The Many Phases and Faces of Fans: The Gravity Beard Podcast on Community

As a content creator, it’s an accepted fact that a podcast is nothing without its fan following.  Whether your fans are the quiet sort that bring it up for recommendations, or loudly and meticulously buying merch, liveshow tickets, and behind-the-scenes patron-program access, all fans are good fans and welcome to be part of your show.

One podcast, The Gravity Beard, as a community that takes it one step further.

If you haven’t heard of them, The GravityBeard Podcast is a comedy podcast that’s got a little bit of everything for everyone.

“The GravityBeard Podcast, always since its inception, is a variety show podcast.  Whenever you tune in from week to week, we do have elements of the show that are consistent and have been since we started, but it has evolved since we started it.  But it’s a variety show, in that you don’t know necessarily what we’re going to do week to week. We’ve done a huge array of things, from interviews to round-table discussions, to a lot of different things under the comedy umbrella.  And then currently, we’re doing “This Week Today,” which is something we’ve done consistently for the last year and a half or so. And then more recently we’ve done “Staff Meetings,” which is a talk show segment-formatted show that we put together because we’re getting so much great content out of the GravityBeard Interns Facebook group.  So that’s essentially what the podcast is.”

As their podcast grew, so did their fanbase and how their fans interacted with the show.  Not content with just interacting with the creators on public forums, they inserted themselves into the GravityBeard narrative – going so far as to assign themselves roles based on the fictional company.

“The Intern group – especially the GravityBeard one – is a place that’s kind of built its own separate world.  I guess, to some extent, in the way that it’s not just people sharing just content that they find online, and it’s not just people interacting with the show in general, but like, it’s people that have taken up an active part of the fictitious world that The GravityBeard has kind of put behind it as far as an internship, so then The Gravity Beard is a company that everyone kind of bought into.  It’s an extra layer. As opposed to other groups where it’s like people come on and they talk about the show, and they try to interact with the host. This one actually built its own separate thing all around it that allowed for more back-and-forth and interactivity with everyone.”

Though their group isn’t the largest – around 230, give or take – the name of the game is quality over quantity.  Each new member is personally greeted as if they’re new employee getting on-boarded to the company, and there’s no shortage of positions for those that want to join in.

To learn more about The GravityBeard Podcast, check out their Twitter and their fellow shows on the Podfix Network.