Jordan, Jesse, GO! - MaxFunDrive 2025 - Niche Subreddits Day Four: r/occlupanids

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

Jesse and Jordan read you comforting subreddits chosen by you! Every day during MaxFunDrive 2025 9:30am PST, March 17th - March 28th (except weekends). Today we’re joined by Greatest Trek and Greatest Generation’s  Benjamin Ahr Harrison to discuss r/occlupanids (Tiny Bread tags!).It's MaxFunDrive 2025, become a new or upgrading member today! Live Jordan, Jesse, Go! in Chicago at Sleeping Village on April 11th!MaxFunDrive ends on March 28, 2025! Support our show now and get access to bonus content by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. MaxFunDrive ends on March 28, 2025! Support our show now and get access to bonus content by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Give a little time for the child within you, don't be afraid to be young and free. Undo the locks and throw away the keys and take off your shoes and socks and run you. Welcome to Jordan Jesse Goh. I am Jesse Thorne, America's Radio Sweetheart. Jordan Morris, boy detective. We are joined on this episode of The Subdoms by our pal from greatest gen and greatest track Ben Harrison. Hi Ben. Hello, thank you for having me. I apologize I haven't heard all of these streams. How did sub doms become what you're calling them? Well, we're dominating all these subreddits. So, the subdoms.

And paying people to punch us in the balls Then you're gonna hear a knock at your door in five minutes make sure you open it we ordered you a little surprise I don't want to disappoint all the folks watching at home. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, the surprise is actually a mrs. Fields cookie cake. Oh I Yeah, the surprise is actually a mrs. Fields cookie cake. Oh I Want to offer a hearty bon-boy to all of the folks who are watching on the live stream? And of course everyone who is listening at home via the RSS feed bon-boy to you all bon-boy bon-boy Oh, yes, bon-boy. Oh bon-boy is our spin on it. So we're not just yeah Bon Boy is our spin on it, so we're not just explicitly advertising the Marriott company. Bon Boy. Well, they're a very litigious organization.

If you stole their tagline slash points system? Yes. If you're out there, we hope you're accruing Bon Boy points for upgraded podcasts. Listen, I'm old school, I still call them Starwood points guys. Oh man, this guy's old school. He'll never change. What are you still doing? Pressing the number a bunch of times to send texts? Oh yeah, yeah. One T9, you know, which was great because you could do it under the desk without your teacher knowing you were typing.

Oh yeah. On the subdoms, of course, we cover some of our favorite subreddits. So we thought we would invite our friend Ben Harrison to introduce us to one of his favorite subreddits. I also, well, hi Darwin. First of all, Ben's. The dog is hey the frame There's Darwin looking fun Darwin knows how to get people to subscribe at maximum fun org slash join I do want to share two quick updates. The first of which is that as of this recording we are at

341 new upgrading and boosting members for Jordan, Jesse go if you're not one of them yet Please become one at maximum fun org slash join where there are all kinds of great thank yous and all kinds of cool stuff. I also want to share an update that comes from Stefano triple-O three eight on the comment stream here on the live stream. One of our favorites, one of our favorite commenters. He has updated us or they have updated us that my favorite taqueria, El Farolito, has beaten the Real Monarchs three to one in the US Open Cup. For folks who listened to these streams last year, we learned that my favorite taqueria in San Francisco has an adult soccer team that competes

in the incredibly complicated adult soccer semi-professional promotion and relegation based tournament system in the United States that apparently has existed for like a hundred years and long predates the major professional leagues in the United States. But El Farolito won the championship, I believe it was two years ago, the national championship. And it's like a mix of guys that work at El Farolito and professional soccer players that the owner of El Farolito has hired to play on this soccer team. Oh man, that rules. Yeah, it's just the absolute greatest. Anyway, thank you to everybody who's given. Thank you to El Farolito for the many burritos that you've provided me over

the years. Ben Harrison, what sub are we going to be taking a look at today? So this is a sub called, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing this correctly, r slash a-cuplanids. And this is as far as I can tell, like a pretty small fandom, but there is a very small but a very intense fandom of those little tags that hold bread bags closed when you buy them at the supermarket. Oh yeah, sure those things that are easy to lose and break, yes. Yes, so the enthusiasm for these is so deep that there is an entire taxonomic structure with like Latin names for all of the different variations on this idea of a little cheap piece of plastic that can hold a plastic bag closed and So there's like there's a website that is also associated with this and I believe there's also a discord

But I haven't gotten into the Discord. I'm not actually personally a collector. I just like to keep an eye on what the collectors are up to in the Acuplanids community. And yeah, like I don't, I took a couple of semesters of Latin in middle school, but I don't exactly remember any of it. So the Latin names are just, you know,

they just sound cool and are fun to read. But it's mostly a sub where people post a picture of one that they found like lying on the ground in a park and ask for help classifying. Well, I was out plastic detecting. Yeah. I was out walking while looking at the ground. Yeah.

The first post that I wanted to share with you is producer Steve and it starts with, what's this little guy? Because it is somebody quote posting an entomology Reddit sub with a picture of a dead bug that they found and the person in the original post is trying to find out what bug this is, but then the Acuplanid enthusiast noticed that there was an Acuplanid, which is the name of these bread tags, next to it for scale. And so they want to know what- Get that bug out of the way.

Get that annoying bug out of the way. We want to see the bread tag! We hate life! But we love fresh bread! Yeah, yeah. So, uh, I learned this term yesterday, like, looking up at, uh, like, more about these people, because, um, there's the website that's associated with it is horg.org and it's an acronym. I don't remember exactly what it stands for but the age is for holography. It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Horg.org.

It's for holography? Yeah, because holographic example of a species is like the one that is like killed and then described by a scientist. So like when you see like a case full of butterflies with pins through them, those are the holographic type of that butterfly, like the most typical example of the species. And so like, I think people are really into finding like as many different variations on the little piece of plastic

that holds a bag of bread together, but then also weird sub variations because there's like lots of different ways of classifying them through this system of taxonomy, I guess. Can I ask you a question, Ben? Yeah. How did you come across this? Were you just browsing r slash curvy goth chicks and somebody happened to have cross

posted it? I don't exactly remember. I think I may have watched a video that was like a guy who is really into like collector culture and like, you know, valuable rare examples of things that people collect going into this. Cause like I don't think there's any money in a couplenid collecting. But like I do kind of get the sense that people take it more seriously than you might think and like trade them. You know, like, oh, I got my first a couplenid from Germany because I made friends on the internet with a German

bread tag collector. Someone in our comments mentioned that when they were a child, these things were like currency to them and they would stack them on the brake lines of their bicycles. Ooh. Oh, like instead of baseball cards. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think that these would... The baseball cards usually go in the... Between the spokes of the... Spokes, yeah.

Right. Tire, something goes thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip. Do you think it was like a bragging thing? It's like, look how much bread I ate. Look how much bread I can eat. Yeah, yeah. This is a way for those of us not in the gluten sensitivity community to really stick it to those parts. Because they've had it too good for too long. Well, I mean, as our friend, the American actor Ted Danson says to our friend Ben Partridge, host of the Beef and Dairy Network, the loaves must be made.

Ben, can I, I think something that Jesse and I really like about these ultra niche subreddits is like the vibes, right? Like it's not just like, hey, look at this picture of, you know, a root beer or an obscure Archie comic, but it's like the comment section afterwards. It's like people being excited about this stuff or people having weird fights about this stuff. Can you speak to can you speak to the vibes of the bread tag community? Is it friendly? Is there any conflict that you've noticed? I think that for the most part, it is a very positive community. And mostly what people are doing in this community is is asking for help in classifying one that they found,

or bragging about a weird one that they found. An example post here is, My Absolute Unit of a Find is the title. And this person has posted a really big bread tag next to a quarter and another more normal sized one. And... Whoa! That is a unit! That's a big chungus! And a tape measure to just show how big this is. And the first post is,

OMG, I just found that exact one today. It was on a giant bag of carrots. And the first post is, OMG, I just found that exact one today. It was on a giant bag of carrots. Yeah, I mean, I think when it comes to bread tags, like length is impressive, but also width. It's also very wide. Yeah. And I mean, like the one that it's compared to also has some ridges along the side, which

I understand some people find very pleasurable. Yeah, I mean, it's a weird and very specific community. I'm just noticing looking at the Reddit page that there are two users online of this subreddit, and I think that's probably me and Stephen. Ben, do you have a favorite? Do you have a personal favorite tag in the time you spent browsing this sub? I would say that 90% of the ones that I've seen are hard to tell apart from each other. I guess maybe there's variations in how big the

opening is and like the color and I think that there's like my understanding is that like the color of the tag has something to do with the day that either it was baked or the day that it got to the store or something so like I think that some people are really into knowing like how fresh their bread is based on this but I don't think that the collector community really gives a shit about that like they they like buy the bag of bread and throw the bread away. Right in the trash.

A whole pair of little pieces of plastic. Right in the trash. Up to the sun. Yeah. I don't need these English muffins. Ben, what color would the tag be if you're baked every day? Oh, man. Well, I think I think if you're like a Nate dog, for example You might go with kind of an olive green color. Yeah. Mmm sure

but I had a friend in college who He said if you Didn't know of a kid in your high school that would just be walking down the hallway and spontaneously say, smoke weed every day, you were probably the kid in your high school that would knock down the hallways and spontaneously say that. Ben, do you collect anything yourself? I don't collect anything in a like, collectorly way where I'm, you know, I don't have any like binders with clear

sheets of lots of things in it. I always thought that it would be really neat to have a selection of, you know, butterfly samples or something, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna learn enough to like go out and collect them myself. Yeah, plus you want to use all that ether for yourself. Yeah. One thing that has been a really fun side effect of becoming a Star Trek podcaster is that everyone that listens to our show, when they get rid of stuff from their house, sends Star Trek stuff to us. So I guess you could say I have like a pretty extensive collection of Star Trek crap, but it's not stuff I like went out and looked for or paid any money for.

It's just accumulating in my office. Is there a, do you have a favorite piece of Star Trek crap that you've gotten? Because I mean, Star Trek is a fandom with some wonderful crap and crap that goes back to the sixties too. Like vintage crap is so So wonderful and fun. Do you have a favorite? Yeah Let me think I'm trying to think of one that's like official crap and not Something that somebody made because we do also get lots of fan art

I'm gonna pull down a couple of a couple of things here from my wall of display. Oh beautiful okay, well this well this is why, if you're listening, this is why you gotta be watching the live stream because Ben is going to be revealing vintage Star Trek crap here on screen. All right, so this is something that was given to me in Toronto by someone who came to one of our live shows. It is a collection of Pez dispensers featuring most of the main cast of Star Trek The Next Generation and the Enterprise-D as Pez dispensers and it is like mint in box, still unopened and yeah I guess I should probably open this and enjoy these Pez's at some point. You gotta scarf that pez, bro.

How are you resisting the urge to scarf that delicious pez, everyone's favorite candy? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe there's some thought that I could save it and make money off of it one day, because this is number 84,121 of a limited edition of 200,000 that they created. So that's a pretty cool one. I'm going to grab two more. Oh yeah.

I'm genuinely impressed that they made it to 84,000 with that product. Yeah. thousand with that product? Yeah, yeah. This is a piece of a ship that was actually on Star Trek The Next Generation and somebody, I don't know why they had it. Wow, a piece! But they sent in, I think that what they did was they had these big models that were very expensive and complicated to make and and so they would just take shit off them and put other shit on and like that's a whole new spaceship. So this was on the show as far as I know and I have like one of those little like certificates

of authenticity that came with it. And somebody just sent this to us like they had it and they were like, well, need to clear up some shelf space. So now you have it. And, uh, I mostly been when I'm at the flea market, I have to spend so much of my emotional energy keeping myself from buying you whoopie Goldberg figurines. There's so many whoopie Goldberg figurines at the flea market and I want to buy

them for you every single time. And then I remember, no, Jesse, that's you that likes whoopie Goldberg. Oh, I love Whoopi Goldberg and I have many, many of them because people send them in and give them to us at live shows. And yeah, I think I'm covered for Whoopi Goldberg figurines, but yeah, they're great. Did they just, did they make multiple Whoopis like over the course of TNG? Is there like, you know, deep sea whoopee and battle damage whoopee or is it just the one whoopee? I think she may have gotten two or three additions that none of them are like exciting. Like there's a famous episode where like shit is popping off in the bar aboard the Enterprise

D and she pulls a very crazy rifle out from behind the bar and shoots a couple of rounds into the ceiling to calm things down. I've always been fascinated by that gun. Why is she allowed to have that aboard a Federation Starship? It'd be like the cook in the canteen aboard a nuclear submarine having a Kalashnikov. It was like no not allowed You've never seen a little movie called under siege it sounds like Yeah, I mean it's on my list. You know I'll watch it eventually. Do you Ben follow any Star Trek subreddits. I mean there's the main one which is just r slash Star Trek

There's another one called r slash shitty Daystrom. I don't know too much about it, but the Daystrom Institute is a canonical place in Star Trek where all of the Federation's wisest scientists toil to do things like contain and study megalomaniacal machine intelligences and try to replicate data, the Android and do all manner of things that range from very good to very evil. And I think r slash shitty daystrom is people like speculating on how the science and Star Trek works in stupid ways. I don't spend a ton of time there but it because of the algorithm occasionally pops up on my on my reddit feed. One of the subreddits that I follow is called, gosh, what is this thing called? It's called That's a Book Light.

R slash That's a Book Light. And R slash That's a Book Light is just every few days somebody will post a screen cap from some science fiction TV show or movie. And then next to it it they'll just post like the thing from Ikea that that is only painted gray. And that is really satisfying. Ben, I was going to ask you about some of the hot bonus content that the greatest crew is preparing for the Max Fun Drive, but I did want to see do you have any more

bread tag posts that we can share before we get to that? I didn't want to like steamroll bread tag content if there was some hot stuff we hadn't gotten to. Sure. I think that the one that I want to make sure we cover if we if we don't cover anymore is titled I made a shirt out of a cup linens and handsome young person who made like a chainmail bread tag shirt for their city's wearable art party oh my god bless this person this took We need more of these enterprising young gay nerds.

I know. This is what the whole point of living in a city is, is to live near creative nerds wearing cargo blue jeans, artsy cargo blue jeans, and making their own shirts out of bread ties. 10 to 1, this person is in the chat right now. If this is you, please, please reveal yourself. Yeah, they've just been rolling their eyes at me speaking sort of inexpertly about something that they know so much about. Please.

How many of you in the chat are showing nip right now? Well, yeah, Ben, thank you. This is a beautiful post and clearly a beautiful community. I will be following the Bread Tag subreddit as soon as we hang up this call. But yeah, bonus content. We're doing it. You're doing it. What can we look forward to from the greatest crew?

Everybody's doing it. So for Greatest Gen this year, we did a release of a video that we did like two years ago for our Star Trek five coverage. We did a tour, an entire tour where we talked about Star Trek 5, the one where they kill God, and we filmed our live show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. And that is something that you used to have to pay extra money for to stream, and now it is available to everyone who supports our show or any show at Maximum Fun. And then for Greatest Trek we actually teamed up with Jesse and Judge John Hodgman and reviewed the film Top Gun which Jesse had lots of very deep feelings about because of his father's history is as a aircraft carrier person.

Yeah. If you want to hear a combination of our glib jokes and me telling the story of the time my dad saw a friend of his cut in half by a cable, then this is a great bonus content for you. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. You guys you guys really brought a lot of fun energy too. I mean I think a movie that Adam and I have probably reviewed professionally, maybe that's our third time doing that. I think I have watched the movie Face Off to talk about on podcasts 30 times, so I get it. That is I mean if if not for face-off and gremlins to what would the state of the podcast industry even be what would anyone talk about on podcasts well if you're out there and you're not already a member of maximum

fun maybe listening to this on the RSS feed, please join us. Maximumfund.org slash join is the place to go. We are completely dependent on your memberships. Memberships are the significant majority of the funding that pays for Stephen's salary and the microphones we're talking into and all of the expenses that constitute making this podcast. Can I make a personal appeal here? I've been listening to Jordan Jesse Goh since it started and I think that was either like toward the end of my college days or just after them. And it's a very key part of my week.

If it went away, I'd be super, super sad. I've been supporting for years and years and I don't want it to go away and I need you to help me make sure that I get my Jordan Jesse Go! dopamine hit every week going forward. So, if you're listening to this or watching this, please go to maximumfund.org slash join. Do it for me. It's a story that we have shared before, but I met Ben, who is one of my best friends in the entire world, many, many years ago when he was living in New York City and I came to do The Sound of

Young America in New York at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. And he emailed me, at the time, I just said my email on every episode of the show. And he emailed me and said, hey, I'm a filmmaker, can I shoot your show? And I emailed him back and said, dear, I'm a filmmaker. Can I shoot your show? And I emailed him back and said, dear Mr. Harrison, thank you for your interest. I don't even have money to buy these plane tickets that I just bought to New York to do this show. And he said, no, I mean for free.

And we became collaborators and best buds from that experience of being part of this odd community. And it's so wonderful that Ben and Adam have since become members of the community as creators as well. Adam, I also knew before Greatest Gen and Greatest Track ever existed. So I hope that you'll support that kind of thing. If you feel that kind of closeness with this show, go to maximumfund.org slash join

and help us make it possible. Ben, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much for sharing your Star Trek screen saver that everyone is really excited about in the chat. Oh yeah, just search Lcars 10 hours on YouTube and you can have it too. Yeah, I recommend searching for Logistics Art Project and just make sure that you block out the next 40 days of your life. Maximumfun.org join. We are of course streaming live every

weekday morning at 9 30 Pacific, 1230 Eastern on the Max Fun YouTube channel and on our Instagram and Facebook pages. And we will talk to you next time on Jordan Desi-Gal. Bye! I'll hug you and kiss you and love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you, love you