Smosh Reads Reddit Stories has become one of the most reliable formats in the modern YouTube-podcast hybrid world: take a stack of Reddit posts, put Shayne Topp in the host chair, surround him with funny people, and let the conversation become stranger, smarter, and more revealing than the posts themselves. The June 2026 Pride episode, “Am I The Ally? | Reading Reddit Stories,” is a perfect example of why the series works.
The official podcast listing identifies the episode as “Am I The Ally? | Reading Reddit Stories,” published on June 27, 2026, with a listed length of 59 minutes. Apple Podcasts lists Shayne Topp as host and includes Chanse McCrary and Jared Goldstein in the episode credits; Audioboom’s episode page also names Shayne Topp, Chanse McCrary, and Jared Goldstein under “WHO YOU SEE.” The Smosh Wiki gives the more precise runtime as 58:52 and places the episode as number 165 in the Reading Reddit Stories series.
That factual setup only tells you the surface. The real draw is the episode’s mixture of Pride-month absurdity, workplace awkwardness, gay panic, coming-out etiquette, flirtation gone hilariously over someone’s head, and a final story about a work-from-home disaster involving a legendary toilet-related meme. Based on the supplied transcript, this episode is not a lecture about Pride, nor is it a shallow rainbow-branded theme episode. It is a comedy discussion about how queer identity shows up in the most chaotic corners of everyday life: dating, family secrets, office politics, insecure masculinity, unexpected attraction, and yes, bathroom humor.
Quick Verdict: Is “Am I The Ally?” Worth Watching or Listening To?
Yes. This is one of those Smosh Reads Reddit Stories episodes that feels light and ridiculous while still finding room for real observations. It is very funny, occasionally sweet, sometimes gross, and sharper than it first appears.
The best thing about the episode is the balance between Jared Goldstein’s quick, personal, queer-comedy perspective, Chanse McCrary’s more observational rhythm, and Shayne Topp’s role as the steady host who lets the stories escalate without over-controlling the room. Jared, in particular, gives the episode much of its identity. He is not just reacting to Reddit drama as an outsider; he brings lived-in commentary about coming out, being read as gay or not gay, being hit on by women, and how strange it can feel when other people make your sexuality about their embarrassment.
This is also a strong Pride episode because it refuses to make Pride feel like homework. Instead, it treats queer life as funny, messy, human, ordinary, and occasionally spectacularly stupid. The stories are not all “about” LGBTQ identity in a grand political sense. Some are simply Reddit chaos in which queer people happen to be present. That matters. Pride media can sometimes flatten queer stories into inspirational arcs or trauma narratives. “Am I The Ally?” does the opposite: it lets queer people be awkward, horny, confused, petty, gracious, oblivious, and hilarious.
Episode Details
Podcast: Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
Episode Title: “Am I The Ally? | Reading Reddit Stories”
YouTube Channel: Smosh Pit
Host: Shayne Topp
Guests: Chanse McCrary and Jared Goldstein
Publication Date: June 27, 2026
Runtime: Approximately 59 minutes; 58:52 by the Smosh Wiki listing
Main Theme: Pride-themed Reddit stories about queer identity, coming out, attraction, workplace awkwardness, family assumptions, and social misunderstanding
Sponsor Mentioned: Quince, with the official episode pages and transcript both placing Quince as the sponsor for this episode.
The show itself is described by Apple Podcasts as a weekly series in which “tall tales from Reddit” become the starting point for hour-long reaction videos, with Shayne Topp and guests discussing stories about friendship, romance, revenge, and beyond. That description is unusually accurate for this particular episode. “Am I The Ally?” is not merely a read-aloud recap. The Reddit posts are prompts. The value comes from the way the couch turns them into an improvised conversation about social rules nobody fully agrees on.
What Happens in the Episode?
The episode begins with Shayne introducing it as the annual Pride episode of Smosh Reads Reddit Stories. He is joined by Chanse and comedian Jared Goldstein, who immediately becomes part of the joke when he asks why he was invited for this particular theme. The running bit is obvious but charming: the Pride episode needs a certain kind of couch energy, and Jared is very much aware of the assignment.
From there, the episode moves through a set of Reddit stories that range from “this sounds like a bad Euphoria subplot” to “this is a legitimate workplace HR nightmare” to “this person is clearly flirting and the original poster has somehow missed every sign.” The collection includes:
- A bisexual man who hooks up with an older man, then later dates the man’s daughter.
- A gay son who is blamed for not telling women at his dad’s workplace that he is gay after they flirt with him.
- A boss who reacts badly, or at least awkwardly, when an employee walks in and simply announces that he is gay.
- A doctor who fails to realize a school nurse is flirting with her.
- A gay man who is accused by a friend/coworker of fathering his redheaded baby, despite being openly gay and engaged to a man.
- A couple whose work-from-home life is destroyed by a toilet-related interruption during a company video call.
That lineup gives the episode a clear arc. It starts with sexual farce, moves into social etiquette, finds a genuinely sweet coming-out update, escalates into a scary and absurd accusation, and then crashes into full bathroom comedy. The structure works because Pride here is not treated as a single tone. The episode is sometimes celebratory, sometimes exasperated, sometimes tender, and sometimes proudly dumb.
Why the Title “Am I The Ally?” Works
The title is a smart play on Reddit’s famous “Am I The Asshole?” format, but it also captures the central joke of the episode: everyone is trying to figure out the “right” social response to queer situations, and almost nobody gets it perfectly.
The boss in one story tries to interpret an employee’s coming out as a work-related prompt. The women in another story decide that a gay man should have preemptively disclosed his sexuality so they would not feel embarrassed for flirting. The school nurse turns professional banter into flirtation, while the doctor misses the romantic subtext entirely. The paternity-test story shows a man so insecure and so ignorant about genetics and sexuality that he constructs an alternate reality in which a gay friend is secretly the father of his child.
In other words, the episode is full of people trying, failing, overreacting, projecting, or misreading the room. That is where the comedy lives. The question is not only “who is the ally?” It is also “who understands the social situation at all?”
Story One: The Bisexual Dad, the Daughter, and the Worst Possible Family Introduction
The first major story is the kind of Reddit post that sounds fictional because real life is sometimes committed to being more embarrassing than fiction. A man recalls hooking up with an older bisexual man through an app. Later, he begins dating a woman, only to discover that her father is the older man he had slept with.
The twist is not merely that they recognize each other. The father later comes out as bisexual to his family and reportedly tells his daughter to break up with the narrator so that he can pursue him instead. It is an impossible social collision: past hookup, current girlfriend, closeted father, marriage, family betrayal, and a daughter who concludes that the narrator “turned” her dad gay.
The Smosh crew understands immediately that this is not a normal dating problem. Shayne frames it as the kind of secret that would make every future holiday unbearable. Jared and Chanse lean into the absurdity, but they also land on the obvious moral reality: the dad’s behavior is the real problem. He is married, he has created a family crisis, and he is attempting to shift responsibility onto a younger man who did not know the connection existed.
The funniest part of the discussion is how quickly the couch recognizes the story as both horrible and narratively irresistible. They compare it to melodrama, porn logic, and Euphoria-style family chaos. But the underlying point is serious: the narrator is not responsible for someone else’s coming out, someone else’s marriage, or someone else’s attempt to rewrite a hookup into destiny.
This is the episode’s first demonstration of its recurring method. It laughs hard at the situation, but not at bisexuality. The joke is not “a man is bi.” The joke is that one man’s disastrous choices have created the least sustainable family dynamic imaginable.
Story Two: The Gay Son Who Did Not Disclose His Sexuality to Flirty Women
The second story is more socially subtle. A 23-year-old gay man goes to his father’s workplace to drop off photography work because his dad is too hungover after a birthday party. While there, several women flirt with him. He does not encourage it, but he also does not announce that he is gay. Later, after his dad mentions that his son has a boyfriend, the women reportedly call him an asshole for letting them embarrass themselves.
This story gives the episode one of its best discussion topics: does a gay person have any obligation to disclose their sexuality just because someone is flirting with them?
The answer from the couch is a firm no. Shayne, Chanse, and Jared agree that the narrator was simply there to drop something off. It was a professional environment. He was not leading anyone on. He did not owe strangers personal information, especially not in his dad’s workplace.
Jared’s contribution is especially strong here because he tells a personal story about being hit on by a woman he found extremely attractive and panicking when she asked if he was gay. Instead of giving a clean answer, he lied in the moment and later had to clarify. It is a funny story, but it also opens up a richer idea: sexuality is personal, disclosure can be awkward even when someone is out, and attraction does not always fit into neat social scripts.
This is where “Am I The Ally?” becomes more than a funny Reddit recap. The episode understands that coming out is not one event. People who are out still decide, every day, whether a situation calls for disclosure. Sometimes it is safe and easy. Sometimes it is irrelevant. Sometimes it is exhausting. Sometimes it is simply none of anyone’s business.
The women in the Reddit story are embarrassed because they misread the situation. Instead of owning that embarrassment, they convert it into blame. That is a common social move: “I feel foolish, therefore you must have wronged me.” The Smosh crew sees through it immediately.
Story Three: The Boss Who Did Not Know How to Respond to “I Am Gay”
The third story is arguably the episode’s most interesting. A boss describes an employee walking into the office and saying, simply, “I am gay.” The boss waits for more information, assuming there must be a work-related reason. When none arrives, the boss asks whether the employee has any marketing insights for that demographic. Then the boss asks whether he is getting married and needs time off. Finally, with a meeting approaching, the boss ends the conversation.
It is painfully awkward. It is also not malicious. That is why the story works.
The couch is split between laughter and recognition. On paper, the boss’s first response is ridiculous: “Can this be useful for marketing?” But in context, the boss seems like a person trying to locate the practical reason for a workplace conversation. If an employee walks into your office, announces a personal fact, and then stares at you, most people will scramble to identify the expected response.
The episode does not excuse the boss entirely, but it also does not demonize him. The Reddit verdict in the story is “not the asshole,” and the discussion largely agrees. The ideal response, as one commenter suggests, would be something like: thank you for trusting me; is there anything you need from me as your boss? But the episode wisely points out that real-time social interactions do not come with a script.
Then comes the update, and the story changes completely.
The boss later follows up to make sure the employee is not facing harassment or discrimination. Meanwhile, the boss’s family is preparing to adult-adopt a man named Jay, who has been close to the family for years. Jay becomes anxious because he is gay and fears rejection. The boss connects Jay with the employee as a supportive friend. Eventually, the employee and Jay begin dating and become engaged.
It is an unexpectedly wholesome turn. The awkward boss becomes an accidental matchmaker. The story begins as a lesson in how not to respond perfectly to coming out and ends as a story about chosen family, adoption, trust, and queer support networks.
Jared’s comments here are some of the episode’s best. He talks about the experience of people coming out to him and how meaningful it can be to say the things you once needed to hear yourself. That moment gives the episode emotional weight without slowing it down too much. It shows why queer representation on the couch matters: Jared can joke about the awkwardness while also recognizing the honor of being trusted with someone’s truth.
Story Four: The Doctor, the School Nurse, and the Most Obvious Flirting in the World
After the heavier coming-out story, the episode pivots into romantic comedy territory. A woman picks up her niece from school. The niece falls and scrapes her knee, so they visit the school nurse. The niece reveals that her aunt is a doctor. The nurse becomes weirdly invested in the fact that the aunt did not disclose her profession earlier, compliments her appearance, says she looks better than most doctors, and implies that the aunt should “make it up” to her.
The original poster is baffled and wonders whether she was rude.
The Smosh crew immediately understands what many Reddit commenters apparently told her: the nurse was flirting. Hard.
This segment is delightful because the story is low-stakes, sweet, and funny in a totally different way from the opening hookup disaster. Nobody’s family is exploding. Nobody is threatening violence. Nobody is asking for a paternity test. It is just one person being aggressively flirted with while interpreting everything as a professional misunderstanding.
The episode uses the story to talk about “angry flirters,” sarcasm as attraction, and the ways people sometimes miss romantic cues because they are primed to read a situation literally. The update makes it even better: the doctor returns with flowers, asks the nurse out, and they go on a date. Later, they are still dating months afterward.
In a Pride episode filled with chaos, this is the purest rom-com beat. It also adds a valuable counterweight to the stories about accusation and discomfort. Queer Reddit is not only about trauma or social conflict. Sometimes it is about a school nurse shooting her shot with a hot doctor and the doctor needing the entire internet to explain what just happened.
Story Five: The Paternity Test, the Redheaded Baby, and Insecure Masculinity at Full Volume
The paternity-test story is the episode’s angriest and most disturbing segment, even though the premise sounds absurd. A gay man with long curly red hair has a coworker and friend whose wife gives birth to a redheaded daughter. The coworker, whose sons apparently resemble him strongly, becomes obsessed with the baby not looking like him. Instead of understanding that children can resemble either parent, he decides his gay friend must be the father.
The accusation escalates quickly. The coworker threatens violence, insults his wife, demands a paternity test, tells others that the narrator is the father, and creates chaos in multiple families. The narrator is openly gay, engaged to a man, and visibly queer in his life, but none of that matters to the accuser because the accuser’s insecurity has become stronger than reality.
This is where the episode’s comedy becomes a critique of straight male possessiveness. Jared names the dynamic clearly: some insecure men interpret any closeness between their female partner and another man as sexual threat, even when the other man is gay. Chanse and Shayne also highlight the sexism in the husband’s assumptions. The wife becomes, in the husband’s mind, a vessel for his genes rather than a person whose child might naturally look like her.
The repeated phrase about his genes “prevailing” becomes one of the story’s most revealing details. It sounds like villain language because it is. The husband’s problem is not only ignorance about genetics. It is entitlement. He wants his children to mirror him. When one child does not, he sees betrayal.
The couch also notices that the narrator’s friends are not behaving well. Instead of supporting him after he is threatened, they blame him for telling the wife. That detail pushes the story from absurd to unsettling. The narrator is being asked to absorb someone else’s public accusation, pay for a test, stay silent, and protect the man who is actively ruining his reputation.
This segment is funny because the accusation is ridiculous. It is also serious because the behavior is dangerous. The best comedy podcasts know how to laugh at stupidity without ignoring harm. “Am I The Ally?” manages that balance here.
Story Six: The Work-From-Home Toilet Disaster
The final story changes the tone completely. A man sees that his boyfriend has left behind a truly enormous toilet situation. Because the couple share a running joke based on a viral clip, he bursts into the boyfriend’s work-from-home office and loudly performs the reference. Unfortunately, the boyfriend is in the middle of a company-wide video meeting and presenting to his boss and team.
It is the kind of story that makes listeners laugh out of secondhand horror. It is also a very Smosh way to end a Pride episode: after coming-out etiquette, bisexual family chaos, workplace flirting, and paternity-test madness, the final destination is a giant poop joke.
The couch takes the bait completely. The conversation spirals into Zoom comedy, pandemic-era remote work awkwardness, the famous Reddit “poop knife” story, family FaceTime etiquette, burping, farting, and whether bodily functions are morally aware of themselves. It is silly, gross, and very funny.
The story works as a closer because it brings the episode back to intimacy. Living with someone means sharing private jokes, private spaces, and occasionally private disasters that become public at the worst possible time. The fact that the couple are both men is almost incidental, which is part of the joke. In many Pride episodes, the final story might be expected to land on a grand emotional statement. Smosh instead ends with bathroom chaos, which is arguably more democratic and more honest.
Host and Guest Chemistry
The chemistry is the reason this episode rises above a simple Reddit recap.
Shayne Topp: The Calm Center of the Chaos
Shayne’s role in Reading Reddit Stories is deceptively hard. He has to read long posts clearly, manage pacing, invite commentary, track updates, land jokes, and keep the group from drifting too far away from the actual story. In “Am I The Ally?” he does that with his usual steadiness. He lets Jared take space when a story connects to queer experience. He gives Chanse room to react. He also knows when to push the conversation forward.
Shayne’s best moments are often understated. He does not need to dominate the episode because the format is strongest when the guests feel like they are discovering the story in real time. His reactions frame the absurdity without flattening it.
Chanse McCrary: Dry, Observational, and Occasionally Devastating
Chanse is a natural fit for this theme because he can be funny without always performing at maximum volume. Some of his best reactions are short, sharp, and observational. He is especially good in the stories where social cues are being misread. The school nurse story and the paternity-test story benefit from his ability to sit inside the awkwardness rather than immediately shout over it.
Jared Goldstein: The Episode’s Secret Weapon
Jared is the standout guest. His humor is fast, personal, and just self-aware enough to keep the Pride framing playful. He jokes about why he was invited, but he also gives the episode its strongest reflections on coming out and being trusted by someone who is still figuring out how to say the words.
His story about being hit on by a woman is one of the episode’s most memorable digressions because it complicates a simple premise. A gay man can be flattered by a woman’s interest. He can panic. He can lie badly in the moment. He can later turn it into a friendship and a funny story. That kind of lived-in specificity is what makes the episode feel more than topical.
Why This Pride Episode Works
A weaker Pride episode might have made every story about identity in an obvious way. “Am I The Ally?” is smarter than that. It understands that queer life is not a genre. It can be farce, romance, family drama, workplace awkwardness, or bathroom comedy.
The episode also avoids two common traps.
First, it does not make queer people flawless. The stories include queer people who are oblivious, horny, messy, awkward, or simply caught in absurd circumstances. That is refreshing. Representation is not only about dignity; it is also about allowing people to be ridiculous.
Second, it does not make straight discomfort the moral center. In the workplace flirting story, the women’s embarrassment is not treated as the gay man’s responsibility. In the paternity-test story, the husband’s insecurity is not treated as understandable jealousy. In the coming-out-to-the-boss story, the employee’s vulnerability is taken seriously, but the boss is allowed to be imperfect without being cast as a villain.
That moral flexibility gives the episode room to breathe. It is not a sermon. It is a comedy conversation with a functioning ethical compass.
The Episode’s Best Running Ideas
1. Coming Out Does Not Come With One Correct Script
The boss story and Jared’s personal comments both underline the same point: there is no single perfect way to receive someone’s coming out. There are better and worse responses, of course. Kindness matters. Safety matters. But people are awkward. They panic. They say the wrong first sentence. The episode makes space for imperfection while still recognizing why the moment matters.
2. Nobody Owes Strangers a Sexuality Disclosure
The office-flirting story is one of the clearest ethical discussions in the episode. If someone flirts with you, you do not automatically owe them your identity. You can disclose if you want to. You can redirect. You can leave. You can simply be awkward until the moment passes. Embarrassment is not harm.
3. Queer People Are Not Props in Other People’s Insecurities
The paternity-test story is the darkest example. The narrator’s gay identity is ignored because the accuser needs a target for his fear. The husband’s insecurity turns a friend into a scapegoat and his wife into a villain. The episode’s reaction makes clear that this is not just ignorance; it is a form of entitlement.
4. Sometimes Reddit Actually Helps
The school nurse story is a rare Reddit win. Commenters identify the flirting, the original poster acts on the advice, and the result is a date. The episode treats this as funny, but also genuinely sweet. For once, internet strangers help someone find romance instead of merely diagnosing disaster.
5. Pride Can End With a Poop Knife
The final segment is not profound in the usual sense, but it is a perfect tonal choice. Queer couples also have stupid household jokes. They interrupt work calls. They embarrass each other. They discuss toilet logistics. That ordinary absurdity is its own kind of representation.
How This Episode Compares to Other Smosh Reads Reddit Stories Pride Episodes
Smosh has turned Pride into a recurring Reading Reddit Stories tradition. The 2024 Pride installment, “The Pride Episode,” was released on June 22, 2024 and starred Cammie Scott and Taryn Arnold Scott, according to the Smosh Wiki. The 2025 Pride installment, “Queer Queries,” is listed on Spotify as a June 28, 2025 episode.
“Am I The Ally?” feels like a continuation of that tradition, but it has its own flavor. It is less about explaining queer issues and more about navigating social absurdity. It also leans heavily into the fact that Pride episodes have become expected by the audience. Early in the transcript, the group jokes about this being an annual event and wonders whether it is the fourth Pride episode. That self-awareness helps the episode feel casual rather than ceremonially branded.
The episode’s strength is that it treats Pride as both celebration and permission: permission to tell weird stories, permission to laugh at bad assumptions, permission to call out homophobia and sexism, and permission to be unserious.
Best Moments
The funniest story premise is probably the first one: dating a woman after unknowingly hooking up with her father is pure Reddit nightmare fuel. But the most satisfying story is the school nurse romance because the update gives the audience a happy ending.
The most meaningful segment is the boss-coming-out story, especially because of the update involving Jay and H becoming engaged. It turns an awkward workplace misunderstanding into a surprisingly moving story about connection.
The most infuriating story is easily the paternity-test accusation. It is funny in the room because the logic is so broken, but the underlying behavior is cruel. That contrast gives the segment its energy.
The grossest and most classically Smosh ending is the work-from-home toilet story. It is not the deepest part of the episode, but it is the kind of closer that makes the whole hour feel like a hangout rather than a lecture.
Who Should Listen?
This episode is ideal for:
- Fans of Smosh Pit and Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
- Listeners looking for a Pride-themed comedy podcast episode
- People who enjoy AITA-style moral debates
- Viewers who like queer comedy without overly sanitized messaging
- Fans of Shayne Topp, Chanse McCrary, or Jared Goldstein
- Anyone who enjoys Reddit stories with updates, twists, and chaotic social dilemmas
It may not be ideal for listeners who want a serious Pride history episode or a structured interview about LGBTQ politics. This is not that. It is a comedy reaction episode with real moments of insight. The tone is loose, conversational, and frequently ridiculous.
Final Review
“Am I The Ally?” is a strong Pride episode because it understands that queer-themed comedy does not need to be solemn to be meaningful. Its stories cover coming out, bisexuality, workplace disclosure, flirting, insecure masculinity, chosen family, and relationship embarrassment, but the episode never turns into a panel discussion. It stays funny first.
The guest choice is excellent. Jared Goldstein gives the episode personality and perspective, while Chanse brings a quieter counterbalance and Shayne keeps the format moving. The Reddit selections are varied enough to avoid repetition, and the updates provide satisfying turns at exactly the right moments.
The episode’s greatest achievement is tonal confidence. It can laugh at a bizarre bisexual-dad dating disaster, pause for a sincere reflection on coming out, celebrate a lesbian rom-com meet-cute, condemn a dangerously insecure husband, and then end with toilet chaos. Somehow, all of that feels like one coherent Pride episode.
That is the Smosh Reads Reddit Stories formula at its best: human behavior, filtered through Reddit, then rescued by comedians who know when to mock the situation and when to respect the person inside it.
Rating: 8.8/10
Best For: Pride-month podcast listening, Smosh fans, Reddit drama lovers, and anyone who wants queer comedy with both chaos and heart.
Skip or Stream? Stream it. This is one of the more memorable themed Reading Reddit Stories episodes of the year, and more trending podcast episodes can be found on PodcastCharts.net.