Follow Friday

Patrick Willems spent six years on YouTube trying to attract an audience for his short films, before he pivoted to video essays about everything from baseball movies to Francis Ford Coppola's filmography to Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again. Those essays got wildly popular and today, he has more than 350,000 subscribers.

However, he kept making shorts, embedded in his essays as narrative framing devices. In other words, he says, he "trick[ed] the audience into watching short films that I also wanna make, but that normally would not get the views on YouTube or have sponsors on them."

Then, starting in early 2020, he began connecting those narrative shorts into a serialized story about an evil talking coconut named Charl. This so-called "Charl saga" culminated in June with the release of a feature-length film, Night of the Coconut, which is available on the streaming platform Nebula.

Today, on the season one finale of Follow Friday, Patrick shared some of his favorite follow recommendations, while imposing some additional rules on himself: With "one asterisk," he says, he picked favorite accounts run by people he doesn't know in real life: Kobe Eats (@kobeeats on YouTube and TikTok, @kobe_yn on Instagram); Jackson Murphy (@LCJReviews on Twitter and @LightsCameraJackson on YouTube); Neil Cicierega (@neilcic on Twitter and YouTube); and the George Lucas Talk Show (@TheGeorgeLucasTalkShow on YouTube).

Thank you to everyone who has tuned in to this season of Follow Friday. You can help make season two a reality by completing a 5-minute survey at followfridaypodcast.com/season2.

And on Follow Friday's Patreon page, you can unlock an extended version of this interview in which Patrick shares a bonus follow recommendation! Thank you to our amazing patrons: Jon, Justin, Amy, Yoichi, Danielle, and Elizabeth.

Also:

• Follow Patrick @patrickhwillems on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram
• Watch Night of the Coconut on Nebula
• Follow us @FollowFridayPod on Twitter and Instagram
• Leave a review: LoveThePodcast.com/FollowFriday
• Follow Eric @heyheyesj on Twitter
• Email us! [email protected]

This show is a production of Lightningpod.fm, hosted and produced by Eric Johnson

Music: Yona Marie

Show art: Dodi Hermawan

"When you're a broadcaster, you don't have a conversation you can't use as content," jokes Roman Mars — well, mostly jokes. The host of 99% Invisible says he's trying to use the internet more thoughtfully than he used to, and that includes not needing to share everything with the world.

"The past year, it's been really the focus of my time, actually not having every thought be on social media and making everything into something," he says.

Today on Follow Friday, Roman talks about which creators he likes to follow, including: Constitutional law professor Elizabeth Joh (@elizabeth_joh on Twitter); writer and podcaster John Green (@literallyjohngreen on TikTok); competent people who calmly do things well, such as @stellarsidewalks, @texasbeeworks, and @rightchoiceshearing on TikTok; and the subreddit /r/oddlysatisfying.

And on Follow Friday's Patreon page, you can unlock an extended version of this interview in which Roman shares a bonus follow recommendation! Thank you to our amazing patrons: Jon, Justin, Amy, Yoichi, Danielle, and Elizabeth.

Also:

• Follow Roman @romanmars on Twitter and @theromanmars on Instagram
• Listen to 99% Invisible and What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law
• Follow us @FollowFridayPod on Twitter and Instagram
• Leave a review: LoveThePodcast.com/FollowFriday
• Follow Eric @heyheyesj on Twitter
• Email us! [email protected]

This show is a production of Lightningpod.fm, hosted and produced by Eric Johnson

Music: Yona Marie

Show art: Dodi Hermawan

Social media producer: Sydney Grodin

Two years later, Depths of Wikipedia has more than 1.5 million followers combined across Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. That success means walking a fine line: Annie wants to celebrate Wikipedia's oddities and encourage her followers to edit pages, but not to intentionally contribute false info or "bad writing for the sake of humor."

"Sometimes I'll post something and then it'll start getting vandalized a bunch," she says. "Like when I posted the List of Mammals Displaying Homosexual Behavior — don't do this, by the way — people started editing it to add in their name. It's funny, I guess, for two seconds, but then you just feel bad."

Today on Follow Friday, Annie shares some great follow recommendations: Meta-influencer Harry Hill (@veryharryhill on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok); Twitter bots such as @NYT_first_said, @ResNeXtGuesser, and @AceCourtBot; post-ironic Catholic Instagram pages such as @ineedgodineverymomentofmylife and @praying; and TikTok aggregator Leia Jospe (@favetiktoks420 on Instagram).

And on Follow Friday's Patreon page, you can unlock an extended version of this interview in which Annie shares a bonus follow recommendation! Thank you to our amazing patrons: Jon, Justin, Amy, Yoichi, Danielle, Elizabeth, and Sylnai.

We'll be off next week for the 4th of July weekend in the US, and will be back on Friday, July 8th.

Also:

• Follow Annie: @anniierau on Twitter, @annierau on Instagram, and @anniierau on TikTok
• Follow Depths of Wikipedia: @depthsofwiki on Twitter, @depthsofwikipedia on Instagram and TikTok
• Follow us @FollowFridayPod on Twitter and Instagram
• Leave a review: LoveThePodcast.com/FollowFriday
• Follow Eric @heyheyesj on Twitter
• Email us! [email protected]

This show is a production of Lightningpod.fm, hosted and produced by Eric Johnson

Music: Yona Marie

Show art: Dodi Hermawan

Social media producer: Sydney Grodin

When Rusty Foster started the email newsletter Today in Tabs, in 2013, "tabs" was trendy media slang for the articles open in your browser that you were hate-reading. That meaning has faded into obscurity, but Today in Tabs is going strong, dishing up must-reads, great tweets, and a song every Monday-Thursday.

"I do the sort of thing that you do when you have a job where you don't have enough work to do, and you spend a lot of time procrastinating on Twitter," he says. "I do that professionally. I read stuff on Twitter. I keep track of the good tweets and I keep an eye on what people are talking about."

Today on Follow Friday, Rusty shares four great follow recommendations: Programmer and cryptocurrency critic Molly White (@molly0xFFF on Twitter); musician and comedian Petey (@petey_usa on Instagram, @peteyusa on TikTok); writer and technologist Paul Ford (@ftrain on Twitter); and role-playing game podcaster Taylor Moore (@taylordotbiz on Twitter).

And on Follow Friday's Patreon page, you can unlock an extended version of this interview in which Rusty shares a fifth bonus follow recommendation! Thank you to our amazing patrons: Jon, Justin, Amy, Yoichi, Danielle, Elizabeth, and Sylnai.

Also:

• Follow Rusty @fka_tabs on Twitter
• Follow us @FollowFridayPod on Twitter and Instagram
• Leave a review: LoveThePodcast.com/FollowFriday
• Follow Eric @heyheyesj on Twitter
• Email us! [email protected]

This show is a production of Lightningpod.fm, hosted and produced by Eric Johnson

Music: Yona Marie

Show art: Dodi Hermawan

Social media producer: Sydney Grodin

Today we're playing four bonus follow recommendations that originally were exclusive to Follow Friday XL, our special podcast feed for supporters on Patreon. If you want to get five follow recommendations per week instead of the usual four, you can donate $1 or more at patreon.com/followfriday!

In today's episode:

• The Stacks host Traci Thomas talks about someone super-talented who’s still under the radar, Whit McClure (@whit_hazen on Instagram)
• The Comics Curmudgeon writer Josh Fruhlinger talks about someone who makes the internet a better place: Rusty Foster (@fka_tabs on Twitter)
• There Are No Girls on the Internet host Bridget Todd talks about someone who has stopped posting, but needs to come back: Teju Cole (@tejucole on Twitter)
• Bullseye host and Maximum Fun founder Jesse Thorn talks about someone he's jealous of: Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel on Instagram and Twitter)

Also:

• Follow us @FollowFridayPod on Twitter and Instagram
• Leave a review: LoveThePodcast.com/FollowFriday
• Follow Eric @heyheyesj on Twitter
• Email us! [email protected]

This show is a production of Lightningpod.fm, hosted and produced by Eric Johnson

Music: Yona Marie

Show art: Dodi Hermawan

Social media producer: Sydney Grodin