Wow if true
I posted a tweet asking for podcast recommendations with the following query:
"Tech industry podcasts where people are not just bragging about themselves for 50 minutes straight."
Someone sent me the link, I opened the website and felt seen. This is the description the "Wow if True" podcast has: We mesh our professional expertise and our curse of being terminally online to talk about silly digital phenomena in an intelligent, thoughtful way.
As a fellow terminally online person I felt validated. Then I listened to the podcast...
You know that feeling when you find an old playlist that you created in your teens in your 30s?
Or maybe you have this interest that you really can't talk to anyone because to talk about it you need to fill in 10 years' worth of internet history and you just don't have the time for it.
Well Wow if true is like finding a podcast that combines that feeling of nostalgia and finding an unexpected friend in a line for coffee.
"This is the only podcast that talks about crypto and Destiel within 2 minutes from each other." the girls said in one of the episodes and honestly that's what I want from my podcasts. Supernatural drama and roasting of crypto bros.
Who would like this podcast?
If you like me spent your 20s in weird fandoms, wrote fanfiction, talked about fanfiction in online spaces, and at one point had a LiveJournal blog this podcast is for you.
If currently, you are gaslit, gatekept, and girlbossed into oblivion with different corporations trying to appropriate early fandom culture this podcast is for you.
If you are a fellow terminally online person and just want to feel like you're not crazy and there are other people who talk and think like you (without registering in TikTok) then this podcast is for you.
I rest my case.
Essentially, instead of writing 500 thoughtful words describing my feelings about this podcast, I could say that it has the best vibes, and now you have to check it out.
Episode recommendations
As I said I used to write fanfiction so "Fandom Inc." episode spoke to me just on the level of the title. The episode was a trip down memory lane for me. When 2 people talk about fanfiction, tags, ao3, and how writing fics helped them in their professional careers without talking down on the fandom culture or calling it "silly" it makes my heart melt.
Quote from the episode: "No one was making money it was an equal exchange for the love of the fandom and the fun of it".
Web3 is doing just as great actually. You didn't know? Everything is fine with crypto and their projects and NFTs, they are going to the moon. Well, maybe not that good, as the crypto world has provided enough content for the website called Web3 is doing just great where you can see all the flops that crypto bros endured. This episode is a funny and also very informative interview with the creator of that project Molly White.
Attention the phrase "sigma grindset" is used unironically.