Hey Kiwis, here’s a bit of advice. Everyone wants to start a podcast because it sounds easy and they feel that they have something to say. I have news for you: it generally isn’t easy. Podcasts are stupidly hard to run solo or duo – you need to balance scriptwriting, research, booking, outreach, sponsorship if you get there, and editing. Why do all of that, though, when you can just sit down and talk about random shit with the crew like Ethan Klein?
I’ll tell you why. Podcasts are not designed to be listened to while doing nothing, because you’re missing out on using your eyes and limbs to be productive. But they’re also not designed to be listened to while doing concentration-heavy activities (like labor or video games or conversation), because then you won’t actually be listening to the podcast. People listen to podcasts when they’re doing something just menial enough to pay attention, but not so demanding that they can’t hear it.
Your podcast is competing with millions of podcasts for your listeners’ time. That time is really fucking limited. You need to know who your audience is, why they’re listening to you, and what they want to hear. Most people can’t commit to over three or four different podcasts per week (and podcasts that put out several episodes a week make this harder). You need to find your niche and milk it. Only then can you compete for your audience’s time.
The H3 Podcast’s audience consists of:
- Holdover fans from the h3h3 days who have stuck with Ethan and have tricked themselves into enjoying it (a shrinking minority)
- Teenage girls/troons who got interested in the podcast during the Trisha days, when Ethan began softening his edge dramatically, and stuck around after the fallout
- Weird redditors who discovered it either because reddit or because of Hasan (liberal American/Canadians in their late 20s and early 30s, sometimes furries, frequently bisexual and always garbage)
This is not an audience that you can expand or cater to. The first group will slowly drain as the old h3h3 brand continues to get older. The second group can only expand through hearsay (very difficult), since Ethan and the crew lack the “yas queen” energy to attract more of them directly. The third group can expand if Ethan makes continuous angry political jabs at conservatives. Ethan is not doing this very frequently anymore, and his audience has plenty of left-wing podcasts to get their daily dose of rage-fuel from.
Ethan’s show is not a podcast. It’s consistently a boring discussion between a bunch of boring people. The viewers are holdovers from back when the podcast did unique things (interviewing e-celebs and watching a schizo and a retard argue was sufficiently unique). I firmly believe that this show’s model can’t be replicated successfully, because no one would listen to it. It’s the equivalent of making a few million dollars, investing most of it in index funds, and living every year on nothing but your investment profits. You’re not working or doing anything important, and you only have money because of what you used to do. You’re rotting.
Ethan and his producers are making money (probably not as much as they used to) by doing nothing and coasting off of previous successes and legitimacy. I don’t know how this episode got over 650k views at time of writing (I’m assuming the clickbait), and the only reason I watched it all is because I want other people to understand just how easy it is to fill 3 hours with garbage. If for whatever reason you find yourself making a podcast, I can only ask that you put in more effort than Ethan Klein.
