Before we go on (brief! I promise!) hiatus and move to a seasonal format, Jamie takes a look at your submitted stories about being the main character -- from viral pets to grieving online to reckoning with your relationship to a changing internet, we explore the spectrum of what it means to be too online. Bonus: one of Jamie's favorite memes of all time calls in!

Thank you for making the first year of Sixteenth Minute so special, see you soon <3

Buy Raw Dog here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250847751/rawdog/

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In my day, there were but three things middle schoolers cared about -- BADGERS, MUSHROOMS, AND SNAKES. This week, we look at the peak of Flash animation -- Jonti Picking, aka Mr. Weebl's masterpiece "Badger Badger Mushroom," and the obsessive subculture that was Newgrounds flash animation of the 2000s. How do you become an iconic animator online? Here's a tip: be an incredible musician already. Jamie talks to the multi-talented Jonti about how he makes art born from problem-solving.

Follow Jonti: https://www.youtube.com/@weebl

See Jamie on book tour for Raw Dog!: https://us.macmillan.com/author/jamieloftus

Watch Boston PD Zamboni Crimes Division: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRTunzDofwY&list=PLTHWo4zMtfja4vxOAxnyDK0VXGpRhvRW5

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We all know that Haliey "Hawk Tuah" Welch was the face of a memecoin crypto scandal, and most know that the SEC excused it wholesale. What we don't fully know is why it was so easy to get away with it -- in our grand Hawk Tuah finale, Jamie speaks with former SEC enforcement attorney John Reed Stark about how the state of cryptocurrency can do more than sink a fledgling influencer's career, it can tank a whole economy. 

Follow John Reed Stark's work here: https://www.johnreedstark.com/

Come see Jamie on tour for Raw Dog starting next week! https://us.macmillan.com/tours/jamie-loftus-raw-dog/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaf-I3pdBDpG51TvRPCIfkS08847rolEcVNOqDZCUX8Hq9t9sZlX9idj_DI9NQ_aem_niy1HGU3U4vldbC-KP7JsA

BEFORE MAY 9TH, send a voice memo of your experience being the main character to: [email protected] for your chance to be on an upcoming episode of SIxteenth Minute!

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We're switching to a seasonal format on Sixteenth Minute in a few weeks, and to close the chapter on week-to-week main characters, we want to know -- have you ever been the main character? And if not, how has your relationship to the internet changed? For our May 20th episode, we'll be airing your stories!

Send your voicemail to: [email protected]

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Let’s catch up with Haliey ‘Hawk Tuah’ Welch since the fallout of the crypto scam that undercut her sixteenth minute. While most didn’t stick around to see what happened, a lot about the crypto world has empowered Team Tuah to keep going — getting one over on the government, a second botched pump and dump scheme, and a suspiciously timed podcast relaunch. To what end? We’ve got some ideas.

See Jamie on tour for RAW DOG! https://us.macmillan.com/tours/jamie-loftus-raw-dog/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaf-I3pdBDpG51TvRPCIfkS08847rolEcVNOqDZCUX8Hq9t9sZlX9idj_DI9NQ_aem_niy1HGU3U4vldbC-KP7JsA

Watch Coffeezilla’s breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiZVDY5jNYM&t=696s

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In our final installment of our Tay Zonday series, Jamie speaks with the one and only Adam "Tay" Bahner about how he navigated his viral fame, and how the internet has changed beyond recognition from the days of "Chocolate Rain."

Follow Tay here: https://www.instagram.com/tayzonday/

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In part two of our Tay Zonday series, Adam Bahner gets into his political awakening, and how it affected his relationship to his family, his creative work, and himself. Wanna get radicalized? Wanna get radicalized AGAIN? This is the episode for you.

Follow Tay Zonday here: https://www.instagram.com/tayzonday/

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There are few internet videos more iconic than Tay Zonday’s ‘Chocolate Rain,’ but it took over a decade for the song to be recognized for the politically charged ballad it is. How did we miss it? In part one of our Tay Zonday series, Jamie gets into the history of political music, the naïveté of the early Internet and the ‘post racial Internet,’ and Tay shares more about how he grew up and into one of the most misunderstood cultural figures of his generation.

VOTE FOR WE THE UNHOUSED IN THE WEBBYS BEFORE 4/17!

Webby Awards People’s Voice

Follow Tay Zonday: https://www.instagram.com/tayzonday

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After eight long years of research, Dr. Ally Louks posted to Twitter about completing her Ph. D : "Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose." The Elon-fueled right-wing internet freaked out. In an exclusive interview, Jamie speaks with Dr. Louks about the experience of reclaiming the narrative around a nasty online backlash to better educate anti-intellectuals on the sense we ignore the most.

 Follow Dr. Ally here: https://x.com/DrAllyLouks

Read Dr. Ally's original thread here: https://x.com/DrAllyLouks/status/1861872149373297078?lang=en

vote for "we the unhoused" for a webby before april 17th!: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/shows/public-service-activism

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Where do you go from pivoting your brand to nihilism? Horny, my friends. WILDLY horny. In our final installment of the Sentient Horny Brand series, Jamie speaks to the mind behind Duolingo’s chaotic, wildly horny social media presence Zaria Parvez. Remember when you couldn’t get the owl giving birth to sponges off your feed? Remember when you didn’t even WANT to? That was her, and getting there was a wild ride.
We talk about her journey from nearly taking down a Christian school to changing the way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumes advertising, one shitpost at a time. 

Follow Zaria here: 
https://www.instagram.com/zariaparvez

Join us on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SixteenthMinute/

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Picture this: it's 2020, you're clinging to sanity, and a frozen steak your mom used to eat after school called SteakUmm is now tweeting in the hopes of turning you into a socialist. But... what? Can one be radicalized by hot dog grade meat? Is what's being sold here an idea or microwaveable meat slop? In our penultimate installment of the Sentient Brands series, Jamie gets into the weeds with the mind behind the SteakUmm account, writer and social media director Nathan Allebach. Spoiler alert: we do, indeed, live in a society.

Follow Nathan here: https://beacons.ai/nathanallebach?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaw8UJ_ctC-xxP2HrkYDPA5-9p2LBtn_w_NQsXsZhvZeBBYwiEzyZ6LooY_aem_Dm_8G9fFWhqyK0YAyD1JzQ

Read Nathan's history of sentient brands: https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/brand-twitter-jokes-history.html

Follow Yedoye Travis: https://www.instagram.com/yedoye_/?hl=en

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