Thank you. Let's talk again soon.
It's not goodbye forever but it is goodbye for now
This message was also read on the April 14 episode of Posting Through It: "Thank you for six amazing years"
In February 2018, I recorded the first episode of “SH!TPOST” in my bedroom on a microphone that I barely knew how to use. It was 16 minutes long and about QAnon, which at the time was a budding conspiracy theory movement that I was struggling to get anyone to pay attention to. That’s pretty wild to think about today.
When I listen back to that first episode, I can’t help but feel sentimental. I was young and I had no way of knowing that the types of things I was covering would go on to swallow movement conservatism, bones and all. Instead, younger me thought this “podcasting stuff” might be good public speaking practice and an excuse to talk to people who I thought were interesting. For reasons I still don’t fully comprehend, people started listening to it in the thousands.
But six years and millions of downloads later, it’s now time for me to figure out what’s next. I don’t know what “next” means for me yet, but things will be quieter around here in the near future while I work through the details. I’ll still pop into your inboxes when I feel inspired to write something. I might even get a wild hair and drop a podcast episode once in a while (and you’ll likely hear me on other shows you listen to from time to time). The difference is that I’ll do these things when I want to do them instead of when I have to do them to fulfill a schedule I promised my supporters.
I have wrestled with this decision for the better part of a year. It is very hard to disappoint thousands of people all at once. But at the end of the day, the reality is that my priorities and dreams in life have shifted and I don’t have the drive it would take to send this project to a new level. Instead of hovering below this self-imposed ceiling, I’m deciding to float back down to the ground and think about building something different. Something simpler.
This project will no longer be soliciting financial support from listeners and readers. People who were giving monthly contributions will no longer be billed for them and those who gave annual-tier amounts have been issued prorated refunds. It was the right thing to do. (If that sounds like you and you need help with anything related to that, my DMs are open on Twitter.)
I have a million people to thank for the experience of this project including Sam Thielman for editing the newsletter, my former co-host Jack for keeping me company in the early years, the hundreds of guests who have taken time out of their lives to talk to me on tape, and of course the thousands of people who tagged along for the ride--just like you.
Thank you sincerely, from the bottom of my heart. This won't be the last time you hear from me. I won't be gone forever. If you'd like to know when I resurface, whether that is coming back to this podcast some day, starting a new one, doing a series... you can drop your email here:
Thank you again. Hosting this show has been amazing but not everything is meant to last forever. Long live SH!TPOST. Long live Posting Through It.
I'll talk to you again soon.
-Jared Holt