Okay but for real, I don’t know how the hell you and also the regular guests managed to schedule so many goddamn guest episodes, looking back since the beginning of Tim’s hiatus I’m shocked at the consistency with which there were guests. Bravo to everyone involved in accomplishing that, and please do take as long a break as you all want from having guests.
Though, I do hope that there will continue to be guests, as schedules permit. If I remember correctly the pace of guests every second episode was proposed after the first What Is Wrong With Videogames Spectacular, as a means to ensure that there was some breaking up of the unbroken white dudeliness of the podcast panel (which is still a worthwhile reason to bring on guests with some regularity (although, and I say this knowing that if it weren’t true it would go to someone’s head, I don’t think Insert Credit has ever really been a White Dude Podcast if you know what I mean (and at the same time it can honestly more counterproductive than I think is often talked about to do it out of a feeling of obligation (I guess I got complex thoughts about this1)))), but that was still probably pretty tough week in week out.
So, I did make a dumb in-joke about it, but I do hope that guests do keep appearing. Every second week seems strenuous even as someone very pro-regular guest appearances, but I do hope that it happens as often as schedules permit and as much as you all enjoy doing it. This is especially true for the regular guests who I think absolutely managed to establish an ongoing presence on the show. As well, knowing there’s a non-negligible chance he’ll read this I’ll say without reservation I like what Matthew Kumar brings to the show a lot.
1 - With confidence that present company will know themselves to be where there are in this dynamic even if I didn’t explicitly say so, I think when it comes to the activity of mandating diversity, the benefits of doing so seems to be least needed where it is done well, and where the benefits of doing so are sorely needed, well, it either just doesn’t happen or when it does it’s awful. That’s just pointless and way more alienating to the person, let’s call it what it is, being tokenized, than anyone with the sorts of good intentions that often result in someone being tokenized ever begin to understand.
So, like, the podcast having people who ain’t white nor dudes nor either white or dudes on the show has undoubtedly enriched it, but like, was it a necessary thing to do in order to address some festering, underlying problem or lack with it? I don’t think so, which is actually ideal really, like, part of what I meant about Insert Credit not ever being a White Dude Podcast is that you didn’t have to be forced to perform basic empathy by the mandated presence of The Other (which according to workshops and teach-ins and the like is supposed to sink in over time, but I have my doubts about that). So, I guess as an extra compliment towards the many guests that have been on the show, at least from a listener’s perspective I didn’t get the sense that anyone was being tokenized, and I genuinely hope that no one who has been on the show felt that way.
