{"id":1326,"date":"2013-02-11T12:02:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T20:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2013-02-11T12:02:24","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T20:02:24","slug":"podthoughts-the-f-plus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1326","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: The F Plus"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/media.steampowered.com\/steamcommunity\/public\/images\/avatars\/b1\/b1076950cd5a57f9728d585e5b2c4d8e2dcf7a93_full.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vital stats:<\/strong><br \/>\nFormat: poor and\/or freakish writing found on the internet, then read aloud<br \/>\nEpisode duration: ~1h, plus the occasional special short<br \/>\nFrequency: weekly, in theory<\/p>\n<p>The internet offers more of a chance than we\u2019ve ever had to engage with the written word and with others who share our interests. As much fruit as this development has borne,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thefpl.us\/\"><em>The F Plus<\/em><\/a>\u00a0[<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-f-plus\/id334184087\">iTunes<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/TheFPlus\">RSS<\/a>] reminds us that we\u2019re dealing with, at best, a double-edged sword. Young \u201cdigital natives\u201d aside, most internet users never prepared themselves for a life where they\u2019d need to write anything at all, much less their everyday communication about the things most important to them. And who among us has adequately shielded himself against the universal human temptation to settle into a set of opinions and then retreat into an unthreatening \u2014 indeed, reinforcing \u2014 echo chamber? At the intersection of these two avenues of misfortune, this podcast taps into a considerable vein of comedy: almost 120 episodes\u2019 worth, at this point, with no signs of resource depletion.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know whether anyone has written it as a rule of the internet, but for every interest, no matter how fringe, a forum must surely exist. Indeed, the fringier the interest, and so the deeper into the margins of society its practitioners must dwell, the\u00a0<em>more<\/em>\u00a0likely a forum somewhere supports it. The\u00a0<em>F Plus<\/em>\u00a0troupe \u2014 whom, for all my listening, still often sound to me like a barely differentiated gaggle of comedic-white-guy voices \u2014 scour these fora for the most bizarre, inept, or otherwise laughable posts, then read them out loud in funny voices. Some take pains to faithfully pronounce standard tics and errors \u2014 \u201cLOL\u201d becomes \u201clawl,\u201d an apostrophe-less \u201cI\u2019m\u201d becomes \u201cim\u201d \u2014 but that merely pours into the show\u2019s abundant stream of cheap laughs. The deeper, more troubling humor, the kind that gives you as much of a pause as it does a chuckle, comes partially rooted in good old they-walk-among-us fear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2013\/02\/10\/podthoughts-f-plus\">at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vital stats: Format: poor and\/or freakish writing found on the internet, then read aloud Episode duration: ~1h, plus the occasional special short Frequency: weekly, in theory The internet offers more of a chance than we\u2019ve ever had to engage with the written word and with others who share our interests. As much fruit as this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}