I feel seen and possibly attacked.

I dont do this as often as the meme implies but I do stop and talk things over out loud sometimes, either to grapple with what I just heard or to follow a tangent thought to its conclusion before the podcast continues

If you think that’s bad, consider all the people who sing along with recorded music like they are part of the band.

Huh, I never thought about doing this. Maybe I should start.

I met a family member’s kid once who would both narrate himself while playing Minecraft, and have full conversations with whatever youtuber he was watching on a second screen (who was also narrating himself playing Minecraft)

I also met an old lady with dementia once who would have full conversations and arguments with people on TV.

I’m not sure if this phenomenon has a name, but it’s something currently afflicting both the silent generation and generation alpha.

If you are not social and want to be, this is actually a good way to practice conversations. The idea is to pretend to be one side of a conversation and try to mimic what a person would say in a situation. It’s more practical with planned conversations, like TV shoes because those conversations are designed to lead to something. Casual podcast conversations may have more conversation threads that may end abruptly.

Given the amount of time I spend participating in the podcast this way, I would rather say that I sometimes pause my thoughts for a little podcast rather than the opposite