EntertainmentNewsTechKids turned the comment section of an NPR podcast into a group chatBlocked from other social media, middle schoolers have had to get creative.Blocked from other social media, middle schoolers have had to get creative.by Terrence O’BrienSep 26, 2026, 5:32 PM UTCShareGiftCath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty ImagesTerrence O’Brien is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.Middle schoolers, likely blocked from other apps and social networks, apparently turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR’s Wild Card into an impromptu group chat. In a new episode of This American Life, host Ira Glass digs into how the kids landed there and why. But it mostly boils down to kids getting creative to work around the restrictions placed on them.When Glass asked one of the kids why they picked this particular podcast, they said, “We just, like, looked for podcasts that didn’t have many comments.” Which, obviously, hurt Glass’s feelings a bit.Initially, showrunner Dave Blanchard thought the comments were a particularly odd strain of bot. “It was just like gibberish,” he tells Glass in the episode.
The posts were “clipped, weird, incoherent,” he said, and loaded with emoji and shorthand. So he deleted them. Then one of the accounts posted, “so it deleted my com.” So Blanchard shared screenshots of the comments in NPR’s Slack.Producer Hannah Chin almost immediately recognized the behavior not as bots, but as kids. “I was a kid who used weird parts of the internet not as they were originally designed to talk to my friends,” they said. “I talked back and forth with my friends on Google Docs,” demonstrating just how resourceful kids can be when cut off from traditional social media.A similar thing happened last year with Ted Radio Hour.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Terrence O’BrienCultureEntertainmentInternet CultureNewsTechMost PopularLeaks reveal a new Apple HomePod mini, iPad mini, and Apple TV 4KMicrosoft thinks its new Copilot ‘super app’ will be as influential as OfficeCan Apple Home’s AI camera features outsmart Amazon’s and Google’s? I put them to the testGemini 4 is almost ready, says new Google DeepMind chiefOne company is at the center of a wave of rogue AI attacksAdvertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad
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