“Your Mom’s House,” is a renowned comedy podcast hosted and created by the world’s premiere comedian power-couple, Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky. The show focuses heavily on the couple’s life together, the craft of comedy and viral videos.
Over the course of the shows lifespan, from 2010 until now, their audience has grown into a sizable, enthusiastic and motivated group of talented contributors. “Your Mom’s House,” gets listeners to participate more than your average podcast, but how do they manage to get such an active audience in comparison to their competitors?
One aspect that helps them from the start is the fact that they’re a married couple. This affects the atmosphere of the show making it a podcast couples want to listen together. Whether someone wants to pretend that their current relationship is more fun than it actually is, or they’re a lonely spinster listening by themselves, this show appeals to a wide range of people.
Apart from that, the tone of the podcast is incredibly silly. Farts, excrement, burps and bodily functions take up a good portion of the conversation in any given episode. The light-hearted nature of the conversations make it a welcoming experience — like joking around with friends on the school-yard. Segura and Pazsitzky even deliberately burp in the microphones, per listener requests, and have spoken about buying dedicated fart mics on several occasions.
All of these elements lend to a comfortable environment that welcomes participation. But, what really gets people involved are the extensive inside jokes, nicknames and memes.
For example, Segura and Pazsitzky affectionately refer to each other as “jeans,” and “mommy,” they call bowel movements, “browns,” and they endlessly reference the collection of viral videos that they’ve accumulated over the course of the show with phrases like, “Try it out,” and “Just Glassin.’”
They also compete regularly over things like who drinks more water, which lets fans take a side and decide for themselves who the “Water Champ,” is.
The inside-joke factor is a major pull for people who want to participate. It gives listeners a specific lexicon to work with when reaching out and lets them in on the jokes with the hosts.
The environment of the show inspires people to send emails addressing in-show issues, songs made from in-show sound bites, viral video clips and video submissions imitating other viral videos. Fans of the show, or “mommies,” as they’re often called, also perpetuate memes from the show in unrelated forums and comment sections which are occasionally shared on the podcast as well.
The quality of the fan submissions is definitely high and they receive appropriate praise from Segura and Pazsitzky. The sense of competition, high standards for work and possibility that it might make Segura and Pazsitzky laugh are all huge motivating factors to be engaged.
The title for the fanbase, pet names, inside jokes and viral video memes all contribute to the audiences’ participation because these things give “mommies,” a formula to create their own content. The audience gets to be a part of the show and the more their contributions are recognized the more other people are inspired to participate.
