what "the old Matt" means, since yeah he's different now, but it seems possible (especially hearing his poetry and about his book) that much of his actual personality, though it might have been changed by the trauma and hardship he's experienced, was not destroyed by the stroke. It comes across very differently because his tools for communicating were absolutely fucked, but a lot of what's actually in there in terms of who he is seems to have survived. Not that I knew him or know him, of course.
But if you mean not "Matt" the human but "Matt" the podcast persona, then I agree that that's probably mostly gone because it was so defined by his idiosyncratic communication style, his speed, his range of expression, and so on. It's super parasocial of me, but I'm mostly just glad that Matt the human seems to have held on to himself despite what he went through.
yeah i meant the podcast persona. i know he's still there, thats why i used the hallucinogen analogy.
he's the same person just in a new, altered state of consciousness that he has to adapt to
but the only personality change i've seen is has kind of accepted his own helplessness, sort of jokerfied, but this is absolutely understandable as traumatic response not brain injury
As someone who has more than a few times eaten an irresponsible amount of mushrooms I agree with that analogy.
lol yes. both that and LSD for me.
relearn how to use language, relearn what constitutes being an individual being is, relearn the concept of self - but all accelerated and time dilated at the same time
the mere thought of going through that again is exhausting me
Think I might get some tomorrow now actually
good luck! enjoy the brain zone