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Brian Lehrer: That, if you don't know it, is a song that went viral on TikTok called No Children by indie rock band the Mountain Goats from 2002, that this year started inspiring users to make thousands of videos to that sound bite. What struck people about this wasn't that young people were discovering old music, that happens all the time on Tik Tok, but that the indie Mountain Goats were an unpredictable choice to go viral, and that to fans who loved them, seeing their favorite indie band go mainstream was actually jarring. One older TikTok user explained their sentiments this way.

TikTok user: As a 2010 year hipster in recovery for an insufferable superiority complex, I am constantly forced to reckon with unlearning the impulse to gatekeep everything that I love from everyone.

Brian Lehrer: That particular TikTok user decided to deal with her reflexive gatekeeping by offering tutorials on the full history of the Mountain Goats to anyone who suddenly got interested in the band. Joining me now is Rebecca Jennings, senior reporter covering internet culture at The Goods by Vox. One of her most recent articles is titled What Happens When Your Favorite Thing Goes Viral? Hi Rebecca, welcome to WNYC.

Rebecca Jennings: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Why did that particular song by the Mountain Goats become popular now? What kind of videos are people making with it? Any specific favorites?

Rebecca Jennings: It's funny that you ask that because I think there's ultimately no reason why anything goes viral. I don't think there's one specific thing that this happened in October of 2021, therefore that had some connection to the lyrics. I think it was bubbling under the surface of the swamp that is Tik Tok, and one video happened to go viral that was making fun of the lyrics, which obviously, if you've heard the song, are very dramatic, very sad and mean and angry. From there, people either discovered it or rediscovered it and was like, "Let's talk about the song some more." What I really loved from people were just, "I used to cry to this song when I was a teenager and I didn't even know what the lyrics meant, and now as an adult, I'm rediscovering what this song was actually about."

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we want you to join in here. What was something that you loved that got ruined once it got popular? Do you have something like that? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, because that's part of the reaction that people are having, who loved the Mountain Goats 20 years ago, seeing this song break out now. Was there a band that you listened to all the time and then had to stop when you heard it getting a ton of airplay on the radio, or a favorite book that you thought was all your own, and then you suddenly were seeing everyone read it on the subway? 212-433-WNYC. Who has a story like that? 212-433-9692.

Maybe it was even a restaurant that you could sit in every Saturday night with a good book or a good friend, and then there's a good review, and now you can't even get a seat. How about a secluded beach, a TV show? Did you love Bernie Sanders before he got cool? What's something that you obsessed over and loved before anyone else did or that's how it felt to you, and how did that thing becoming popular change how you interacted with that thing? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. This can extend not just to older people who loved an old thing that has become newly hot on TikTok, but to younger generations because there are no curmudgeons or gatekeepers here.

The other side of the story is, have you recently discovered the Mountain Goats through TikTok or any other indie band from the '90s or early 2000s, how did you discover them, and what are your favorite new old songs? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, with Rebecca Jennings from Vox. Rebecca, I can see our lines are lighting up, so people definitely have stories like this. While we're getting the first couple ready, you write that the Mountain Goats getting TikTok famous feels like if Ulysses suddenly became the bestselling book on Amazon. How did you get a sense that people were feeling this way?

Rebecca Jennings: I think because the Mountain Goats discography is just so vast, and it's been going on for 30 years, and each song and each album is really an entire epic within an album. It's interesting that one single blew up from that on TikTok. It's so dense that to me it felt like if Ulysses, which is a stereotypically very dense book that's not very welcoming to new readers, when that becomes a big thing, it's bizarre.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Charlie in Pine Bush, for whom the thing is geographical. Hi, Charlie, you're on WNYC.

Charlie: Hey, guys, how's it going? In the middle of the COVID, people from the city and from New Paltz proper and coming up to enjoy the Catskills and such. Everybody found my favorite place to go, and now it's impossible to go there. A little place called Peterskill Falls in the Minnewaska State Park.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you said it on the radio, and now you're going to have all these more people.

Charlie: Exactly, it blew up. You can't even park there anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Charlie, thank you very much. That's really a great example. Richard in Sparta, you're on WNYC. Hi, Richard.

Richard: Good morning. I think that the palladium windows have gotten way overdone over the last 40 years.

Brian Lehrer: Remind me what's a palladium window?

Richard: They're the half-circle at the top of a window that now you see in the front of every McMansion in the world.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Thank you. See, those are two examples pretty far from the Mountain Goats, pretty far from music. One, a place where somebody went hiking, someone else, a kind of window. Let's try Marissa in Long Island City. Hi, Marissa, you're on WNYC.

Marissa: Hi, this is my first time calling, so I'm a little bit nervous, but happy to be on the air. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Great to have you. We're all friends here, relax.

Marissa: I would just reference one of the bands around the same timeframe that I was very obsessed with, which have been indie band, was Modest Mouse. They're popular now, but I was a little bit saddened when they broke out, because I think maybe with some bands you feel like they might end up selling out, and I feel like it dramatically then changed their music.

Brian Lehrer: It did change their music?

Marissa: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: When was that, by the way? Was that just recently on TikTok or years ago?

Marissa: This was years ago. It probably was around after maybe 2003, 2004, when they started to go more mainstream.

Brian Lehrer: Marissa, thank you, good example. That's interesting, Rebecca, because she's talking about the band changing in response to its commercial popularity. Some people, with respect to Mountain Goats and the new phenomenon on TikTok, felt the meaning of the song was getting lost. I think you're right about this, but that shifting interpretations of songs and content is maybe the point of art to some degree, we were thinking, and maybe the fun of TikTok is there, a part of the fun is that the meaning of something can change.

Rebecca Jennings: Yes, absolutely. I got the chance to talk to John Darnielle, actually who's the main Mountain Goat. He said something so refreshing, which was that he was looking on it bewildered, he was amused by it. He was obviously so grateful that people were listening to the songs, but it hasn't really changed the way that he performs it or anything because, like he said, he doesn't want to feel like he's trying to capitalize on this viral moment. He doesn't want to be the older guy who shows up on TikTok and is like, "Hey, kids, how's it hanging?" He doesn't want to be that guy, which I thought was really refreshing. He just let it take on a life of its own.

Brian Lehrer: That's cool. Yard in New Rochelle, you're on WNYC. Hello, Yard.

Yard: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me on the show.

Brian Lehrer: Are you on the other side of this? You're a TikTok user? Did you tell our screener you discovered a band?

Yard: Actually, I am a TikTok user, but I discovered Sufjan Stevens just on my own, just through a recommendation. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned his new album earlier and how it's about grief, because earlier someone said on the show that things go viral for ultimately no reason, which is, in some perspective, true, but in the same length, you could say that nothing really happens for any reason, which is crazy because my dad has cancer and it's not looking so hot and now Sufjan Stevens who I just discovered and love is dropping an album about grief.

It just seems a little too intertwined to say that things happen for no reason especially with TikTok trends, because people use TikTok and the content on it to process a lot of their issues, their traumas, their anxieties and it helps. I wouldn't say those things happen for no reason. There's an algorithm that puts stuff in front of our faces for a reason and it helps people.

Brian Lehrer: People share things on social media because they connect with them. That makes total sense. By the way, for those of you who didn't hear the promo earlier, it's because he brings it up because Stevens is going to be on Alison Stewart for a listening party coming up next hour. He's got a fair point there, Rebecca, right?

Rebecca Jennings: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: You can't just say that things go viral for no reason, they go viral because they connect with people for a whole bunch of reasons.

Rebecca Jennings: Yes, no, absolutely. I think what I meant was that anything can go viral at any moment. I remember about nine months ago it was Sea Shanties and people were like, "No, it's the perfect time for Sea Shanties because of X, Y, Z." It's like, "No, I think that was that one video that was like really--" It was arresting for a lot of people. It was really cool. It was a cool thing that the internet all got to pay attention to for a week or so. Really literally anything can go viral. It is because those things really connect with people and they share them and they play into the algorithm and that's how we see things on our phone. That's why we see things.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear a few more examples of things that people thought were their private joy or private place and then they got too popular. Stephen at Rockaway Beach. You're on WNYC. Hi Steven.

Stephen: Hey Brian. Long-time listener. First-time caller. We go up here in the Rockaway Beach. We surf and everybody, all my friends, we used to surf, we used to be the most fun and still is, but it's just that the popularity of the sport has gotten to the point where the crowds are so thick. It's like, you can walk from board to board. It's unsurfable. I find it to be all over, really. The popularity of the sport is-- I go to Costa Rica when I go out there and it's the same thing. I understand why they're doing it, but it just makes it impossible to do.

Brian Lehrer: Because part of the fun is you feel like you're out there with you and the vast ocean, not like you're out there with you in 25 of your neighbors, right?

Stephen: Yes. Well, even a 25 wasn't so bad, but now it's in the hundreds. As long as it's manageable, then you were able to spread out a little bit. Now it's bumper to bumper. It's bumper cars. It's not even really surfing anymore. It's just-- [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. David in Clifton, you're on WNYC. Hi David.

David: Hi, good morning. How are you today?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You've got an example.

David: Yes, I do. Actually. It's almost very similar to the previous caller. It's a location. It was a beach in Asbury Park specifically the Fifth Avenue Beach. Back in the late '90s, it was very not a great location as far as, the boardwalk was a rebuilt and it could be a little dangerous at times. There was a small group of people who frequented the Fifth Avenue beach and there was a small nightclub called Paradise, which was around the corner. Again, it was very sketchy. But we had a lot of fun there. We almost felt like it was our own.

As time went on and I feel like more people discovered this hidden jewel, [laughs] it grew and grew and it became a little more gentrified, and now it's Asbury Park as we know it today. Back then it was almost like we had it all to ourselves and it was a fun time.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Good one, David. Thank you very much. One more John in Prospect Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi John.

John: Hi Brian. This discussion just really brought to mind the fact there's a new book out by a guy named Dan Ozzi called Sellout. That's all about punk and indie bands from the late '90s and early 2000s and their experience and the experience of their fans of them signing the major labels and getting popular and how those of us who were into that scene at the time had to decide whether this was a good or bad thing and whether to keep listening.

Brian Lehrer: Now it's happening again. Thank you so much. Rebecca, before you go, I know you wrote this article over a week ago, but because of election stuff, we were only able to get to a now, even though we saw it right away and wanted to do this. In the world of the internet, a week is a long time. Is this Mountain Goat's trend thing still even happening?

Rebecca Jennings: It's the same thing that happens with everything that goes viral like this. People pay attention to it for a couple of days, maybe a week, and then yes, it's ancient history. I think that's what's happening. The fun thing is that in Mountain Goats world, it's still very much a thing. Because I got to talk to him and he invited me to a concert that he had that week and people lost their minds at that song. I'm pretty sure they're going to be losing their minds to that song if you're already a fan of him for years to come, maybe.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Rebecca Jennings, senior reporter covering internet culture at The Goods by Vox. One of her most recent articles is titled What Happens When Your Favorite Thing Goes Viral? This was fun. Thank you so much.

Rebecca Jennings: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond with Max Balton today. Zach Gotteher-Cohen works on our daily podcast. Our interns this fall are James O'Donnell and Clare [unintelligible 00:16:31]. We had [unintelligible 00:16:34] Marrero Ruiz and Sean Sona at the audio controls. I'm Brian Lehrer.

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