Following the COVID-19 pandemic, podcasts have become increasingly popular. According to Podcast Statistics, there were 4.5 million podcasts available across streaming platforms in 2025, with the number of active podcasts sitting at around 600,000. Along with an increase in the number of listeners, the podcast industry saw an increase in market value from $30 billion in 2024 to $39.5 billion in 2025.
I have recently seen an increase in social media influencers, especially from TikTok, starting podcasts. Now, I genuinely have no idea what is making them start a podcast. I don’t know if it is money, fame, or some other obscure reason, but no matter what the reason is — I think they are all pointless. Don’t get me wrong, I have influencers that I enjoy watching on TikTok; however, I would never want to listen to them talk about basically nothing for an hour and a half.
One of my main issues with this influx of podcasts is that most of them seem to be solely for money, especially because a lot of the people creating podcasts are one-hit wonders who had their one moment of internet fame and are trying to continue to make a profit off of it. A main example of this is Hailey Welch, AKA Hawk Tuah girl, who had one viral clip on TikTok and now has a whole podcast. Mind you, she did not go viral for anything inspirational; it was simply a 15-second clip of her saying mindless words. To me, this seems like an obvious cash grab, because why else would you start a podcast unless you wanted to continue to make money off the internet? Now, most of these podcasts are unsuccessful; in fact, most podcasts make less than $5,000 a month, according to Backstage, and these podcasters are usually releasing weekly episodes. To me, it seems like a waste of time and money to start something that is more than likely not going to make a profit. Honestly, it seems like most of these people are starting podcasts because they like hearing themselves talk, and it is crazy to me how people are giving in to that. however
I am not going to say that I haven’t listened to podcasts before, because I have, and I don’t think that all podcasts are bad. In fact, I actually enjoy listening to podcasts from time to time, especially true crime podcasts(shoutout Crime Junkies) and occasionally the Call Her Daddy podcast, depending on the guest.
However, one thing that I really hate about podcasts is that most of them aren’t even podcasts anymore. Like most people listen(or watch) to podcasts on YouTube (podcast statistics), which really means people are watching them, and at that point, you aren’t even listening to a podcast anymore, you are watching a YouTube video. I don’t understand why people just sit and watch people talk about nothing for hours on end.
Another thing I hate about podcasts is politics. Growing up, all my dad listened to in the car was political podcasts and they would just ramble on and on about nothing. To a little five-year-old, this was the worst thing in the world. Besides this, political podcasts bring up an issue that is brought up across all forms of media: people rely on them for ALL of their information. Like social media platforms and news outlets, podcasts can be a source of misinformation that people blindly follow without doing any of their own research.
At the end of the day, this doesn’t really affect me at all. I can continue to live my life as normal, no matter how many podcasts are available to stream. But, I will continue to complain about it every time I see another influencer start a podcast that literally no one is going to listen to, because who cares about them?
