Deelo

First of all, I really enjoyed this episode, and it made me really look forward to hearing the submissions. Plus I love the heck out of Matt Besser. . Second, Caroline you are awesome, and make some very good points. Thanks for standing up for positivity this and every other time you've done it around these parts. . So for some perspective, there's probably a couple dozen people that post on these forums out of tens of thousands of people that listen to one or more Earwolf shows on a regular basis (I have no idea what the numbers actually are, probably higher than that). For every person that is driven to post something negative publicly there are literally thousands of people that listened to it and enjoyed it thoroughly but say nothing at all. For every person that posts something nice there are also literally thousands of people who echo that opinion but don't say anything at all. There are relatively few people who echo the opinions of the people who post the negative stuff because most people who don't like what they're listening to simply don't listen to it any more. If you want to be encouraged by the internet go look at itunes ratings for many of the podcasts out there, you will find a lot of average 5-star ratings, and relatively few below that, because for the most part the people compelled to rate and review stuff are giving positive reviews and ratings. Does that make the star system very useful? probably not, but it is encouraging nonetheless. . So I'm not sure that the real issue is anonymity, though that definitely makes people a little more likely to be mean, it is that the vocal minority are given a much louder voice than they would otherwise have. Going back to Itunes, the few negative reviews are drowned out by the many more positive, the way they usually are in a real crowd. That is not always the case, particularly on forums like these, and twitter, where the negative stuff tends to have more weight, I think in large part just because people haven't totally been trained to say something when they like stuff as much as they have when they don't like stuff, but I think it is also just that negative comments hit harder. . I have to nitpick on this part, I can't say for sure that there's been a rise in cynicism over the years, and especially driven by the internet, but I strongly suspect there has. I think you could probably back it up by looking at polls about how much people trust things like news and the government and celebrities over the years, but I haven't done the leg work. So maybe it is true that people have always said famous people suck, but I sincerely doubt it, particularly at the levels of today. The internet, and the many and multiple other forms of media out there let that cynicism fester and grow much more than it has in the past mostly because it is given a voice rather than being stifled in the less cynical masses. People have always glommed on when there has been something negative, like a scandal become public or something, I'll admit, but these days there are just so many sources of it that it is free flowing.

@Dirk not to sidetrack too much for your troll, but you seem to have a deep misunderstanding of the concept of free speech. It's not an uncommon one, but still upsetting to see. Speech and a platform on which to speak are two different things and you're confusing them. Plus making unfounded inflammatory accusations has never been protected speech anywhere ever. Throw your opinion out all you want, but realize that you can't always fall back on "that's just my opinion, man" there are lines to be crossed where it is no longer ok in any context. . Now back to the troll. You are correct that word of mouth plays a big part in the spread of Earwolf, however the mouth the words come out of plays a decent part of that. A blatant asshole such as yourself doesn't make for a good representative and you actively boycotting Earwolf is as likely to attract listeners as you praising Earwolf. . I'm absolutely astounded at how seriously you're taking the whole thing, enough to invent conspiracy theories. It's not like the winner is going to walk away with a life changing millions of dollars and be set for life. Literally all the shows featured on the challenge have benefited from increased exposure and Earwolf benefits no matter who wins because of the challenge itself. There is not even any incentive for your conspiracies, they don't make sense. . You're nerdraging because people are criticizing the things that you like and praising things you seem not to like and therefore by proxy calling into question your own opinions and tastes. You're clearly not at all confident in the value of your opinions otherwise this wouldn't bother you. Your anger is only you, it's not righteous or justified. So take a step back and relax.

I would also recommend Topatoco for the t-shirts, it was basically created to solve the exact set of issues you described when they came up in the webcomics world of the early oughts. Plus I've been a fan of Jeffrey Rowland since well before he got into the t-shirt game so I like them as much as I do Earwolf. I know you end up sacrificing a bit of the potential profits that way, but as you have I'm sure noticed as soon as you have more than 1 or 2 designs you're trying to sell your costs go up a lot anyway. You will literally have to pay for space to store and ship the shirts from, plus spend a lot of time managing the logistics and maintaining inventory. So depending on how you can get things set up there's a point where you probably end up making more by offloading it. Never mind being able to focus on more important stuff while still having the merchandise get out there.

Personally, as a listener I do have the context of what shows are and I have yet to come to much of a different conclusion than the judges, except for a couple of times where I dislike something more intensely than they seem to. Adding context doesn't make a bad clip suddenly good, it may make it slightly less bad but most of the criticism still applies. . Second, and most of this is directed at Mark, people like Totally Laime because it's a good podcast. If you don't like it that's cool, but most of the criticism seems to amount to the same thing as not liking a great band simply because it is no longer obscure. I don't think they've gotten any free passes, their clip this week had some problems, but was still noticeably better than several other submissions and was both funny and revealing. . Thirdly, fitting any of these podcasts into categories and then dismissing them because they're in those categories seems especially silly to me. It's like saying, "oh that show is a sitcom and aren't there enough sitcoms around already." Just because a show has a guest on and then talks with the guest doesn't make it the same as another show that has a guest on and then talks with the guest. There may be some much more specific points that can be analyzed and compared but the sweeping categorization just doesn't do it for me. Uniqueness is great, but uniqueness alone doesn't make it good. Some really great things come out of using a classic formula but doing it really well.

While some challenges will probably require longer clips at some point, and as people are eliminated there's more time for them, I think it is entirely fair to judge the podcasts solely on the clips they submit not on the whole podcast and not on their past submissions either. That's what the competition is for, who holds up to a variety of challenges. That doesn't make the podcasts that get eliminated bad podcasts, as Caroline pointed out all 10 of the podcasts chosen to compete are really quite good podcasts so that's not the point, it's figuring out which one holds up to a wide variety of scrutiny thrown at them. I think if you just wanted to pick the best podcast based on the whole thing you could get together a few judges and have them listen to an episode or two of each and pick their favorite but that would not make much of a show. You'd probably end up with a different result than running them through all the challenges too. The exciting part is seeing how each podcast responds to the challenge because your favorite podcast may make a poor submission and get eliminated at any point, or your least favorite may submit something that is awesome and surprise you. . The other part is that I only have limited sympathy for the contestants hamstrung by the length of the clip. They had an option to make something entirely new to submit if they didn't have anything in the bag that worked. So even if it isn't something that they'd ordinarily use for their show I think making something that fits the challenge and the time constraints is better than trying to stuff what they have already into a hole it doesn't fit in. To be clear I don't think that has really even happened all that much yet, by and large the clips have been pretty good and appropriate to the challenge.

I agree that unfortunately the advice show I think served as bad advice in some cases since by the end of the submission show they had come up with somewhat different ideas for what they wanted and what constituted a recurring segment. I'm sure that will factor into the judging though, I suspect it will boil down to enjoyable the pieces were not the technicality of what counts as a recurring segment. Still some may have chosen a different piece to submit given slightly different parameters. For instance I think the bits on Ham Radio with the podcast support line that I've heard are quite good and that to me counts as a recurring bit even more than the movie previews and I think Brett was kind of advised against using those which to me is a shame. I will say personally I think this is the first time I've enjoyed the majority of the submissions, everyone has really stepped up their game a little, or maybe these types of segments are just inherently more funny. I think I'd actually be hard pressed to come up with a standout winner this week. The F+ was my least favorite, it was a confusing bit out of context. They also continue to be plagued by audio quality issues, which made it more confusing, for me at least, since my brain had trouble parsing what they were saying at times and figuring out who was talking. I may not have that issue if I was a regular listener and more familiar with everyone's voices. They're not the only one with that issue, but I think were hit hardest by it this week.

"Come on baby, just the smurf?" Incidentally this makes it 2 out of 2 movies John Oliver has been in being on hdtgm. That's a better record than Nicolas Cage.

I took Brett's sketch in pretty much the exact same way that the judges did. I was actually pretty shocked that he chose to submit that, knowing that it would be listened to by professional comedians because I understood the joke there, and the layers and I was slightly offended by it and I am by no means professional or a comedian. I think Besser was pretty spot on in what he said about it. Until you've created something of your own and proved yourself it's pretty uncool to shit on people who have. If Brett had more merit badges on his chest maybe that sketch could have worked a lot better, but it would still be risky. It was alienating to both "hack" comedians and to "bitter" comedians and also to anyone who can empathize with either which is a lot of people, and if your premise starts off by alienating people your punchline better be good enough to bring them back around or all you've done is alienate people. I think there's a lot of potential in that show, but I don't think it's all there yet. I have a related problem with TVZ, who in the fairly limited clips I've heard and their discussions, seem pretty negative about stuff. That negativity may spring from fandom to some degree but I have a really hard time listening to it. Negativity is fine to listen to when you agree with it but as soon as you disagree with something then it just feels like you're being called an idiot for liking something. Positivity is much easier to listen to even if you disagree. I haven't listened to a full episode of TVZ, so I don't know where their balance is. I just think it's something to watch closely. Anyway I'm really enjoying the challenge which is surprising for me since I don't tend to go for the reality competition shows. So good on everyone who is involved in putting it together and competing in it.