Music, Podcasts, and Odd Niche Entertainment

I spend 99% of my day listening to music or podcasts. I absolutely need some sort of background noise to function. When it comes to music I use Tidal because it comes free with my phone plan. I listen to a wide variety within the genre of rap that includes too many artists to list. Some constant artists are MF DOOM, Childish Gambino, and Kendrick Lamar. I listen to podcasts through Apple’s podcast app. I mostly listen to podcasts hosted by comedians, such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Bertcast, and The Monday Morning Podcast.

Even if I’m not listening to music, a lot of the news I take in is directly related to music in some way or another. For example, I just read that there is an unreleased Mac Miller (rest in peace) and Madlib collaboration album titled “Maclib”. While I don’t check The Fader often, I do follow many music news accounts such as Complex Music and XXL to get a compendium of news.

I don’t really care about Instagram that much, but I go on there at least once a day. My favorite social media sites are Twitter and Reddit. I like Twitter because I get a combination of great jokes and insane news. Reddit is great for oddly hyper-specific discussion about anything you’re passionate about. One of my favorite subreddits is WordAvalanche. WordAvalanches are when you give a sentence and then redescribe the same sentence using homophones.

A majority of my time online involves video games and streaming. I stream everyday on Twitch. Twitch is an online entertainment service where users stream their own content to other users. It’s similar to any other streaming service, but rather than watching professionally made and edited content you’re watching users play video games. A lot of people don’t really understand why you would want to watch someone play video games when you could play them yourself, but to that argument I say, why aren’t you playing professional football instead of just watching it on TV? Right now I’m playing Apex Legends, which is a battle royale game where you try to be the last person standing.

I watch a fair amount of shows and movies on Netflix. I recently finished Parks and Recreation, and I’m getting close to finishing Arrested Development. I just watched Russian Doll and am watching The Umbrella Academy. Russian Doll is a Groundhog Day-esque show about someone restarting their day every time they die. The Umbrella Academy is about adopted orphans with superpowers and the dichotomy of their normal lives and their lives as heroes.

I watch a variety of YouTube videos everyday. There are same gaming YouTubers I watch, some music production videos, and some behind the scenes vlogs. I watch Game Grumps because they are hysterical. They’re type of comedy is a combination of stupid potty humor, witty observations, and hilarious references. The basis for their videos is two guys playing video games while talking over the gameplay. I recently started watching Servida Music to better understand how to make music. He gives great specific tips and broad advice to make music that sounds good. Since Nick and I are attempting to make music I’ve tried to watch more and more Servida videos. I’m interested in some sort of career in filmmaking so I watch Corridor and Corridor Crew. Corridor publishes lower budget, yet high quality videos. Typically they have some sort of ridiculous premise and are highlighted by their phenomenal VFX work. Corridor Crew is their behind the scenes channel where they showcase some tips on how to accomplish on what they have and what working at their studio is like.

I also watch Philip DeFranco most days, because I find him to be a very unbiased news source. While he does have political leanings he tries to not let them influence the content he provides. He’s one of my favorite wells of knowledge because he tries to do a considerable amount of information and present all known sides of the story. From time to time he will also do specific deep dives, such as this video discussing the homeless issue and specifically Skid Row.

I obsessively check my grades on Studentvue to see if there are any updates that I need to be concerned about. My grades aren’t great, but I still frantically check to see if I need to save my grade.

Overall I try to use the Internet to educate and entertain myself, but I find that I get stuck in an echo chamber from and limit myself to perspectives I already agree with.