Editorial: The Story of Us

Chances are, unless you came up out of the same internet gene goop we came from, you’ve asked yourself who The Noisecast is. I thought now would be an acceptable time to detail our history and *officially* launch us. Yes, we’re a thing now. We’re still the same snarky irreverent bunch, and this is still a hobby, but we’re taking this hobby seriously and are determined to serve good content and keep our fans, few as they may be at the moment, entertained.

The story of us begins many months ago… I’m sorry, let me try that again. Once upon a time, there existed a magical wonderland called #whitenoise. #whitenoise was a wonderful little hash tag within a website called Gizmodo, which itself fell under the Gawker media brand. The noisers, as they came to be called, were a random and fun loving bunch. These kids were described as a “more polite 4chan” or the peanut gallery. #whitenoise was a fun place, active almost 24/7. Many people came to build extraordinary friendships there and many a fun meme and experience came out of its bowels.

In order to more effectively bond, numerous external groups were formed where noisers could meet in the event that Gizmodo stopped working (“borked” is the scientific term). As these borkings became more frequent, these external havens became more important. One day, two legacy members had a crazy idea. Skype had just released a new beta that allowed more than two people to video chat. So the two respected young-elder statesmen of #whitenoise, our very own DJ Orphic1 (a real DJ) and Snoop, attempted a large Skype call. Incidentally, Skype is an awful option for group calling… an extremely awful option. Skype was a failure, but the tantalizing possibilities lit a spark and Orphic stumbled across tinychat. The first video chat happened and was a success. There were many curious onlookers. That is, until someone shared the link to the channel and it got spammed by kids who find such things hilarious.

A new channel was created, this time with a password. Of course the weakness was that you had to tell someone the password, and one of the many someones posted the password openly again, leading to massive spamming. Around this time, the tail end of the great time-warp bork occured and an inside joke was born of its ashes. A comment that had been made by Snoop (serendipity with this guy) got stuck in a Gizmodo time-warp and for months that would be the top comment on #whitenoise unless you hit refresh repeatedly. The comment he made asked a simple question and his answer became the question, the most agreed upon answer to his question became the answer to his question-answer thingy. Do you still follow? Finally peace reigned in tinychat-land.

These events happened over the space of 3 or so days. Around this time, a third major character enters the scene. Our very own Kevlar Menace. He is what a witch might call a metaphysical aetherial nexus. I made that up. He was the one guy everyone liked, a concept that defeats me since he is such a snarky and sarcastically abusive man *trollface*. He was a man everyone had in common with everyone else and by some form of witchcraft he became the web that drew legions to tinychat. Enter the next title character in this adventure, me, Agrippa. I joined the party on the third day. By then every member of the current podcast except Vitto #9, Caroline and Kaiser were visitors. We reveled in this new magical form of contact. So many of us had been trading jabs for months and here we were, hearing each other’s voices for the first time.

For months the idea of a podcast had popped up but been laughed down, followed by loud calls for an official Gizmodo podcast with no dice in response. Agrippa, being the general social hacker that he was, saw an opportunity to make something real by playing on the visceral nature of this new form of contact. His plan was as brilliant as it was effective. It required the full flex of his considerable and superior genius and manipulative power to muster up his world changing plan of staggering genius. Pay attention, this is what he said: “Dudes, we should like, totally start a, like, podcast dude. Word.” The room went silent, clearly floored by the staggering genius of this brilliantly and subtly executed plan. Then the most brilliant response came from Gonzorider, said perfectly according to Agrippa’s brilliant plan, he said “Sure, why not? I don’t give a fuck.” Incidentally, that would become his catchphrase in the podcast.

Over the next few hours and days on tinychat, Agrippa would bring up the podcast so that it stayed real until the people who would eventually become the core members of The Noisecast started taking it seriously. At this point, a series of unfortunate events occurred involving an overzealous member. He was a great guy and tried very hard to make it work out, but went too far too fast. He should have been here with us, but the incident burned bridges and an agreement was made to part ways with hard feelings only lingering for a little while. We still thank him for the first beta podcast, we learned many things from it, including the best software to use, the general length of editing, how to spread responsibility without holding it ransom to one person’s whims, The fact that having a good radio voice doesn’t mean you can lead a radio show, the fact that Steven Callas was the only man who could lead the on air stuff, etc. Growing pains and such.

With his initial vision derailed, Agrippa decided to stop being antisocial and take control. He tapped Rontourage to handle a lot of the technical details, editing podcast episodes and responsible for designing the site. Rontourage is the man to blame… err… credit for the continued existence and function of The Noisecast. Without him, everything grinds to a halt. While the cast affectionately calls Agrippa ‘boss’ or ‘grandpa’, instead of his preferred ‘Lord Agrippa El Magnifico the Great, esq. The First’ he insists he is the least relevant member of the squad. Think of him as the band manager who fetches sandwiches (10 internets if you get the reference). One more beta later and the addition of a few more people to the cast, logo redesigns, move from Skype to Teamspeak, a few special guests like Brian Brushwood and many many penis jokes, we come to today. This blog was meant as a repository for the show notes but it’s grown into something more. It’s grown into a record of The Cast members’ thoughts, ideas and rants. Someday you might find scoops here, but understand, we are here to entertain, enlighten, delight and offend. We’re not reporters. We have long since distanced ourselves from Gawker and #whitenoise, but it remains the seedy back alley that we were drunkenly conceived  in and for that, a piece of #whitenoise will always live in us, like herpes, like happy herpes. So welcome, hello.  No ,that is not a Nexus S in my pocket, I’m really happy to see you. #creepy

Remaining cast members for those too lazy to go to the cast page linked above:

Benguin: Laughs uncontrollably at the word quiff

Vitto#9: He seems gentle, but that fruit died.

Kaiser: 3D? He sees in 6D.

Caroline: Yes you do look ginger

Sbunny: Pretty face, dirty words

Bazookafox: He’s not really a blowup doll