The pursuit of authenticity on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast

Abstract

One new technology, the podcast, has been especially instrumental as a site of expression for stand-up comics. One of the most popular of these podcasts is Marc Maron's WTF, which has over 350 episodes. Maron's podcast has vaulted the once-struggling comedian to popular culture prominence while allowing him to experience perceptions of a more authentic sense of self. Through an analysis of four episodes of Maron's podcast, I demonstrate that WTF allows Maron and his guests to resolve interpersonal disputes, explain away controversy, participate in communal reflection and provide the place from which a more authentic presentation of oneself emerges. The field of media studies is under constant revision as the parameters of the discipline mirror the identic fluidity of the actors pushing those parameters. Podcasts like WTF, I argue, provide a vehicle through which the agent exercises more freedom of control over how they perceive themselves and perceive others. Participatory, do-it-yourself media, such as WTF, are particularly conducive to the pursuit of a more authentic sense of selfhood, a development that has implications for how these types of technologies allow for narratives of self-discovery that elude and resist dystopian understandings of new communication technologies.