Pet Peeves

I promise you, I roll my eyes as I edit My First Sketch all the time, cursing myself and my annoying voice. I listen to a ton of podcasts, and as much as I love the format, I have generated a list of pet peeves that I personally try to avoid when I talk to people. But, I feel I’ve traded my pet peeves as a listener for annoying tics as a host.

The agreement moan: especially when listening to faith and religion podcasts, you make a good point and the other person lets out a moan as an audible thumbs up. I’ve tried to avoid this, replacing that with “very nice,” “oh, cool,” and so on.

Negativity as a fan: I’ve unsubscribed to a couple fandom podcasts recently, because the hosts have gotten so negative and nitpicky about the topic. I get it. The creatives forces aren’t giving you what you want, but it’s exhausting that you think what you’re a fan of owes you anything. I don’t think I’m too bad at this, despite my very real opinion that sketch is better than improv.

Repeating yourself: People make fun of Marc Maron all the time, because he repeats himself in various interviews. But I think he understands that not everyone listens to every episode. I know I repeat myself about: the Phil Hartman book, not understanding Holy Grail when I first saw it, and so on. But I fully believe I can count on my hands (and probably name) any person that has listened to every MFS.

Long intros: And I don’t mean the monologuing. I mean the social media plugs of everyone you know and every social media site from Twitter to Friendster. If my intros ever go over five minutes, you can punch me in the arm when you see me.

Audible pauses: My high school English teacher had a buzzer that he’d hit whenever you’d say “um,” “uh,” and “like.” I say “so” before half my sentence and “like” wayyyy too much. As much as I like the podcast being conversational, my like and so count is way too high.