Hey, everybody! We’ve got a huge update for you all. The call-in/voicemail inbox and number is officially live! We’re excited to start integrating these into the show. We’ll probably be experimenting with placement/flow as we adjust to the new segment, but I’m pretty excited to see how it fits in. The number will be shared in a later post to the applicable tier.

I know using real phone numbers for internet stuff can be a little uncomfortable so here are some reassurances and ground rules.

• PRIVACY: Your number, along with any other private info sent to our end will not be shared on the show for anybody to grab or look at.

• SPAM: Avoid spamming the inbox. If we see the same number many times in a row, we’ll either block it or ignore it. We want to get as many real messages on the show as is reasonable for runtime.

APPLICABLE TIER - $10 & UP

I expect this choice may lead to some consternation/critique so let me walk you guys through our reasoning for putting it at this tier instead of having a fully open number or accessible at lower tiers.

• GIVING THE TIER A PURPOSE: Without a proper discord (frankly, because we hate the idea of needing to monitor an anonymous community) the $10 tier has been sitting there acting as a glorified tip jar. Personally, I’m not a fan of that. This fleshes out all of the tiers and gives unique purpose to one that has been deeply neglected for a long time, while also giving additional value to our highest tier as a bonus.

• QUALITY / QUANTITY CONTROL: We do think it’s best to limit the accessibility a little bit more than usual to avoid having an overflowed vault of voicemails that becomes too full, too quickly. It’s already hard to get to every written question as is. Placing it at the Audience Participation tier potentially doubles that volume which feels a little untenable.

• PRICE CONSISTENCY: We like the idea of keeping prices the same, especially now when goblins are fucking with the economy like it’s Garry’s Mod. If we were to put it at a lower tier (Audience Participation) we’d need to mitigate the number SOMEHOW to keep quantity of messages at manageable levels. Theoretically, raising the price of that Audience Participation tier would be the other option to keep quantity reasonable without splitting tiers. I’d rather not.

Obviously, I’m open to suggestions and feedback, but this is how we’re moving forward with this little initiative for now. Hopefully this reasoning makes at least a little sense. I don’t like people feeling priced out of something or cheated, but I like communicating thoroughly when we do moves like these.

We’ll be renaming the tiers too to better reflect what they do/offer. (“Audience Participant” > “Write Ins” & “Discord” > “On-Air Voicemail.”) Still working out the proper nouns, but that change will come this week.

Excited to hear from you all and to see how this all goes. See ya soon!

-Chris Ray Gun