Doomscroll: Tim Heidecker

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Welcome to Doomscroll, my guest is comedian, musician and actor Tim Heidecker. If you’ve spent any time online, you’ve probably come across his work in the form of videos, stand-up, podcasts, music and more. If you enjoy this program you can access bonus episodes by becoming a monthly paid subscriber: Support the show.
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Tim Heidecker is a multi-hyphenate artist and entertainer. He is perhaps most well known for his video work in collaboration with Eric Wareheim, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, that began in 2007 on the Adult Swim network. Today, you can find him performing live music as Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band as well as hosting the call-in podcast show Office Hours. We discuss:

• How irony & online shitposting became real world politics. It wasn’t always this way, so when did it change?

• When should we separate the art from the artist? Where does comedy end and ideology begin?

• The shift from legacy TV to big social media platforms. How did these new media ecosystems created the politics and culture of today?

Many people have asked me, “Josh, how do you choose the guests for this show?” To which I reply, “Zoomer shitpost accounts make memes that show political figures alongside content creators in quadrants of the political compass. If someone appears in those memes, I invite them on the show.” As silly as this sounds, its actually the secret recipe for the program. Naturally, I reached out to Tim via four separate email addresses and bombarded his inbox with invitations.

Doomscroll should reflect the chaos and flattening of social media, where serious political events occur alongside silly and exaggerated memes. This week, we are lucky to be joined by one of the more thoughtful voices in online commentary. Tim Heidecker’s career has spanned the full gamut of mediums and genres. Much of his recent work is a parody or satire of online right-wing guys “in a world of blue haired #metoo types” (his words not mine lol).

Our conversation traces the arc of political satire, irony and American counter-culture. Few people have been as influential as Tim in pioneering the affect, style and genre of new media internet comedy. None are more qualified to comment on its impact. The full episode is out today:

Tim Heidecker: Irony, Comedy and the Internet | Doomscroll

On this week’s bonus episode, we explore Tim’s background in creative DIY scenes, his upbringing and early political education, as well as our shared admiration for the work of artist and documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis:

Doomscroll: Tim Heidecker II

Doomscroll is a small independent program. You can become a paid subscriber and get access to bonus episodes with every guest:

Doomscroll: Aella II

Doomscroll: Francis Fukuyama II

Doomscroll: Hasan Piker II

Doomscroll: Catherine Liu 2 II

This week, in a somewhat related story, the official White House account on X has been ratio’d by a shitposter named National Juche. If you haven’t been following these developments, the official WH account has been posting some outrageous and extremely online memes in the last few weeks and months. Thinking further on the topics of comedy and ideology, we may soon find ourselves in a culture where these two categories are no longer so distinct. Instead, comedy, or art in general, may serve as the permissioned space in which to make political critiques that are not allowed elsewhere in society.