Greatest Generation

Just read the newsletter. More ads incoming, talk of "industry standard."

I'm sure there are reasons why they want to go this route that I don't understand. My personal fear right now is that we will be witnessing a version of podcast enshitification.

I don't know why but I find the abruptness of the announcement rubs me the wrong way too. A show that prides itself on producing everything well in advance gave virtually no indication that this was coming. So next week we go back to Farpoint. Next week rolls around and we get this.

The timing is bad. Money will be tight thanks to peace loving, senile president Dukat's recent well thought out military excursions and impeccably humane diplomatic messaging. You don't want to give subscribers a reason to stop their subscriptions in a time when every penny needs to be pinched. You will lose subscribers because they will forget to make the change. You will lose subscribers because now you are forcing them to reevaluate their decision. You may lose more if your new asking price is higher than before. I fail to see how they could not lose subscribers here.

Tbh I always disliked the marketing messages of MaxFun, never really liked any other of their shows, so I don't mind seeing the back of them. They had a touch of the Pluribus, I paraphrase: "come to our events even if you are a bit weird, we will love you, guaranteed!" I stopped listening to their guilt tripping, which I call their pledge drive messages, after year 2 or so. Couldn't fast forward fast enough through this like it's the Enterprise intro. Ask for support, no problem; I listened to every episode till the very end. But there is a manipulative line you can cross for me and they do in those drive weeks. So will we be hearing less of that? Or more of it all the time? A surprise two-week break is maybe giving me too much time to ruminate on that.

Fucking hell, I had a lot of thoughts about this, didn't I. Sorry it got so long and thanks for reading through my parasocial therapy sesh.