u/Digitalmodernism

I have been living in Amsterdam for a year and would love to meet some new friends in the area, even if you aren't near Amsterdam it would be cool for someone to chat with and teach me a bit more about the culture and life here.

I am 35,married, and have kids. I enjoy all kinds of music,spooky youtube documentaries,languages,geography,art, and cooking. I am a professional chef by trade. Feel free to send a message!

MaxFun seems to have a lot of podcasts. Does anyone actually listen to the ones outside of Judge John Hodgman, Beef and Dairy Network, and the McElroy related ones? Do they release their stats at all?

If you visit Kinshasa you will see thousands of people wearing shirts with Candlenights, Shmanners, Bunker Buddies, Rachel's Poetry Corner, The Besties, Tights and Fights, New Appalachian Workshop, plenty of forgotten about jokes, canceled MaxFun shows, and other logos. At the Marché Central de Kinshasa people use old MaxFun enamel pins as currency. Justin even sent the rest of his Kraft Dinners that the listeners gave him to villages around the country and they have become a staple food. This has caused a large problem in the economy and has effected the culture in a significant way. People even greet each other saying "Shrimp Heaven Now" although they are not sure what it means. This is a huge problem and the international community needs to act.

Last week you heard a little about the NYC MaxFun Meetup from Stacey. Here in Los Angeles, we gathered on the outskirts of Little Tokyo and talked about Philip Glass, scanlations, and the 1998 TV movie, You Lucky Dog, starring Kirk Cameron, which a MaxFunster worked on, way back when.

It was really special to spend an evening with MaxFun fans like you.

A week ago we announced that our goal for this year's MaxFunDrive is 16,000 new, boosting, or upgrading members. That was based on a budget I made, which accounted for a bunch of rising costs (healthcare, software, development), some savings (our beautiful new offices actually cost less than our previous digs; outfitting them was expensive, but thanks to so many of you, we we able to absorb that one-time cost), and the continuing challenges of other revenue streams like advertising and live events. The goal was a real number, and we are pretty far away from that goal right now, which means our budget is at risk.

The most important reason to become a MaxFun member is to support the shows that you love. That will always be true. A portion of your support goes to MaxFunHQ, to keep the lights on, as we say, but also so that we can better support your favorite shows. We can help them promote their work, we can get them booked on other podcasts and featured in apps, we can help with advice and technical know-how, we can connect them with advertisers that they want to endorse and allow them to turn down ads they don't vibe with. We can give them a world-class (okay, sometimes slow) membership platform that isn't subject to the inevitable ensh*tification that comes for every single VC-backed platform I know of. We can give them a clear, distinctive, unique choice, and it is so important for creative people to have choices.

MaxFun is partly a media company and partly a technology company and honestly, both of those businesses are rapacious and awful. We are very consciously not awful, but we can only be what we are because of your support. We can only keep serving our shows the way we do because of your support.

MaxFun is also, wholly, a creative company, and wholly a community company (I am good at math, I promise). We want to be a focal point for good people to gather and do great things together. The not-awfulness is key to fostering a creative community, and things like last week’s Meetups are key to strengthening and growing it. A desire for growth is unsavory, because in the framework of capitalism it means growth-at-all-costs. I want to be clear: I would like MaxFun to grow. I want our audience to grow, I want our membership to grow, because I think that we are doing good in the world, and I would like to do more of it.

The way we're going to grow is by doing a lot of hard work at MaxFunHQ, supporting our shows, supporting our members, and supporting our community. But we can only do any of that with your support. I believe there are enough people out there with $5 a month (officially less than a latte; half a beer, it turns out, in a bar on the outskirts of Little Tokyo) to help us do that work.

Will you help us?