5x5 #19 // “Wait, What’s that Blink Podcast You Always Tweet About?”

5x5 #19 // “Wait, What’s that Blink Podcast You Always Tweet About?”

Weirdly enough, this is probably my favorite and most personal piece of content I’ve ever made. Anyone that knows me painfully understands that I’m a colossal fan of the band Blink 182. I have so much emotionally invested in their trajectory as human beings that I consider them a significant part of my life. I’m carefully considering authoring a comprehensive biography on them someday. Pathetic? Maybe a little, but what’s a fandom if it’s not?

I’m not alone in this passion. Throughout their dynamic if waning career, the band has built up a cult-like fanbase that patrols every movement of each band member’s life. They exchange their information on Reddit and Twitter to the point where it has formed its own lore and subculture as a whole.

One of the most captivating products of this obsession is Blink-155, a podcast where two Canadian music journalists have committed to talking about every single one of Blink-182’s 155 songs. What happens when they inevitably release more material? Fuck off, stop wasting your time with stupid questions you normie.

An episode averages at about two hours long, with the addition of bonus content for those who are willing to pay for extremely long diatribes about expired body wash and middle aged men buying Travis Barker’s vintage vehicles. The pod has formed a cult following itself with members who have given countless hours of their time listening to the pod’s output. It’s mostly manifested in its eclectic yet oddly consistent Twitter universe with numerous fan accounts referring to specific idiosyncrasies of the pod and its cohosts. The hyper-specialized nature of it all is something I’m doing extensive research on. In fact, I’m in the process of writing an essay on the pod and how the new media landscape allowed for it to resonate so strongly with this group of people.

Anyway, the voices of Josiah Hughes and Sam Sutherland have been the backdrop of so many different moments in my life, including the best and worst alike. I wanted to capture that in this little piece and I think it’s one of my best executions of an idea to date. This nothing but a pure, heartfelt tribute to a rather unique part of my life.