From The Verge · Terrence O'Brien · · 1m 40s
Kids hijacked an NPR podcast comment section as a group chat
Middle schoolers blocked from social media turned a Wild Card episode into their own messaging app.
In brief
Middle schoolers blocked from social media turned a Wild Card episode into their own messaging app. Middle schoolers blocked from social media used the Spotify comment section of an NPR podcast as a group chat, prompting an investigation on This American Life. Originally reported by The Verge.
Middle schoolers found an unlikely chat space
Blocked from other apps and social networks, middle schoolers turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR's Wild Card into an impromptu group chat.
They chose a podcast with few comments
When host Ira Glass asked one of the kids why they picked this particular podcast, they said, "We just, like, looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments."
“We just, like, looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments.”
The showrunner thought they were bots
Dave Blanchard, the showrunner, initially mistook the comments for bots because they were clipped, weird, and incoherent, loaded with emoji and shorthand. He deleted them.
“It was just like gibberish.”
A producer recognized the pattern
Producer Hannah Chin recognized the behavior as kids, not bots. They said, "I was a kid who used weird parts of the internet not as they were originally designed to talk to my friends."
“I was a kid who used weird parts of the internet not as they were originally designed to talk to my friends.”
This American Life investigated the phenomenon
Host Ira Glass digs into how the kids landed on Wild Card and why in a new episode of This American Life, exploring how kids get creative working around restrictions.
It happened before with another NPR show
A similar thing happened last year with Ted Radio Hour, showing this is a pattern of kids finding unexpected spaces to communicate when blocked from traditional social media.
Here's the gist
Middle schoolers blocked from social media used the Spotify comment section of an NPR podcast as a group chat, prompting an investigation on This American Life.
