mcsweeney’s
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HAHAHAHA? LOL?
See here for a perspicuously articulated inquiry into the efficacy of one of our most oft-used signifiers. Here’s the thing about ‘lol’: What in the hell does that even mean? That I’m laughing out loud? Yeah, that really comes across when I’m…
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Insert Short Story Here
[Beginning in media res in mother’s house.] [Sufficiently dramatic exposition with an obvious, planted echo to the story’s climax.] Story in need of kindling? Take a gander at this short story template from McSweeney’s. Use it as a guide— —Ok.…
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Social Media Year, 2080
In the spirit of Orwell, Saunders, and M.T. Anderson, see here for a glimpse at the future of social media: virtual reality dates, sensory augmentation, robots writing on humans in peer-reviewed journals. Sensory augmentations will make possible ever-deeper transports…
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What We Can’t Say
You know the feeling perfectly. You’re at an interview. The manager clears his throat, says, “Tell us a bit about some of your strengths.” Despite the facts that he repeatedly calls you juggernaut, you feel an undying, writerly urge to…
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Discovered: Aesop Manuscript
Fine, you caught us: it’s a McSweeney’s thing. In one sense, these mock-Aesop fables show just how untranslatable the morality of antiquity is to the modern, post-Enlightenment subject. In another sense, they’re just plain funny. When the winter came, the…
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Tricks and Tropes of the Trade
Though it may never be nominated for an Oscar, the contemporary ad has unarguably become a genre of its own. Over at McSweeney’s, Kendra Eash pokes fun at some of the genre’s tricks and tropes. See how this guy in…
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Of Mice and Machines
Ever wonder what John Steinbeck would make of angel investors and Google? McSweeney’s contributor Thomas Scott has reimagined Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men, taking George and Lennie from the fields of Great Depression-era California to modern-day Silicon Valley.
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Ballad of a WiFi Hero
Yesterday, Vulture premiered “In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed As a Conquering Hero,” an animated short based on Mike Lacher’s popular McSweeney’s humor piece of the same name and which “follows the harrowing tale of a bold warrior…
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A Heap of Cake
It’s lovely to be wanted, and then it isn’t. You start to wonder what they want you for–the audience, the men. If it’s even about you. If all I am, despite my many professional and artistic roles, is a woman…
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A “Ridiculous, Potent Musical Minefield”
As part of McSweeney’s long-running series “Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond,” Summer Brennan wrote “An Open Letter to the Mix Tape Made for Me by My College Boyfriend, Now Deceased.” It’s exactly as poignant…
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Commas, and How Complicated Things Might Really Be
When properly used, commas can be used to keep discourse clear, to bring statements together, and to suffuse language with detail. In “The Comma From Which My Heart Hangs,” Benjamin Samuel makes the case for using commas correctly, exploring the…
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Let Math Decide Your Novel’s Fate
Are you worried that your novel contains too many adverbs or too much white space or lacks the proper rhythm? Despair no more. Joy Lazendorfer writes on how you can use math to edit your novel in a piece featured on McSweeney’s.…