I Still Say No to a Podcast - Even I don’t fully understand why

 


Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix)

PodcastMedia

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

Podcasting has become quite hot during this pandemic, but it was heating up before all this. Looking at it logically, people who produce content should consider adding a podcast to their output.

I will not argue against that. I’ve been a consumer of podcasts for years. I listened in my car as soon as that became technologically easy, and now that I drive less, I listen while I walk for exercise. It may be hard to become popular, but when is that not the case?

I’ve thought about podcasting for a long time, longer than the word itself even existed. I even recorded a few (very few) of my early tech articles and hosted them on my own site as that was the only option back then.

But I didn’t like doing it. It’s not that I don’t like talking; quite the opposite. I’ll blabber on for hours. I’ve given extemporaneous lectures; off the cuff doesn’t bother me at all. Nor does the thought of large audiences or negative feedback; I’ve stood in front of 4–5 thousand people expressing unpopular opinions.

I just don’t like the idea of it for the same reason I do not like YouTube videos: I can read so much faster than anyone can speak. I find it hard to pay attention when my mind, bored by the glacial pace, darts off in twenty different directions.

But that’s me. It’s not most humans at all. Most people prefer video over text. I should embrace both outlets.

The time to do that was many years ago when I had a website audience of hundreds of thousand people. Today, I have almost no audience. I would have done well then without much effort. Today I’d struggle with all the other wanna-be’s.

And I simply don’t want to do it. I may have a small audience now, but what little I have does appreciate words. They are much more my tribe than people who watch videos on YouTube. Sure, there is crossover, as evidenced by my own habits. But, no, I will not.

Where’s the harm, you rightfully ask? My reluctance is worse than you think: I have all the equipment I’d need. I know HOW to do it; there are no obstacles.

But I won’t, and even I don’t fully understand why.

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