The internet is quickly becoming a sea of garbage content. Much like the sea of garbage contents.

There has always been low-effort spam-y content. It used to just take a bit more effort.

With AI and The Algorithm, we’ve fast-tracked the robot takeover of a vital form of human communication: our content. Today I want to talk about The Algorithm specifically (we’ll get to AI another time).

Right now, there is good news. Kinda.

There are still corners of the communication industry that The Algorithm hasn’t devoured and spit back as flashy, noisy echoes of our most primitive instincts.

Podcasting is one of those corners. 

For now.

But be warned… The Algorithm spares none. It will come. And it will turn purpose into noise, craft into clickbait, and humanity into data. Maybe.

I don’t mean to make The Algorithm a Lovecraftian villain. To be fair, The Algorithm is just doing what it thinks is best. It’s showing us the content we are willing to consume. This may not be content we need, or a lot of times even want, but by God it is the content that we will consume, hanging onto every second so that maybe just maybe we’ll get that glorious hit of dopamine that we so crave, that hit we crave because ironically, we deprive ourselves of it naturally by staring down these tiny little boxes that have paradoxically destroyed and saved the world. 

But I’m not here to talk about the sanctity of humanity. Nor am I positioned to do so.

I am here to talk about The Algorithm.

The thing is, The Algorithm isn’t the bad guy. Or it is, but it’s a bad guy we’ve created.It exists as it is because of the feedback loop that we contribute to. That means both sides, the consuming and the creating. 

Yes, I said it. That poor poor Algorithm that’s just trying to please us has been morally degraded by us.

All Pity The Algorithm.

Ok… I don’t really mean that. I know there are people behind the code, and platforms are doing their best to keep you on it at all costs for the sake of that sweet sweet black number on a spreadsheet. 

Obviously things are more complicated than the misunderstood villain trope. (Maybe we were the real villains all along!)

Ahh yes, I promised you an article about podcasting. We’re getting there.

In fact, we’re here.

Show Me The Goods

For the past two or three years, I have been preaching to anyone that will listen about the discoverability gap in podcasting. All other platforms seem to excel at sending users down endless rabbit holes of content, feeding them so many options that they could spend an eternity scrubbing through it all and never run out of options. But podcasting is different. 

Because I’m the “podcast person” among my social relationships, I get asked for recommendations a lot. The other day, I had a friend (Ella I will name drop you here), ask me for recommendations while also complaining that it’s too hard to find new shows to listen to. She went on to complain that once she’s finished whatever she’s listened to, she has to start the hunt all again. 

But Ella loves podcasts, so she will engage in the grind to find more. A lot of others will simply give up. 

For a while, I saw the temporary solution (the real solution being better in-app algorithms) as utilizing YouTube for discoverability. That made a lot of sense to me at the surface level for two reasons. The first being that YouTube is the OG Algo Master. The second being that YouTube was and still is in a big push to get more podcast content on their platform.

But I’ve had a bit of an opinion reckoning recently. 

If you don’t already know, I produce the show Moneywise, which is hosted by Sam Parr and Harry Morton and me one time. It’s a show where we really focus on making high-quality, intentional, non-bs content. But we’ve also recently been trying to utilize video and grow the show on YouTube.

Now, everything has changed.

Ok not really but that’s a great, classic hook. 

Ahh but you see… that is the very problem(?).

The YouTube Rabbit Hole Rabbit Hole

YouTube has been around for oh my god twenty years. Does anyone else remember their first YouTube video? (Mine was the music video for White and Nerdy by Weird Al, which doesn’t seem to exist anymore.) The point is this, YouTube has had a lot of time to evolve, and it is mostly a platform for the masters now. 

People like Mr. Beast, who have obsessed over every detail of their videos, their thumbnails, their captions, their titles, the way they talk during a video, the clothes they wear, the words they use, the amount of time one shot will play before they have some big pop up or sound effect or holy shit some overwhelming insane amount of information to process in ten seconds.

The last Mr. Beast video I clicked on felt like a 7 minute long hype intro. Does anyone else just sit there waiting for the video to start only to realize that the “intro” is the video?

Now, I don’t want to just pick on Mr. Beast here. It’s just a good example that most people recognize. The evolution of this content catered for the dumbest part of our brains is incredibly prevalent elsewhere. 

When YouTube came out, being a video creator online was an art, it was a performance from a creator. It was a new form of expression and entertainment. And it was silly. 

Then people realized you could make a lot of money.

Naturally, that led to the evolution of YouTube content being tailored for The Algorithm. 

But somehow… podcasting has been spared….

The Storm is Rolling In…

There are a few interesting things about the podcasting space. By nature of the RSS feed, podcasts have never been truly exclusive to one platform. YouTube creators are YouTubers, TikTok creators are TikTokers, Vine creators were Vine… creators? But podcasters… they’re just podcasters… and you can listen to them on “Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts from”.

This means that discoverability for podcasts was never down to just one app. YouTube got to control an entire medium, that’s just not the case for podcasts. No matter how much Spotify has tried. 

The other factor is that none of these apps have ever figured out a solid algorithm. And a revolutionary change doesn’t seem to be coming. I’d argue that the closest we’ve ever got to solid recommendations is Apple Charts, which I’ve actually looked for podcasts on myself despite being a Spotify listener. 

And now we get to a bit of a chicken or the egg situation. Are video podcasts taking off because YouTube (and other social media platforms) can offer a solution to Algorithm discoverability? Or were video podcasts a natural evolution and the YouTube algorithm was just an added bonus? 

Either way, we’re here. The industry wants video, and because of that we are all about to be confronted with the weight of The Algorithm. 

So what will happen next?

Not In My Backyard

Here’s the thing, podcasting has had nearly 21 years now to mature. This isn’t a new and quickly evolving medium (in relation to the pace of the internet and technology today). This is a medium that has had time to establish itself. Podcasting has an identity. And listeners, whether they’re aware of it or not, feel that.

There’s a huge culture in the podcasting world of asking what people are listening to and recommending content to each other. This is anecdotal, but I typically know what podcasts my friends are listening to, while I have no idea what they’re watching on YouTube. The Algorithm is personal. You only tell your closest friends what it knows about you. If that. Though, that personal element may not actually be the case much longer.

Podcasting is kind of like books. I don’t really want an algorithm telling me what to read. I do, however, submit myself to the nonsense man-made short list of what you need to read to be considered “well-read”. But even so, I love going into a bookstore, just picking up books, reading the backs, and waiting for something to sound interesting. 

Alas, even the previously tangible, physical medium of books has been touched by The Algorithm. Look no further than Pinterest and BookTok. Still, it has been largely spared and it too tends to function on people recommending and sharing books they’ve read and loved.
Podcasts are apparently the same. Here’s a survey that straight up suggests listeners prefer word of mouth discoveries over an algorithm.

As nice and human as that sounds, discoverability is still a problem that people want to fix, and it will be fixed. Creators want more reach, listeners want more content, platforms want more users. 

Right now, YouTube is the popular answer. 

So now we are left with the question: How will it change podcasting? 

Just Be Yourself (but not like that)

I’ve already noticed it. As we’ve tried to transform Moneywise from an audio-only show to a captivating video product, we’ve started to ask ourselves, what do we need to change? Should we make the intros 10 seconds long and click-baity so people stay on the video and we get suggested more? Do we ditch the thoughtful narrated cut-ins we actually care about, just because YouTube commenters insist, “Nobody cares, just give us the raw interview,” a la Joe Rogan? 

It got in our heads faster than we expected. So we took a moment and thought about it. This is what we decided:

F*** The Algorithm.

I don’t completely mean that. There is a game to play, and we do want to make sure that our show reaches the listeners we want it to, but degrading your content to make that happen isn’t the way. 

This is what I think:

I used to love the lack of effort that I had to put into finding content. But now, I hate my phone and I hate the internet. I don’t want The Algorithm to dictate my content, and I don’t want content creators to be personalityless drones bending to the knees of it. I just want real people, making content that they believe in. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

We’ve Been Dead the Whole time

It’s my opinion that the world is craving real. We’ve all been in a two-decade-long fever dream where online content went from violently lip syncing the Pokemon theme song on a web cam, to carefully orchestrated slog, to AI-infested garbage.

I want to rewind to the good ol’ days. My bet is that everyone else does too, and I want my content to be there for them as they realize that. Or even help them realize it.

For years we’ve been clinging to metrics like views, subscribers, reach, likes… Those are becoming increasingly useless.

It’s already common knowledge that you can buy likes and subscribers and views, etc. And AI has made bot commenting way more convincing. Essentially, the internet is dead.

Because of it, there is decreasing value in those metrics, and instead what matters is a real, active, traceable human community. My goal as a creator is to build that, not superficial metrics. That’s why podcasting has been so valuable to brands, because it has always been about that, and because of that and how intimate the medium is, podcasts are more trusted than any other media. 

For Moneywise, when we share the value of the show with advertisers, we aren’t focusing on the number of downloads we get, (though it’s about 120k/month for the audio only if you’re curious). When we talk about ad revenue as part of our ROI, we highlight the real value: giving advertisers direct access to a niche, engaged audience that trusts us. Obviously ad revenue isn’t the only ROI for the show, it’s actually just a small added benefit. 

The main point is this: the internet sucks, there is ever increasing value in building real communities, and the only way to do that is to get out of The Algorithm hamster wheel and be real.

So What The Hell Does This Mean for Podcasting?

The Algorithm is coming. And it will bring much-needed discoverability. That’s okay. I genuinely think it’s a good thing. But now it’s up to the creators to not let it degrade the medium. That will be even harder as AI junk continues to clog up the internet, and somehow gets more attention than actual good content real humans laboured over.

The future of valuable and successful content is in standing out by refusing to play the game. The future is human. The future is real.

Use Your Brain

There’s another takeaway here that is directed just as much at myself as it is at you. Stop being lazy.

Remember discovering your favourite artist because you were browsing the CD shop looking for something that had a cool cover? Or picking out a movie to rent for the night with your friends based solely on the cover? (And sometimes watching some batshit movies as a result). Or browsing endless forums spread randomly across the internet trying to find new bands to listen to? 

Figuring out what content you liked or didn’t like used to actually involve you.

It’s a skill that we’ve somehow forgotten. When did we start expecting good, personal content to find us, instead of going out and looking for it ourselves? No wonder I feel like shit after watching 45 minutes of parkour videos on Instagram. Sure, I’ll watch it, but I don’t really care. It’s empty. And that’s how I feel after.

So please, remind yourself that finding content can be laborious, but that’s how you find the good stuff. Go ask all of your friends for their favourite podcasts. Go find random threads on forums in weird parts of the internet. Go ask your colleagues if any of them have a cousin with a podcast where they “just riff” (at least one will). 

Stop letting content find you. Go find the content.