On this date in 2008, I gathered my smartest, funniest friends and together we founded Overthinking It to subject the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn’t deserve.

It went better than we could have imagined. In the last eight years, we’ve published over 1,500 articles, recorded 600 hours of podcasts, and shot dozens and dozens of videos. We’ve had over 10 million video views, over 1 million podcast downloads, and over 6 million people who stopped by to read about everything from Arrested Development to Zombies. What’s more, we’ve grown the circle of Overthinkers from that initial group of college buddies to a global community of pleasant pedants, each cheerful “well actually” forging friendships stronger than Valyrian steel.

But over the past year, there has been a disturbance in the force. Maybe you have felt it. We just haven’t had the same number of articles going up on the site, or the same level of participation in the comments and forums. And it’s easy to see why: Creating high-quality entertainment takes a massive commitment of time and resources. After eight years on the Internet, it looked like the whole thing was slowing down.

But here’s the thing: We want to give you more content, more often. And we want to do it right, with a real budget that will guarantee our crew can keep making the smartest, funniest stuff together for a long time to come. We’ll never be the biggest pop culture site—and we don’t want to be! We want to be your favorite pop culture site. And hope that’s something you’re willing to support.

Become A Member of Overthinking It Today

That’s why today, we are launching Overthinking It Memberships, a monthly subscription for our audience to give back to Overthinking It and get something in return: We’ll be identifying our members with a swanky badge on their comments and forum posts, and by thanking them publicly on podcasts and videos, and by giving them cool members-only content.

If you love Overthinking It—if we have made you laugh, made you think, or made some sense out of the hodge-podge of movies, TV, music, comics, games, and more that we call “pop culture”—we hope you will become a member. And let’s be clear: we’re not talking about just continuing Overthinking It; we want it to grow, with more writers, more podcasts, and more coverage of the things we love to love. And we can do it with the direct support of our audience—you.

OK, OK! I’m Sold! Where do I sign up?

The Members’ Area will open on Monday, February 8, 2016, and monthly memberships will be available then.

Today, we are launching Charter Memberships for our most loyal readers and listeners. If you sign up now and pre-pay for a year (with a hefty discount!), we’ll send you an exclusive bit of Charter Members Only swag (details TBA—it could be an awesome Charter Member T-Shirt, or we may come up with something even more awesome than that). This will never be sold publicly, and is only available to those who join before the membership area opens.

Please help us ensure a future for Overthinking It. We truly hope that our most ambitious projects are still ahead of us, and becoming a Charter Member will help us get those ideas off the ground.  Here’s to another eight years and beyond!

Update: The Charter Membership drive has ended, and it went better than we had dared to hope. Thank you very much to everyone who could make the commitment to charter membership. Now we’re very happy to welcome new members who can support Overthining It with a small monthly subscription. Join now!

Become a Member Now!