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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

I think especially for podcasters in recent years there have been some.... issues with community management.

I would say in particular lots of these people started doing "community slacks/discords" and then they realized that being able to produce podcast episodes doesn't make you a good community manager.

There's been specific drama with Relay and people around that extended universe as well, so lots of podcast hosts in that space are basically done with fan interaction.

I'm being a bit glib but I totally get it. If you have the choice to just walk away from dealing with CM stuff then it's a pretty nice proposition.

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I enjoyed HI but the community on Reddit always seemed super weird to me. People just competing over who’s most in on the joke and endless posts “Brady would love this...” I can imagine it being tiresome to try to “manage” that. Other podcast communities don’t seem to suffer from same kind of super fans as much.

This might explain why the disappearance was a surprise to me. I never paid much attention to the Subreddit, other than checking to see why there had been an unannounced absence of new episodes for several months.

I remember that both the hosts encouraged audience engagement in different ways — several episodes featured long discussions about topics on the Subreddit, and they solicited audience participation in various projects.

> I think especially for podcasters in recent years there have been some.... issues with community management.

A show that I listen to skipped a week during the early stages of the pandemic. I was concerned that one of the hosts was ill / possibly dying. It was some planned thing, like a vacation or something. A little notice would have been nice.

Sure, these are strangers and my emotional investment is a bit like teen girls crying when they saw the Beatles play: “Really?”. But I love the show and would have missed it, so I was anxious about its (possible) demise.

I think you’ve nailed it with this.

> A show that I listen to skipped a week during the early stages of the pandemic. I was concerned that one of the hosts was ill / possibly dying. It was some planned thing, like a vacation or something. A little notice would have been nice.

I’d imagine it can be a real grind, endlessly producing a podcast week after week. If it’s anything more than walking up to a mic and talking stream of consciousness, the prep work must take hours.

Most podcasters have other jobs. On one hand, I’m surprised that we don’t see people taking a seasonal approach, to give themselves a break, recharge, and maybe put in work writing and researching in the down time. On the other, it seems so many are afraid to walk away, even temporarily, for fear of losing an audience.

> A little notice would have been nice.

Serious question: why? So an episode doesn't show up in your feed one week. I doubt I would even notice in the first place, much less jump to being concerned about the hosts' health or much less jump to feeling put out by the lack of warning.

The difference is exactly that you wouldn't notice and the other person would. There's a difference between a recurring piece of media being a drop in the bucket and having a specific thing you look forward to watching or listening to every week. If one week you're waiting for it to drop and it's mysteriously absent you might suspect something is wrong.

Seems reasonable to me.

What are the issues around Relay you’re referring to?

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