OUR RATING:
The Podcast That Turns Internet Drama Into Side-Splitting Comedy Goodness
People come up with all kinds of creative formats for podcasts. And in recent years, there have been some that have used the millions of stories told on various subreddits to tell various tales through the wonderful medium of podcasts we all know and love. Amongst these, “Smosh Reads Reddit Stories” tends to stick out.
“Smosh Reads Reddit Stories,” is a podcast where the age-old human tradition of gossiping about strangers has been elevated to an art form through the magic of podcast technology and Reddit’s inexhaustible supply of relationship disasters. This show takes the simple concept of “what if we just read the internet’s messiest stories out loud and made jokes about them” and transforms it into appointment listening that makes you feel both superior to and deeply concerned about your fellow humans.
Smosh takes Reddit’s most jaw-dropping tales of relationship chaos, workplace drama, and family dysfunction, then lets the Smosh crew loose on them with commentary that ranges from supportive advice to absolute bewilderment at humanity’s capacity for poor decision-making. It’s essentially a book club, except instead of discussing classic literature, they’re dissecting posts from people who think it’s totally normal to ask the internet whether they’re wrong for hiding their lottery winnings from their spouse or serving their vegan sister-in-law meat at Thanksgiving as “a prank.”
One of the reasons this podcast has become so popular is simply because humans are hard-wiared to gawk at an endless buffet of human absurdity, served up in bite-sized portions perfect for dissection and analysis. Stories about a bride who wants to charge her wedding guests admission fees or about someone who thinks their roommate’s pet goldfish is plotting against them are the norm rather than the exception here.
The variety of stories is staggering, and somehow the hosts maintain their sanity while navigating even the ones that would make soap opera writers say “okay, that’s a bit much.”
The commentary style is what elevates this from simple content aggregation to genuine entertainment. The hosts don’t just read these stories…they live them, they question them, they get emotionally invested in updates from throwaway accounts, and they’re not afraid to call out obviously fake posts while still enjoying them for their creative merit. They’ve mastered the art of being cynical and optimistic, skeptical and engaged, which is exactly the mindset you need when diving into Reddit’s endless ocean of “surely this can’t be real” scenarios.
These days, a lot of us have been left with the endless feeling of… “how the fuck is this real-life?”… but perhaps the answer lies in the cultural revealing that happens when you use a podcast like this as a window into the collective psyche of our culture. Through their selections and reactions, you start to see patterns in what drives people to post their most intimate problems for stranger judgment, and somehow the hosts manage to find both the humor and the humanity in these digital confessions. The hosts are anthropologists digging through a burning Rome as everything around them, well, burns.
The show also serves as an unintentional social commentary on how we’ve collectively decided that crowdsourcing our personal problems to strangers on the internet is somehow more appealing than having actual conversations with the people in our lives. The hosts navigate this particular modern absurdity with just the right mix of incredulity and acceptance, treating each story as both entertainment and a fascinating glimpse into how people actually think relationship conflicts should be resolved through upvotes and comment threads.
There’s no doubt that “Smosh Reads Reddit Stories” is a guilty pleasure. It’s not about educating yourself or turning yourself into a better person. It’s all about becoming the embodiment of that dog in the “This is Fine” meme.
Where to listen to Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
Episodes.fm | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro
Discover the best episodes of Smosh Reads Reddit Stories