The F Plus

The F Plus is a comedy podcast with the tagline "Terrible Things Read With Enthusiasm". The main host is Lemon, who is a website developer in his day job. Each episode features a rotating cast of co-hosts (known as "Ridiculists") reading out a selection of "bizarre" content from the internet (or, on rare occasions, from printed works), and riffing on it. Given the nature of the internet, content often is fandom-related, and there have been many episodes devoted to badfic, kink memes, original character descriptions, forum roleplays, etc. Each episode is themed around a single site, or several sites on one topic. For example, episode 98, titled Can't Say I Approve Of Your Methods, Mister Holmes, was entirely made up of readings from the LJ community SherlockBBC-Fic.
Fans of the podcast itself have also made fanart and fanfiction inspired by the show.
==Ethics==
The podcasters have a strict rule that nobody should harass the subjects of their episodes. As Lemon said in the intro to one episode:
This rule that they use is based upon The Prime Directive from Star Trek and rules that were come up with on the Something Awful forums. The premise is to center around the concept of "atrocity tourism". Don't interfere with the websites or people who are features in the podcast. You don't want to bother the subject matter. 
==Origins==
Many of the main Ridiculists met on Portal of Evil, which had a similar ethos to what The F Plus would become: showcasing strange sites on the internet, but highly discouraging anyone from "invading" the showcased sites. Another inspiration cited is Mystery Science Theater 3000. Later, the group from PoE started to meet up in a dedicated Team Fortress 2 server with open voice chat, where the players would read out strange things they'd found online, such as My Immortal. Lemon described this server as "a poker game, basically," meaning that there was a game being played, but the real purpose of being there was chatting. Eventually, the number of people who wanted to listen exceeded the maximum that a TF2 server could hold. Another limitation was that the server couldn't handle too many people on audio at the same time: Acierocolotl related that "if you made a good joke, everybody would laugh, and the server would crash." So they began to do recorded readings outside of TF2.The F Plus Retrospective, January 17, 2016
==Events==
"F Plus Live" shows took place in 2010, 2011, 2013-2018, and 2020 at clubs in Minneapolis and Seattle. They also have done 24-hour livestream events which raised donations for the Southern Poverty Law Center: "24 Terrible Hours" in April 2017, and the first "Garbage Day" in April 2018. In 2019, they switched to raising money for the National Network of Abortion Funds for their garbage day events in April 2019, October 2020, and September 2022. 
==Advertising==
The F Plus has a strong stance that they don't want advertising on their podcast. Having a podcast for over a decade and not putting ads on it is nearly unheard of. Having this stance is great for the podcasting world. The money they have made from live events and from merch have been donated to charity. 
==Drama==
A few people have accused The F Plus of being mean spirited or looking down upon subjects that they talk about. These accusations have mostly come from twitter and tumblr and aren't very frequent. 
==The F Minus==
The F Minus also called extra credit is a spin off podcast starting in August 2016 by fans of the podcast. The main host of The F Minus has changed overtime and is currently ShellGame. Many of the older F Minus episodes are deleted due to quality and ill-advised content that the readers no longer support. It's entirely fan made, but sometimes features readers from The F Plus. They have their own documents they read as well as using fan submitted documents
==Quotes==
:Bumpgrrl (reading): "Wincest is also used as interchangeable with Sam/Dean or Dean/Sam when describing a fanfic pairing."
:Acierocolotl: What's the difference?
:Lemon: I would assume it's top/bottom relationship.
:Portaxx: Yeah that's what my guess is.
:Acierocolotl: Oh I thought maybe it was like whether you prefer them be alphabetically or numerically sorted. - Episode 45: It's Only Supernatural
:Lemon: I love that I had this nickname before I knew it meant explicit sex. - Episode 276: im•`prüv yər lek•sə•`kän
==Example fanworks==
* "HAHA, SUCKERS! You’re listening to the F Plus podcast!" - Mashup of The F Plus quotes and Homestuck images, by curlicuecal
==Links==
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==Further reading==
* Fandom-Plus: Metacommentary on Terrible Things Read with Enthusiasm, by Eldritch Hat, November 10, 2018 (quote: "Fandom is a part of life on today’s internet, and The F Plus exhibits that approaching it uncritically is often a recipe for disaster.")
==References==
Category:Fandoms by Source Text
Category:Podcast Fandoms
Category:2009 Podcasts
Category:2000s Podcasts
Category:2010s Podcasts
Category:2020s Podcasts
Category:Meta on Audio
Category:2009 Meta
Category:2000s Meta
Category:2010s Meta
Category:2020s Meta