Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

Before we go on (brief! I promise!) hiatus and move to a seasonal format, Jamie takes a look at your submitted stories about being the main character -- from viral pets to grieving online to reckoning with your relationship to a changing internet, we explore the spectrum of what it means to be too online. Bonus: one of Jamie's favorite memes of all time calls in! Thank you for making the firs...

In my day, there were but three things middle schoolers cared about -- BADGERS, MUSHROOMS, AND SNAKES. This week, we look at the peak of Flash animation -- Jonti Picking, aka Mr. Weebl's masterpiece "Badger Badger Mushroom," and the obsessive subculture that was Newgrounds flash animation of the 2000s. How do you become an iconic animator online? Here's a tip: be an incredible musician already. Ja...

We all know that Haliey "Hawk Tuah" Welch was the face of a memecoin crypto scandal, and most know that the SEC excused it wholesale. What we don't fully know is why it was so easy to get away with it -- in our grand Hawk Tuah finale, Jamie speaks with former SEC enforcement attorney John Reed Stark about how the state of cryptocurrency can do more than sink a fledgling influencer's career, it can...

We're switching to a seasonal format on Sixteenth Minute in a few weeks, and to close the chapter on week-to-week main characters, we want to know -- have you ever been the main character? And if not, how has your relationship to the internet changed? For our May 20th episode, we'll be airing your stories! Send your voicemail to:  smalliceresurfacer@gmail.com See omnystudio.com/listener for p...

Let’s catch up with Haliey ‘Hawk Tuah’ Welch since the fallout of the crypto scam that undercut her sixteenth minute. While most didn’t stick around to see what happened, a lot about the crypto world has empowered Team Tuah to keep going — getting one over on the government, a second botched pump and dump scheme, and a suspiciously timed podcast relaunch. To what end?...

In our final installment of our Tay Zonday series, Jamie speaks with the one and only Adam "Tay" Bahner about how he navigated his viral fame, and how the internet has changed beyond recognition from the days of "Chocolate Rain." Follow Tay here: https://www.instagram.com/tayzonday/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In part two of our Tay Zonday series, Adam Bahner gets into his political awakening, and how it affected his relationship to his family, his creative work, and himself. Wanna get radicalized? Wanna get radicalized AGAIN? This is the episode for you. Follow Tay Zonday here:  https://www.instagram.com/tayzonday/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are few internet videos more iconic than Tay Zonday’s ‘Chocolate Rain,’ but it took over a decade for the song to be recognized for the politically charged ballad it is. How did we miss it? In part one of our Tay Zonday series, Jamie gets into the history of political music, the naïveté of the early Internet and the ‘post racial Internet,’ and Tay sh...

After eight long years of research, Dr. Ally Louks posted to Twitter about completing her Ph. D : "Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose." The Elon-fueled right-wing internet freaked out. In an exclusive interview, Jamie speaks with Dr. Louks about the experience of reclaiming the narrative around a nasty online backlash to better educate anti-intellectuals on th...

Where do you go from pivoting your brand to nihilism? Horny, my friends. WILDLY horny. In our final installment of the Sentient Horny Brand series, Jamie speaks to the mind behind Duolingo’s chaotic, wildly horny social media presence Zaria Parvez. Remember when you couldn’t get the owl giving birth to sponges off your feed? Remember when you didn’t even WANT to? That was her, an...

Picture this: it's 2020, you're clinging to sanity, and a frozen steak your mom used to eat after school called SteakUmm is now tweeting in the hopes of turning you into a socialist. But... what? Can one be radicalized by hot dog grade meat? Is what's being sold here an idea or microwaveable meat slop? In our penultimate installment of the Sentient Brands series, Jamie gets into the weeds with the...

In part two of our 'Sentient Brands on Social Media' series, Jamie speaks to the GOAT of online joke writing -- the great Amy Brown, who defined the Wendy's brand on Twitter, then got radicalized and left Twitter in a blaze of bullying Elon Musk. We take a look at the brief moment where getting replied to by a cheeseburger could get you on the national news, and take a look at how a girl from...

In part one of our ‘Sentient Brands on Social Media’ series, Jamie speaks with Serenity Discko, the original media writer behind the teenage edgelord Denny’s Tumblr account. But worry not, we go DEEP — Jamie sets the stage by tracing back our history of parasocial relationships with brands all the way back to World War I. Buckle in, the brands are getting angry, the brands...

This week, Jamie talks with Adam Aleksik aka The Etymology Nerd about how relying on algorithms to communicate is changing the way we talk and scream at each other, and the inevitability that your nephew is going to grow up to say "seggs" without a shred of irony.  Learn more about Adam's work here: https://www.etymologynerd.com/ Pre-order Algospeak: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/468266/alg...

Jamie continues her conversation with Liam Kyle Sullivan, AKA Kelly of "Shoes" fame, Mrs. Cunningham of "Muffins" fame, and an actor and comedian workshopping a show about what it all means. Bonus: Jamie's cousin Chloe stops by to explain why kids from New England had no idea Mrs. Cunningham was "doing an accent." Come to The Bechdel Cast's Oscars Spectacular Celebration this Sunday: https://www.d...

This episode rules. This episode does not suck! Jamie meets up with Liam Kyle Sullivan, one of YouTube's earliest stars with his character Kelly of "Shoes," "Muffins," and much more, before he workshopped his one-person show in Los Angeles. Nearly two decades out from Shoes, Liam reflects on learning what YouTube was by becoming famous on it, how Hollywood struggled to translate internet fame to c...

When Zoë Roth was four years old, her dad snapped a photo of her in front of a neighborhood home being burned with its owners permission to clear the land -- and the rest is internet history. This week, Jamie goes in depth with Zoë twenty years later about becoming a meme just as she started to form memories, how she's chosen to interact (or not interact) with it over the years, and why...

Our weirdest episode yet? Let's GO. This week, Jamie gets to the bottom of the backrooms, one of the most famous images on the internet -- posted to a horror-themed 4chan board in 2019, one blurry picture of an empty expanse of offices inspired teenage horror fans, online sleuths, and adults sinking into existential dread alike. We're looking at all three corners of the backrooms' history, from it...

In honor of the ten year anniversary of the left shark moment at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show in 2015, a very special rerun! Sixteenth Minute exclusive! We’ve got the first in depth interview with Bryan Gaw, aka the Left Shark himself.  This week, Jamie revisits the 2015 Super Bowl saga that was Left Shark — the costumed cartilaginous fish that went rogue in 2015 beside Katy...

You earned it, Sixteenth Minute listeners! As a little treat, Jamie talks with fellow Cool Zone Media host Ed Zitron of Better Offline about the nature of the Hawk Tuah crypto scam, and whether he thinks anything will come of the pending lawsuit.  Listen to Better Offline: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart   Ed's Links: Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ https://twitter.com/edzitro...

Between June and December 2024, Haliey Welch completed one of the most astounding main character runs of all time. Beginning as someone with no social media, catapulted to fame all but against her will after talking to on-the-street YouTubers targeting drunk women, the end of the year saw Haliey "Hawk Tuah" Welch acting as the face of exploitative memecoin scandal. In our final part of the Hawk Tu...

In part two of our deep dive into Haliey Welch, aka Hawk Tuah Girl, Jamie looks at the media blitz Haliey was sent on after her viral moment and securing management. Without the Ellen Industrial Complex to reel her in, we dig into the world of vaguely conservative video podcasts, and how all roads lead to sports gambling scams. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this Hawk Tuah bonus episode, Jamie connects the man on the street TikTok content that made Haliey Welch famous to its media ancestor — the Girls Gone Wild craze of the 2000s. We talk with former GGW street team member and incredible podcaster Courtney Kocak to learn more about how exploiting drunk women for men’s profit became a million dollar industry.  Follow Courtney’...

Let's do some discourse on that thang. To start our series on 2024's Main Character Haliey Welch, AKA Hawk Tuah Girl, we're taking a closer look at how a Tennessee twenty-something with no social media and a factory job became a household name in a matter of weeks in 2024. Jamie looks at the culture of TikTok and YouTube man-on-the-street surveillance channels, and tracks where the channel that ca...

Wildfires have devastated Southern California in the past week, while mainstream media has remained fairly fixated on the wealthier communities and celebrities affected. Meanwhile, the majority of lives lost were in the middle class neighborhood of Altadena, and mutual aid efforts have blossomed across the city to address those affected. This week, Jamie reaches out to writers and organizers in Lo...