I worked for a radio station once. In New York City. I never wanted to work for a radio station, but one day — poof! — I found myself employed by a radio station. This was twenty years ago, the dawn of the digital age, when everyone thought the internet would unite the world.
The job was an education. For instance, I learned that I did not like working at a radio station. I also learned that the internet and its hell spawn social media are just mics and phone banks full of strangers ready to scream “you suck.” And the more successful you are, the more they will scream that, by the thousands.
I never planned to work in radio, and had my dad still been alive, I would have embraced the opportunity. He would have been tickled. My old man was a radio DJ in the Army, and he loved it — the radio was always singing, crackling, and droning on and on in the car.
The radio gig came along right after I was laid off from a men’s magazine, where I had spent my days writing about things men care about, like beer, motorcycles, and swords. I made sure to use monosyllabic words in these efforts and made a meager living, as they say.
Before I could have a proper emotional breakdown about the layoff, however, I was immediately hired by a radio station programming director looking for someone with my specific bona fides, and that’s how I ended up hosting a national nighttime call-in talk show for men — a dream job to someone, just not me. For almost two years, I sat in front of a microphone for four hours a night, five days a week, and talked to men with no one else to talk to.
I was a quick solution to the programming director’s problem: he wanted a host who could talk about topics of interest to early 2000s dudes. His best radio personalities were men who spoke trash and bitched about their lives, crude outrage queens who loved drama. He wanted less drama, and I was perfect because I could talk about The Matrix and MP3 players and other subjects that piqued the interests of men at that time.
It also didn’t hurt that I was cheap. The programming director took a gamble on me, betting that he could train me to be a radio host on the job, and he tried his very best.
My programming director was a lanky, laidback veteran who had fought his way up the radio industry ladder from middle-of-nowhere morning DJ to New York City, where he managed a dirty half-dozen or so radio personalities, each with their very own ridiculous on-air pseudonym: Gator or Kid Comet or DJ Hot Sauce. My programming director did not have a nickname, but I was told that early in his career, working the midday slot somewhere in the Southwest, he went by a name that sounded like Beef Stu, a nom de plume inspired by meat.
Working in radio alongside ‘talent’ is like working in the Justice League or the Avengers, where everyone has a superhero name and a secret identity. I toyed with one of my own but settled on ‘DeVore.’ Just one name, like Cher. “Yo, bros, it’s DeVore.”
(In the biz, on-air hosts are called ‘talent’ by management, which may sound like a compliment, but it is not.)
And each of these personalities — performers — was emotionally volatile and vulnerable, hot-tempered and instantly gloomy the moment they were off-air. I don’t know if the job attracts people with this kind of temperament or transforms folks with normal brains into aggressive, wisecracking, yackety-yakking maniacs, but I did not have this personality type. The job of talking to faceless humans on the radio is intense and requires a sort of courage verging on recklessness — you have to think fast and talk faster.
I was not qualified to be a radio host because I didn’t have “it.” I have a naturally dry mouth, and the sound of my voice makes me nauseous. My programming director — formally Beef Stu — thought I had it in me to be “good enough,” but I didn’t. Even a moderately gifted radio host or DJ hungers for the airwaves, and I never did.
A good radio host doesn’t have to turn it on or off for the mic; they are always on, ready to open their mouths and let it all pour out: gripes, random epiphanies, and mini-monologues on current events, the names of songs, the locations of listeners, and station call signs. It just flows. I did not have this fire inside, so I drank liquor on the job to soothe my nerves and to help me perform — there were bottles of it everywhere because old school radio stations are a subset of “man cave,” a filthy space where men will be boys. I would drink before the show and during because I thought it made me sound cool, and loose, and dangerous.
In reality, I sounded drunk. Slow. Mumbly — like a muppet with a concussion.
At first, I thought my programming director was a mellow dude with a playful, syrupy voice, but to survive decades in an industry that attracts and grooms egotists with a gift for speaking in tongue, you have to be cunning, and he was. He was also nurturing, in his way. Encouraging. He was a big believer in the “air check,” which is how radio personalities are given feedback by their employer.
“Air checks” can be fraught — on-air talent are famously thin-skinned and with good reason. I found the job to be horrifically high-pressure, and it’s hard to hear criticisms sometimes, especially when you’re on the front lines.
The ‘air check’ combines editorial notes with an ambush. Even when you know it’s coming, it’s mildly unsettling. It would have been impossible for my programming director to listen to every minute of my four-hour show, so he would, in the morning, randomly listen to five or ten-minute segments from the previous night’s show, which, at the time, was recorded on compact disc.
I’d then meet with him before the show, and he’d critique what he heard, and usually, his notes were focused on the topics I was talking about and how I talked about them — my pacing mostly, but also other technical tweaks. I had a bad habit of “swallowing” the microphone at times, for instance. I also had a slight lisp that he made sure I knew about. (My listeners also wanted me to know I had a lisp.)
And then there was my drinking.
Itdidn’t take long for me to have an epiphany behind the mic — a small one, almost profound. I realized that radio and the internet are similar in that they both make lonely people feel like they’re in a conversation with other human beings, when they are, in fact, just filling time between commercial breaks or until the next influencer pops into your feed.
Both media are also in the “make someone mad” business because anger is a powerful emotion that takes little effort to rouse. Another emotion that is easy to exploit is fear, which can turn into anger pretty easily, just add a pinch of scapegoat or a twist of “poor me.’ Every person who called into my show, and every comment I’ve ever gotten on the internet, is mostly fueled by rage or resentment, which is like anger’s younger, more passive-aggressive sibling.
Old school talk radio and podcasts and streaming shows all follow the same laws of nature. The same physics. Hurt some feelings, then enjoy the backlash. These kinds of displays of cruelty and confidence can transfix the human animal the way the proverbial flame attracts the moth — and a person mesmerized by such exhibitions are vulnerable to all sorts of sales pitches.
Sure, I get positive replies to social media posts. One or two, here or there. I post a photo of my dog or a homemade bowl of pasta and old friends will respond “cute” or “awesome.” But if you want attention — if you want clicks and callers lining up to yell at you — then you have to be loud and opinionated
We live in a hot take-based economy. Emotions and opinions turn the gears of social media, and what most people don’t realize is that their opinions are not original, most political views are the result of osmosis — you hear or read something someone said or wrote, and whatever you heard or read rattles around in your head like a ping pong in a raffle spinner and the next day, during a conversation with a spouse or a friend or a colleague, this thing you heard or read pops out of your mouth, only you think it’s your idea now, but it isn’t. I’m guilty of opinion laundering, too.
The truth is that original opinions are difficult to invent, and they’re actually rare. I didn’t realize how rare a unique, interesting opinion was until it was my job, on-air, to share what I thought without even thinking and to listen to and endure, the brain farts of anonymous listeners.
During my tenure at the radio station, I had the following experience a few times: I’d be out, at a party, or a social function of some sort, a dinner maybe, and I’d be sat next to someone I didn’t know, or I’d get cornered by a friend’s friend from high school, and we’d inevitably ask each other what the other does, which is one of the worst habits New Yorkers have, the instant willingness to abandon pleasant small talk and ask direct questions that size up the other person’s professional status. Why waste time talking to a public school teacher or a hospice nurse? This is rude and we live in a Golden Age of Rude.
So on more than one occasion, I answered the “What do you do” question directly: I’m a talk radio host, and the responses were immediately intense and probing. One person just repeated that word: “Fascinating.” But another immediately said, “I could do that job.” Just out of nowhere. She didn’t blurt it, she just said, matter of factly, “I could do that,” after I told her my talk show was five days a week. What I wanted to say was, “No you couldn’t.”
Maybe she could? She could very well have been a natural. The radio station was full of hosts born to jump on a mic and just talk and sound self-assured and funny and exciting. I was nervous during my first show, and last, nervous the minute before I went on air, and nervous the whole show. I was not good at the job. But then she followed that up with this chaser: “I have opinions on everything.”
I think I smiled and nodded like a coin-operated robot. I remember what I wanted to say, which was: “You think you have opinions but you don’t. Most people are parrots who mimic what other people say! It is actually hard to have an opinion! You don’t know!”
I didn’t say that, of course. Because my hot takes are tepid, like room-temperature tapioca pudding. I didn’t take the bait, I just listened.
“Mmhmm.”
Your social media posts — especially the political ones — are likely purloined from a larger account, and many of those large accounts spend their days searching feeds for funny/thoughtful/interesting posts from smaller accounts they can cut and paste.
But if you aspire to being a professional poster or radio talk show host, it does help if your hot takes are offbeat or innovative, but what’s most important is belief. You must believe what you are saying is the most important thought in the world and you must believe it even if you don’t believe it. Even if it’s a flat-out lie. During one “air check,” I was told I was being too wishy-washy. I forget the topic but let’s say it was “apples and oranges.” I went on air and said something like, “Hey what’s your favorite fruit? Apples or oranges? Call in!”
That was not the way to do it. “Do you like oranges? How about apples? Me? I like oranges!”
My programming director told me how: you go on air and you say “Oranges are the best fruit, the most delicious, there is no fruit as tasty as an organge. All other fruits are awful.” He paused and added, “Apples blow.”
He tried to teach me, he really did. It was hard for me to project myself via radio waves into cars and homes, and headphones. But he did manage to make me a better blogger and Twitter troll. He taught me to sharpen my hastily-conceived points of view to a point and to stab, stab, stab.
He also stressed to me that there was reality, and there was the studio. I learned to be aware when I was on-air and when I was off and to never confuse radio John with real-life John, which happens all the time to people who broadcast their thoughts and feelings for money or attention.
I’d argue that being online is more attractive than boring old life — it’s exciting, and energizing, and you never have to accept responsibility for the things you say if you don’t want to. The dopamine surges are more frequent too. Every caller, every follower, every laugh and comment is a rush, a brain-soothing jolt that further diminishes the pleasures of reality. Who wants to struggle and worry when you can exist as a disembodied voice and float above the mess of having to look at other human beings in the eye?
The very best radio personalities I’ve ever met eventually fused these two states of existence into one, and they were always on. I assume the influencer community, if you can call it that, is thick with these kinds of sickos.
There was this one guy, a sports radio legend, who would barge into the studio we shared like a one-man battering ram talking a mile-a-minute, shouting orders at his producers, making fun of his interns, and griping about this football team or that basketball star. I’d watch him prep as I slowly walked out at the end of my shift: one minute, his cans were around his neck and his mic was cold and the next, the cans are over his ears, the mic was hot and he’s still shouting orders at his producers, making fun of his interns, and griping about this football team or that basketball star as the phone banks filled with blinking lights, each one a person desperate to connect, to shout and insult and share their second-hand opinions.
I envied his blinking lights. I never had a full bank, just a handful of misfit regulars who felt obliged to remind me every night that I sucked.
The programming director never liked it when I acted over-the-top or tried to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I tried to rant like the sports radio legend but I sounded like a living coronary — I wasn’t entertaining or interesting.
He used to tell me the callers can smell bullshit, my performances were not convincing. “Be yourself,” he’d say, and not one of the other more polished hosts. Yes, “be yourself,” sounds like a platitude, something stitched on a pillow but he believed it. This wasn’t charity, he wanted me to succeed because finding new talent that worked for peanuts was a pain in the ass.
He told me how to commodify myself, basically: take two or three aspects of my personality and blow them up big for the mic. Like, if I like bacon, then I had to dial up that love of bacon to a 10 on the air. I intellectually understood what he was saying but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of three things I could passionately talk about all the time. Batman? I could probably talk Batman for four hours but every night?
He was a pro and one of the friendliest, most approachable bosses I’ve ever had in the media but I was genuinely shocked the day he fired the morning show jock, an expensive diva addicted to controversies that repelled advertisers.
In radio, people get fired the way gangsters get capped: one in the back of the head from a friend and you never see it coming.
He broke the news to the guy after his show during the ‘air check,’ and the station’s number one star did not take it well. I could hear him barking as he stormed down the office’s hallways towards the elevator.
During my ‘air check’ later that day I asked him how this was possible, the morning show was popular, and everyone loved him. Surely, I said, the callers would revolt. The programming director agreed. They would definitely get calls. Nasty ones. But, eventually, the listeners would forget and move on to something else.
“How long will that take?”
“Two weeks.”
It takes two weeks for people to get over most things.
I have never forgotten that: no matter how beloved you are, no matter how big you may be, the public will only care about you for two weeks before finding something new and shiny to play with. Dead? Fired? Cancelled? Two weeks.
In that same meeting, he forced me to listen to five minutes of my show, and they were five minutes that made me cringe. I was drunk and slurring, and my sentences were like dark country roads. It was embarrassing, and we sat in silence for a minute after it was over before he said we were going to listen to it again. I begged him not to press play but he did and the liquor made my lisp more pronounced. I sounded so scared, too. Insecure.
He was making a point I didn’t want to hear. Then he said, “Do your show drunk again, and your show will be forgotten in two weeks.” A year or so later, I would be laid off by corporate powers. Nothing to be done. It spared him from having to fire me though. I saw it coming. But that programming director was the first person in my life to tell me I was drinking too much. I’m not suggesting he cared about me, personally, but he cared about good radio.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of John DeVore's work on Medium.