Day 24 of our cultural advent calendar, in which we count our highlights from 2022 to Christmas and beyond day by day. Our highs & lows of this cultural year continue with the H3 podcast.
the past two years, I’ve been diligently following The H3 Podcast, a YouTube channel with 2.89 million subscribers that streams live four shows a week and focuses primarily on the Internet and pop culture.
It is hosted by married couple Ethan and Hila Klein, who achieved online fame in the mid-to-late 2010s via their other YouTube channel H3H3 Productions, on which they mainly shared memes and reactionary content.
Your most famous video? VAPE NAYSH YALL.
The backstory of the H3 podcast is important as it includes A LOT of Internet lore.
Think back to early 2020, the whispers of a virus spreading across the world are getting louder and louder. Lockdowns are on the horizon. The “king of YouTube” Shane Dawson has yet to be canceled.
H3 (which, by the way, symbolizes the initials of Hila and Ethan) now have an established podcast in which they interview people like Post Malone, Bo Burnham and — whispers — Jordan Peterson.
Then, on February 22, 2020, they published an interview with controversial YouTuber Trisha Paytas, who is perhaps best known for crying on her kitchen floor and claiming to be a chicken nugget.
The interview was a huge success. The bickering, exaggerated, sibling dynamic between Trisha and Ethan was so popular that they later decided to create their own show hosted by H3 called “Frenemies.”
Together with the pandemic, “Frenemies” has completely changed the direction of the H3 podcast channel and caused its audience — and cultural significance within the influencer sphere — to skyrocket. It became the go-to place to learn about the latest YouTube dramas from an insider’s perspective.
But unfortunately, “Frenemies” didn’t last long. It wasn’t very unexpected, especially when the entire concept of the show was based on Ethan and Trisha hating each other.
It ended with the two dressed up like Uncle Fester and Debbie from the 1993 movie Addams Family Values, eating pizza, and arguing about Ethan getting an additional 5% of the show’s revenue.
DieI’m skipping a lot of information and hearsay here because, frankly, there is simply too much. Plus, I guess you probably don’t care.
The most important thing to know is that after the episodes of “Frenemies,” the majority of the audience sided with Ethan and chose to continue watching and supporting H3 content. All of this has resulted in a much larger and more engaged community of viewers who, interestingly enough, are overwhelmingly female. The podcast has even become a kind of litmus test for some women to check the values and compatibility of the men they date. (If he prefers Joe Rogan, run.)
Today, H3 streams four shows a week (five for paid members), all live and with a much larger crew of people who have become popular contributors to the show. Watching feels like hanging out with the family — but like a cool, funny family sharing inside jokes and introducing you to eccentric TikTok personalities.
My consumption of traditional media has definitely fallen since I became an H3 fan, but I love the convenience of the almost daily routine, which is definitely a hangover from the COVID lockdowns, when the weeks blurred and something as simple as a weekly show could become routine.
In such turbulent times of social media, when many content creators are either burnt out or outed for something, the H3 podcast has also achieved something remarkable: retaining a loyal audience. It not only knows what its viewers want to watch, but also collaborates with them by contributing content ideas to its subreddit of over 500,000 members. The fan base may be huge, but you always feel heard.
For the very online person, the H3 podcast really does have it all.
Join the discussions about politics and pop culture; stay on the lookout for the unwanted knowledge that American TV presenter Howie Mandel once uploaded a TikTok with an anus prolapse. (Don’t look it up.)
Day 24 of our cultural advent calendar, in which we count our highlights from 2022 to Christmas and beyond day by day. Our highs & lows of this cultural year continue with the H3 podcast.
the past two years, I’ve been diligently following The H3 Podcast, a YouTube channel with 2.89 million subscribers that streams live four shows a week and focuses primarily on the Internet and pop culture.
It is hosted by married couple Ethan and Hila Klein, who achieved online fame in the mid-to-late 2010s via their other YouTube channel H3H3 Productions, on which they mainly shared memes and reactionary content.
Your most famous video? VAPE NAYSH YALL.
The backstory of the H3 podcast is important as it includes A LOT of Internet lore.
Think back to early 2020, the whispers of a virus spreading across the world are getting louder and louder. Lockdowns are on the horizon. The “king of YouTube” Shane Dawson has yet to be canceled.
H3 (which, by the way, symbolizes the initials of Hila and Ethan) now have an established podcast in which they interview people like Post Malone, Bo Burnham and — whispers — Jordan Peterson.
Then, on February 22, 2020, they published an interview with controversial YouTuber Trisha Paytas, who is perhaps best known for crying on her kitchen floor and claiming to be a chicken nugget.
The interview was a huge success. The bickering, exaggerated, sibling dynamic between Trisha and Ethan was so popular that they later decided to create their own show hosted by H3 called “Frenemies.”
Together with the pandemic, “Frenemies” has completely changed the direction of the H3 podcast channel and caused its audience — and cultural significance within the influencer sphere — to skyrocket. It became the go-to place to learn about the latest YouTube dramas from an insider’s perspective.
But unfortunately, “Frenemies” didn’t last long. It wasn’t very unexpected, especially when the entire concept of the show was based on Ethan and Trisha hating each other.
It ended with the two dressed up like Uncle Fester and Debbie from the 1993 movie Addams Family Values, eating pizza, and arguing about Ethan getting an additional 5% of the show’s revenue.
DieI’m skipping a lot of information and hearsay here because, frankly, there is simply too much. Plus, I guess you probably don’t care.
The most important thing to know is that after the episodes of “Frenemies,” the majority of the audience sided with Ethan and chose to continue watching and supporting H3 content. All of this has resulted in a much larger and more engaged community of viewers who, interestingly enough, are overwhelmingly female. The podcast has even become a kind of litmus test for some women to check the values and compatibility of the men they date. (If he prefers Joe Rogan, run.)
Today, H3 streams four shows a week (five for paid members), all live and with a much larger crew of people who have become popular contributors to the show. Watching feels like hanging out with the family — but like a cool, funny family sharing inside jokes and introducing you to eccentric TikTok personalities.
My consumption of traditional media has definitely fallen since I became an H3 fan, but I love the convenience of the almost daily routine, which is definitely a hangover from the COVID lockdowns, when the weeks blurred and something as simple as a weekly show could become routine.
In such turbulent times of social media, when many content creators are either burnt out or outed for something, the H3 podcast has also achieved something remarkable: retaining a loyal audience. It not only knows what its viewers want to watch, but also collaborates with them by contributing content ideas to its subreddit of over 500,000 members. The fan base may be huge, but you always feel heard.
For the very online person, the H3 podcast really does have it all.
Join the discussions about politics and pop culture; stay on the lookout for the unwanted knowledge that American TV presenter Howie Mandel once uploaded a TikTok with an anus prolapse. (Don’t look it up.)