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Still Buffering · Sydnee McElroy, Rileigh Smirl and Teylor Smirl

Still Buffering: Infomercials

December 25, 2025·56 min·4 clips
A raccoon broke into a Virginia liquor store, got drunk, and passed out in the bathroom.
The conversation begins with weather. Sydney and Taylor compare snow days, a midnight walk, school closures, and the specific letdown of a modern snow day that still comes with online work. It sounds loose because it is, in a good way. A quick check-in turns into memory, routine, childhood expectations, and the tiny rules culture trains people to accept. Convenience products carry the back half. That means can-cutting tools, fast pizza gadgets, and comfort sold through strangely narrow promises. The funny parts come in sideways. One host starts with the product premise, and the other names the awkward little fantasy sitting inside it. The beer detour has more bite. They connect a joyless light beer image with a quieter, glossier kind of conservatism, the sort that feels less ridiculous and more unsettling than loud outrage. They keep qualifying the thought as they talk, which helps. It sounds like two people working out an idea in real time, not reading a finished argument. Taste turns into texture. Bad beer and low-calorie pleasurelessness open into identity, branding, and the habits people perform without making a speech about them. The mood stays warm, even when the critique gets sharper. Then the ending lands back in familiar Still Buffering territory: email, Maximum Fun, the theme song, and one last pizza-speed joke. Snow days, beer, and kitchen gadgets all point back to tiny promises about ease, belonging, and control.

As heard by us

A funny, drifting look at infomercials, everyday objects, and the social meanings people attach to them.

Infomercials gives Still Buffering room to treat commercial culture as a trail of odd little habits: snow days recast as virtual learning days, beer choices as social signals, and the faintly chaotic promise of tools that cut cans or make pizza faster.

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Why you'd press play

When a snow update turns into a sharp, funny read on beer and politics.

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