This week, Alex Goldman’s favorite place on the internet is in danger, thanks to a bunch of robot snipers. Jilgamesh's Twitch Stream Jessica Conditt's reporting at Endadget Valve Employee Handbook Team Fortress 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This episode of Reply all is brought to you by childhood.
Remember childhood when you had less responsibility and one of your responsibilities was just to like, run around and play, and now you're doing whatever it is you're doing, you know, driving to work or sitting at the laundromat or doing the dishes or whatever, and you'll never have that childhood feeling again.
Anyhow, here are the ads from Gimlet.
This is reply all.
Alex Goldman in 2010, I was in a particularly uncertain and anxious time in my life.
I'd just turned 30 and walked away from what would have probably been a pretty safe career in it to take an unpaid internship at New York's public radio station WNYC.
I remember saying during my interview, this is what I want to do for a living.
And the interviewer responding, this is a very competitive field.
Dont expect to find work at WNYC after this internship.
For me, being an intern was a nerve wracking line to walk between asserting myself enough to learn things and get to know people and being quiet enough and thoughtful enough not to annoy them.
I frequently ended up on the wrong side of that line.
The first story I worked on, when I asked one of the producers for help, he ran his hand down his face in exhaustion and said something like, I just need you to figure it out.
After work, on particularly stressful days, I would leave the office and ride my bike in circles around Central park, replaying every interaction that day in my head and wondering, was that joke I made not funny?
Was I loitering in conversations I wasn't invited to?
Would I ever get to make a story I felt passionate about?
Would I ever get to make a story at all?
And then, when I'd worn myself out, I'd ride home, eat dinner with Sarah, and after she went to bed, I'd shuffle into our tiny study and close the door, turn off the light, put on Jizz's liquid swords, turn on my gigantic desktop, and boot up the game team fortress two.
I'd only just started playing Team Fortress two at this time, but I was already convinced that it was the best Fortnite Overwatch Apex legends these games have tried to chase the magic of Team Fortress two, but none of them can hold a candle to it.
Team Fortress two, or TF two as the fans call it, is hands down the greatest free to play, multiplayer, class based, first person shooter ever.
And this is what it was like to play.