This Video Totally Nails How It Feels To Be the One Friend Who Doesn’t Listen to Podcasts

I don’t know why, but listening to audio through my headphones kind of freaks me out. Maybe it was all those long car rides with my parents as my father listened to sports talk radio. Maybe it was the anxiety associated with the annual hearing test we had to do in elementary school (I had a lot of anxiety in elementary school). Whatever it was, it has made my adult life — especially as someone who works in political media — sort of uncomfortable because everyone else is consuming this stuff constantly.

I envy people who can listen to audiobooks at the gym. I know I’m missing out on some genuinely funny and informative stuff, too. Heck, two of my best friends have a radio show that I’ve wrangled up the courage to listen to, but even that can’t get me over my general squeamishness about disembodied voices.

Today, I found a video from Above Average that really expresses how it feels to be me. If you’re someone else who doesn’t listen to podcasts, you’re going to appreciate this.

“Um, we’re all pod people here, Amy,” is a line that really resonated with me, you know? That’s exactly how it feels to tell other politics nerds that I don’t really do podcasts or talk radio. Above Average’s cast even name-dropped podcasts like WTF With Marc Maron, which is literally something that has happened to me before.

Look, it isn’t that I haven’t given it a shot. In middle school, I tried to get into MuggleCast (which, in retrospect, is sort of yikes material) and I drank the Serial Kool-Aid for two episodes, but what this video describes — “we like a dry, low-quality recording of someone else’s thoughts stuffed into our brain” — is pretty accurate, and I just could never get over the scratchy sounds, spotty audio, and vocal fry.

Podcasts can be well done, for sure, but I don’t think they’ll ever be my jam. Sadly, like CrossFit, bulletproof coffee, Breaking Bad, paleo diets, and not using an eReader, podcasts have been elevated to a godlike status by their cult-y devotees, so until I give in, I’m the odd one out.

Still, I’m not odd to the point of not getting (some of) the references in the above video. Check it out to see a great lampooning of podcast culture, including manic cult leader Ira Glass, a shrine to Sarah Koenig, and the unflappable optimism of Serial fans who are sure Season 3 will be better.

Oh, and it is definitely worth mentioning that while I was writing this, Mediaite’s own Sam Reisman came back from his lunch break, set his phone down, and said, “Ugh, you have to listen to this new podcast I found.”

No. I’m not kidding. We’re all pod people here.

[image via screengrab]

For more from Lindsey, follow her on Twitter.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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