Against the better advice of his friends, a “Lit Bro” just became a “Podcast Bro” when he took his nasty, little-read Goodreads reviews to the air. The Bro is now the host of the little-listened “Catch-22 in the Rye,” recorded for free using Audacity.
After recording a few episodes where he rambled on about the importance of Jonathan Franzen and the creative genius of David Foster Wallace, he started acting like he was ahead of the podcast curve and doing this for years.
Unfortunately for his family, they either have to pretend like they don’t know what a podcast is or “listen” to his show by playing it on low-volume while they do some menial task around the house.
…Most people realized that his show was just an audio-recorded version of his already hate-charged and sexist Facebook posts.
“This isn’t a spot any of us wanted to be,” said his cousin, a literature professor at a local state college. “For years my cousin has recommended and forced us to read the bro-iest books of all time and acted like some sort of bookworm…and now we have to listen to his take on Notes from the Underground.”
When he first put his friend’s and family’s emails on his subscription list without asking, some people were at least mildly interested or intrigued at his attempt to finally do something positive with his time. But after listening to Episode 1: American Psycho/Inherent Vice, most people realized that his show was just an audio-recorded version of his already hate-charged and sexist Facebook posts.
Other family members are gearing up to have more children just so they have an excuse to not listen to his tired hot-takes on David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
Luckily for people outside of the Bro’s inner circle, not too many people are able to access the podcast since it is not listed on any major podcast carrier, like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Listeners are asked to inconveniently download each hour-long show to their phone or computers, eating up large chunks of storage on their devices.
Those who actually have listened to “Catch-22 in the Rye” were not surprised at the low-quality of the recording and its lack of polish, especially since the Bro’s desktop is a shitty old Dell and his phone screen is cracked to the point where it looks like a hydrological map.
Those close to the Bro are just happy that he has now found an hobby and concentrating his efforts into something productive instead of just spending all day on Reddit or weird Japanese pornography sites.
His mother, whom he still lives with, spoke about how her son has “come a long way.”
“He’s usually down in the basement just yelling at people on his video games or punching holes in the drywall. To be honest, I thought he was one or two months away from committing some for of workplace violence at one of his old jobs.”
She continued.
“Yes, his book podcast is terrible, but at least he can now channel his frustration into something where nobody will get hurt.”