I am a Serious Person
Hello World,
Just pushing this through the pipeline, on the off chance that the below is of import to someone out there. I did social media and some copy writing for this site back in summer. Got kinda bored with it, frankly, and I didn’t really want to be associated with this Tich guy rocking his way on and off the handle. This letter from the editor has been in the drafts folder for about two months. I think he thought that it got published, but it didn’t. There’s like a dozen rants in the drafts by this Tich dude, so my best guess is that Tich stopped the scheduled post from going live.
Not sure what E.C. is on about with this Tich guy being AWOL. He’s writing on here constantly, from the looks of it. He just never posts. Probably for the best. I can’t imagine anyone is into the whole “I’m gazing into the maw of Hell, agape. Pupils dilated into eyeballs of pure blackness, suffering from the grip of Humanity. I wait for the Under-God to finally see me, as He is always watching” sort of thing. That’s not a quote; just a bad paraphrase. Idk. He’s got this whole paranoid thriller meets Lovecraft sort of autofiction thing that doesn’t even really track internally. It’s all a bit try-hard, if you ask me.
Anyway, I just figured to put this out here. E.C. wanted it public. Though he also probably doesn’t care too much either way. Neither do I.
—A
Hello Dear Reader,
It’s your trusty editor here with a special message for all the faithful eye bleeders out there.
For the last eight months, I have served in the largely thankless role of editor inside this dismal little corner of cyberspace. Every week, either I or my not-so-loyal cultural critic Horace Tich have presented you with the strangest media oddities that we could get our hands on. It has been, off and on, a rewarding experience. But it’s time for a change.
It came to my attention a few weeks ago just how out of hand Mr. Tich’s behavior had become. His erratic and occasionally incoherent ramblings have found their way into our articles from time to time. Perhaps you have noticed. In any case, I had been thinking of ways to change the tenor of this space of criticism. Namely, I was fixing to break the hard news to Mr. Tich that his services would no longer be required on this Substack.
Concurrently, life found a way of opening and closing various doors within my own life. Frankly, and ultimately, I find that this site may have a negative impact on my future prospects. Given Mr. Tich’s behavior, and the nature of the content discussed herein, and (I am willing to admit) a rather laissez-faire attitude toward critical editing of the material on my part—these all are reasons for why I myself should step away from this project.
As I am up for academic positions at institutions of some renown, I feel obliged to comport myself in a more dignified manner than what is currently present on this forum. Although I still believe this could be a space for generative critical conversation on media, it simply cannot occur under my tenure. As such, I will be stepping aside.
Instead of firing one Horace Tich, then, I had decided instead to allow him free rein over this space to write whatever dangerous rhetoric he so pleased. Funnily enough, once I had come to this decision, I realized that I could not seem to be able to track Horace down.
The man has seemingly disappeared into thin air.
The last I’d heard, he was being forcefully ushered out of his primary place of employment, or so I heard from a friend of one of his coworkers. He was shouting something about being watched, and then he drove away. Hasn’t been seen since.
He is free to return to this site if he so pleases, just so long as his words are not associated with myself. As I must now be seen as a serious person. Which is not to say I was not previously serious, just that now it does not suffice to know in my heart of hearts that I am serious; I must now play the part of the serious man.
If for some reason the dastardly algorithms-slash-bots-slash-AI-e-waste over at Google has SEO-ed this Substack to the top of search results for my name, and the nice folks at any hiring committees have found themselves here: let me reassure you. I am a very serious person. My work likely speaks for itself—only not here, as it has grown indistinguishable from the Tich of it all. Elsewhere, it speaks for itself, and it speaks more kindly words about my abilities. Mr. Tich, he had some innate skills when it came to the analysis of the audiovisual form, but he didn’t have much of a handle on his own view of the world, as it were. I, on the other hand, have a clear vision for what this world is all about, not to mention the culture that spreads like moss on its glorious surface. Sweetness and light, my dear friend. All that is fit to print, only after you’ve subtracted the trite and the tripe.
The Pale, trite Tripe
Holds unworthy candles
To the Sweet, bright LightThis is the only way. Kant and Plato and Shakespeare and Aeschylus, Keats and Dickinson and Dickens and Tolstoy. Only those names which have already been chosen, elevated to the promised land by those intelligent men of letters. To think one could be swayed from the path by something as heinously antithetical to poetics as Rem Lezar. It’s simply a silly notion. Sillier still that the converse is so simple: consume that will enrich you wholesale. All else is Rot.
Perhaps in time Mr. Tich will come to understand this. It was a curious exercise, this idea to promote that which holds no value to humanity. But one cannot put lipstick on a pig, lest one wants to ruin a good tube of lipstick. What shade would it be, the pig’s lipstick? Not also pink, surely (#F399CC? #EC3A86? Certainly not #F8BDDD! #B30E08, perhaps). It is immaterial, I suppose. As a matter of course, the pig, too, has preference, but to what end? Does the pig understand Rembrandt’s laugh? Can the pig fathom it at all? Alas. To laugh, one must first Know. Otherwise, one is only laughing at oneself.
Farewell for now, dear Reader. Let us hope that we will come to laugh whilst knowing at what we are truly laughing. If we laugh together, so be it.
—E.C., your once and former Editor
End Volume 1