Short, bite-sized daily distraction.

January 16, 2023 2:27 PM

Looking for something creative, interesting, or funny that tells a story over time but that is current and ongoing. I just want a little something to look forward to and distract me from the rest of the world for a few minutes each day as I don't have much free time to watch tv shows. Is there a webcomic, short daily podcast or vlog that you are dying to recommend that is daily (or almost) in small doses? Non-fiction or fiction, serial or not, doesn't matter. I'm just overwhelmed with where to begin looking.
posted by Mikey51 to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

Drawfee is my favorite youtube channel. They have two videos a week, usually between 40-50 minutes long, and they also do weekly 2 hour streams if you're into that thing. There's no narrative arc to their typical content, it's just funny people doing chill art content that's stupid and nice without being saccharine. Because there's no story to follow, sometimes I just open a random video or vod and watch 15 mins to relax. Or sometimes I'll watch 3 in a row. Just kind of works like that for me.

But since you're looking for something serial, I really recommend their Drawtectives series. They've done two seasons so far, it started as an experiment when they were owned by college humor and then survived everyone getting laid off, covid, and the channel becoming independent. I believe they're currently planning their third series.

example video I particularly like
Drawtectives playlist
also Drawga was fun
posted by phunniemee at 2:57 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Not answering the question, but funny: the Glob & Mail used to include daily brief excerpts from Samuel Pepys' diaries two centuries after they were written. Interesting stuff.)
posted by ovvl at 3:20 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Questionable Content is my daily treat.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:25 PM on January 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I’ve read Dumbing of Age for many years. Chronicles freshman year of college for an ensemble cast: first loves, crises of faith, neurodivergence, n00b mistakes, old wounds reopened and maybe healed, and some inappropriate heroism. Sweet, occasionally spicy, lots of nostalgia for the turbulence of youth.
posted by eirias at 5:17 PM on January 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Penny Dreadful stories from Victorians, Vile Victorians are posted almost every day, and are short snippets, serialized and highly amusing, all set in the Victorian era, each one written to go with an image from that era.

There are also Victorian history posts which are excellent if you are interested in the history, but the Penny Dreadful stories are fiction which come flowing from Victor Ian's inventive pen. They are well researched which helps with the suspension of disbelief, cynical and heart warming all at the same time.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:56 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

How much backlog do you have time for? Some of my favorites have been daily-ish for a while — would you like catching up? Does it matter if there’s a single plot line?
posted by clew at 6:03 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Substack has several serialized Classics, where you sign up and they email you a bit of a book daily or weekly. For some of the books, they sync up the date of the emails with the date of the events in the books, so you get the narrative in real time.
posted by chrisulonic at 6:37 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not sure this is really what your looking for (and not really funny) but Dracula is perfect for this type of consumption as each letter back and forth is relatively short
posted by raccoon409 at 6:51 PM on January 16, 2023

My current favorite webcomic is Breaking Cat News
posted by kathrynm at 4:26 PM on January 17, 2023

I'm focusing on the "bite-sized" and "a few minutes" here - a few of my favorite short podcasts are:

Composers Datebook, 2 minutes - "a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present"
Engines of our Ingenuity, 3-4 minutes - "The story of technological progress ... explore technology's spectacular failures and many magnificent success stories." (transcripts)
posted by kristi at 10:13 PM on January 18, 2023