Sometimes petty Internet drama reveals a lot about platform dynamics. In this case, the ongoing spectacle of an over-the-hill radio personality’s downward spiral within the podcast/ Youtube streaming space is working to bridge connections between Cleveland terrestrial radio shows and hard-right online content creators. This is all thanks to one man, Chad Zumock.
Who Are These Podcasts (WATP) is a podcast which tries to emulate the Opie & Anthony Show’s ‘Jocktober’ bit by ruthlessly mocking and ‘busting the balls’ of weird, low-quality, and sometimes politically progressive podcasts. In recent years, host Karl has realised that there is an audience out there seeking the drama that comes with busting the balls of over-the-hill radio personalities who are either failing to thrive or are trying to make it within this new era of podcast/livestream dominance. Karl’s occasional mockery of the cringy online content from previously well-known people like Opie Hughs, “Stuttering John” Melendez or Howard Stern has been quite successful. WATP’s success has, undoubtedly, been assisted by frequent spotlighting from Anthony Cumia and his Compound Media enterprise. Cumia’s business venture appears to make money from anti-woke rhetoric, trading on Cumia’s known ‘edge’ for controversial statements and signing personalities like Gavin Mcinnes and Chrissie Mayr for similar reasons.
Chad Zumock is, from what I can gather, some kind of comedian who appeared on a successful Clevland, OH, drivetime radio show but was fired after a drunk driving charge in 2012. Chad has since moved to Florida, where he continued to pursue a radio/entertainment career, but with little success. Chad’s Alpha, uncompromising and combative on-air personality, complete with his professional credentials, made him a good pick for Carl to co-host an episode of WATP in October 2020. For Chad, it is an opportunity for him to audition for induction to a loosely affiliated entertainment network which includes Compound Media and other WATP friends like The Dick Show, The Official Podcast, and the Blind Mike Project. There is money to be made here if you are good at what you do; WATP alone makes over $10k monthly from almost 2,500 backers on Patreon. Chad, however, was not good. The episode was borderline unlistenable, and Chad became a joke within the WATP fandom.
Chad would have remained largely irrelevant if his uncompromisingly combative personality had remained a professional persona. It did not. According to Chrissie Mayer, Chad has maintained consistent hostile contact on Twitter since around 2020, after Chrissie became involved in a spat between Chad and her friend Stacey Prussman. Additionally, smaller comedy podcasts like the Ski Mask OfFenziv took to covering Chad’s seemingly unhinged Twitter behaviour around 2020. At this time, details of Chad’s Florida conviction on over 30 counts of credit card fraud and identity theft were circulated online, including the WATP subReddit.
Chad’s online behaviour seemed comparable to Stuttering John - a lolcow that can not only be milked for content - but also prompted into beginning a feud which can be quite lucrative in this space. Unlike Stuttering John, Chad was a provably criminal person and not just seen to be terrible online. Chad was mocked for a bit but was otherwise left alone by the main shows.
In late 2022, with Stuttering John retiring from podcasting, the hunt was on for a new lolcow. Chrissie provided some evidence that Chad Zumock brought Twitter followers in an attempt to boost his apparent relevance after Chad frequently asserted that Chrissie was not funny and largely irrelevant (before signing with Compound Media). This started a feud between the two. Erin from the Steel Toe Radio Show decided to get in on the feud by “stream sniping” Chad and “raiding” his chat (playing Chad’s live stream as picture-in-picture within their live show and directing their fans to ‘bust balls’ in Chad’s chat). Chrissie also entered Chad’s chat to plug her own live shows; she then called into Steel Toe to discuss her feud with Chad. Chad did not take this very well at all, and a new lolcow was born.
Since 2023, Chad decided to become a “mud shark” to try and combat the online mockery. While Chad tried to use the term to imply that he would be ‘savage’ and ‘fight in the mud’ of the Internet, he failed to realise that the term is a pejorative for an (overweight) White woman that has sex with Black men exclusively. The mockery continued. In February 2023, WATP hosted their live event - Dabblecon - at Comedy @ the Carlson in Rochester, NY, featuring Chrissie Mayer, Anthony Cumia and Shuli Egar (ex-Howard Stern employee). It has been heavily suggested that Chad Zumock played some part in trying to cancel the event by falsely complaining to health inspectors about the venue. Karl interpreted this as Chad trying to ruin the event and costing him money. Chad’s grace period with WATP was now over.
Since Dabblecon, WATP has dedicated a segment to Chad’s antics almost weekly. Around March 8th, attention has been on Chad appearing on stream with a black eye, claiming that he was assaulted by someone who then yelled, “dont mess with Cumia”. This followed Chad’s appearance the night before on the Misery Loves Company podcast, where Chad left the show early, claiming that someone had messaged him saying they were outside his house. The comparisons to Jussie Smollett were instant, although Karl also contended that Chad’s reported history of alcohol abuse could have caused a fall which he was trying to spin as an assault. Chad would then appear on the Nobody Likes Onions podcast, where Chad admitted to spinning the story but maintained he was assaulted in a bar by someone critical of his comedy.
Since then, Chad has suggested that there are around 30 podcasts discussing him regularly, which he considers a win. Unfortunately for Chad, “there is no such thing as bad press” is not a truism. While Chad is certainly the topic of conversation within this odd Internet sphere, he is cultivating a hate following that may feel that his bad behaviour legitimises efforts to effectively drive him off the Internet. However, in my opinion, Chad’s reactions over the past few months and admitted history of alcohol abuse raise the risk of self-harm or worse.
This week, revelations by Rover’s Morning Glory - a radio show out of Ohio on the network Chad was a part of - further reinforce the idea that Chad deserves any and all forms of harassment. It was a good move on Rover’s part, jumping into the controversy with intimate knowledge of Chad’s life before Florida and getting exposure to the ‘Dabbleverse’ (the Fandom built up around WATP/Compound Media). Rover confirmed that Chad’s firing in 2012 was because the car he crashed while intoxicated was given to the station as a sponsorship deal, to which Karl retorted, “I wish they had taken the airbags out of it”. Rover also claimed that Chad’s mental health issues extend to him constructing a victimised self-perception, where he believes his actions are ‘normal’ (stable and healthy) responses to conflicts that others started because they are horrible people. Rover then catalogues earlier instances of Chad’s poor behaviour, such as drunkenly shoplifting a blender from a department store and bottles of vodka from a liquor store, and flailing a police report claiming that Rover had hired two goons to assault him. Apparently they yelled, “this is for Rover”, during the alleged assault. Most damningly, Rover claims that messages were published between Chad and an unnamed woman (with apparent mental health issues), where Zumock repeatedly encouraged her to kill herself.
This weekend, WATP published a podcast hosting Chrissie Mayer and Erik Nagle (ex-Opie and Anthony Producer, current Compound Media producer) to discuss Chad. Erik made the observation that much of the interest in Chad is not sustained by hosts of these podcasts but rather by members of the Dabbleverse fandom who are obsessively clipping segments of shows featuring Chad / are about Chad and emailing them to relevant podcast hosts. Such actions not only provide content for the shows because Chad is a lolcow but also develop ongoing feuds with Chad because it can be expected that Chad will handle things poorly and overreact by doing dumb things. Chad wants attention but is not receiving the glowing praise and admiration he wants. Instead, Chad has proven to the Dabbleverse that any and all forms of negative attention and ‘ball-busting’ he receives are legitimate because he is a terrible person. However, Chad is stuck in a dilemma where he himself is too toxic to receive good attention, but the other solution is to become absolutely irrelevant. As such, like most lolcows, Chad will continue fighting against the haters in a desperate hope that they will soon come to see that he is the victim being gang-bullied by the Dabbleverse (or “Cumia’s Cucks”, as he calls the fandom).
Chad is not experienced enough with Internet fandoms to know that getting rid of a hate fandom is virtually impossible. Personalities such as Dark Syde Phil (DSP), Wings of Redemption (Wings), and even Boogie2988 have had to deal with haters for over a decade. However, as Keemstar recently put it to DSP in an interview, “those haters are your most loyal fans”. He has a point. Keemstar claims he will pay DSP, Wings, and Boogie $50,000 each if they agree to a podcast contract under Keemstar’s management company. Laying out the business rationale, Keemstar claimed he could easily sell the podcast to advertisers because of the sheer number of hate watchers. There is money to be made from newer forms of hate online; Chad Zumock seems to see the potential too. Still, I doubt the man’s mental resilience and business acumen to transition such negative attention into anything that pays off in the long term. In the short term, the Internet will make life even tougher for Chad, someone who appears to be the architect of their own downward spiral.