A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum

I was heading out for my morning walk, and taking my kid to school for the day, when my neighbor passed me. She was on her way back from dropping her daughter off at school. I waved and said, "Hi."

And then she said, "I found your podcast and your instagram. It was amazing."

What? That seemed weird. She found my podcast? Someone I actually know in real life found my podcast? And not even because I told her about it, but she just found it?

I laughed and moved on to get my walk in, but I couldn't stop thinking about that comment. She found my podcast? How? How did she know that Big Anklevich is me? What the heck?

I remember...I believe it was John Higham who said it...a story about a listener who was on vacation in France, and he saw someone with a Dunesteef T-shirt on, and he said, "Hey, Dunesteef. Cool!" And then the guy gave him a thumbs up or whatever, and they went on their merry ways.

That story still sounds so preposterous. I think, at our height, we had maybe as many as 5,000 listeners. Which is pretty good for a podcast, but when you factor in that there are, according to Google, 1.35 billion English speaking people in the world, the chances that any two of those 5,000 would randomly meet are preposterous.

Yet, here I was faced with a similar thing. I had to know what was going on, so on my way back home, I stopped in and asked her how she found my podcast. 

Well, it's still pretty preposterous. She says that Instagram recommended that she follow my Big Anklevich on Toys account.

She saw my picture and said, "That guy looks really familiar." So, she clicked in and then found the link in my bio to my videos on YouTube.

She followed that over, and then saw me and heard me, and realized that it was her neighbor from across the street.

So, it wasn't my podcast podcast. It was my YouTube videos...that I guess are technically a podcast, but still...

Weird, right? Why did Instagram recommend me? She does have a few Funko Pops on her shelves, but who doesn't these days, amiright? Do you think Instagram tries to recommend people who live in close proximity of each other? It's just so crazy to me that my neighbor was led to my shows out of pure chance.

I wonder if I got a new listener/viewer out of this coincidence. So weird.