Controversial Subversive Podcast: An Origin Story
Brenda couldn’t remember if the podcast idea was hers or Nell’s. They joked about it for a while, after they would frequently get together and complain about the state of feminism. “We should call it ‘The problem that has a name,’ after the Beddy Friedan thing,” said Nell. Brenda still thought she was kidding until she showed up at Nell's, and she had a USB microphone at her laptop.
They recorded an episode, rambling and apologetic, 73 minutes of them talking about recent events and their lives. At times they addressed the invisible audience, at other times, each other. “This may be controversial,” Brenda would say. “But this sort of feminism is ruining feminism.” Nells had the idea for segments, like “femme fatale” about a celeb who was giving feminism a bad name and “hairy legs on campus,” which highlighted the antics of campus feminist groups. They recorded two more episodes, and their friends listened to it.
Then a friend tweeted about it. And it got retweeted. “Bren,” said Nell. “Our numbers are insane!” The next episode has 475 downloads, which was still hefty. They addressed it in their next episode. “New listeners beware,” said Nell. “We’re not here to suck feminism’s cock.” One of those 465 followers happened to work for Buzzfeed, who wrote about them, not exactly complimentary, but all news is good news.
Over the next three episodes, their downloads grew to 6700. They entered the iTunes chart at #87 for “culture and society.” Nell bought fancier new equipment. Brenda’s twitter feed turned into retweets of mentions of her and the podcast.
One day after recording an episode, Nell said, “I wish I could do this instead of my job.”
“Why not monetize?” said Brenda.
“But then it will feel like we owe people something,” said Nell.
“Feminists are always complaining about unpaid labor,” said Brenda. “They’ll be hypocrites if they criticize us.”
Laster, Brenda, and Nell set up a Patreon account. The levels included access to bonus episodes, a private message board, and then for $10,000, they could be a guest on the show. “Don’t worry, everyone knows that’s just a joke,” Said Brenda.
The more people listened, the more responses they got. Thinkpieces against them abounded. But they were retweeted by the wife of a famous singer, which made people mad at that renowned wife of a bad singer. Nell spent a lot of their episodes addressing the haters, which made more people angry.
“You guys suck now that you are popular!” said the fans. “Haters gonna hate! Responding to them makes you weak!”
Nell had the idea to include responses to haters as a bonus episode, in a segment called “t’s and a’s” or Tits and answers.
In the first bonus episode, Brenda complained about the fans who complained but didn’t pay money. This information was leaked into the fan Facebook group, who complained, and many threatened to stop listening.
Nell convinced Brenda to record an episode addressing the comments she made. Since she made this a free episode, people needed context because it was a paid episode. So then they had to release the paywalled episode as a free episode for context.
A twitter personality, known for her feminist comedy sketch show, tweeted how the podcast “revealed their racism through paid supporters.” Downloads skyrocketed to 40,00.
Brenda became anxious about recording. “I don’t know if those are hate listens or new fans,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nell. “We’ll get a book deal out of it.”
In the next episode, Nell called a celebrity a dumb cunt, something she did on the regular, but now 40,000 listeners heard it. The emails came in. Nell addressed it on the next episode and semi-apologized, but on the subscriber-only episode, she double-downed. “She is still a cunt, and I meant it.”
Meanwhile, the Patreon money started building, and soon they had $14,000 a month. Nell quit her day job since she was not doing well because she was answering emails and fighting twitter all day. She had more time for interviews, which were pouring in, albeit from alt-right publications.
“Do we really want to support these publications?” Brenda asked Nell.
Nell shrugged. “SPeaking to them doesn’t equal endorsement. They are going to write about us anyway, so why not let us participate?”
In one of the interviews, Brenda made a sarcastic joke about Kelly Clarkson’s weight that didn’t translate on the page. Later, Nell showed her a change.org petition asking all advertisers to boycott them.
Brenda’s google alerts came in daily with news and commentary about them. “Will I ever get a real job again?” she asked.
Nell shrugged. “Do you need to?”
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