September 19th, 2022 - The Secret Sauce
Dear TNY,
Fuck you and fuck “The Secret Source”.
What a piece of shit. Let me see if I can parse out why it’s a complete waste of human effort, both in writing/editing/publishing, and also reading.
It’s not a fucking short story. It’s the premise for a novel. A bad novel. This is a slightly longer elevator pitch for a fucking James Cameron movie. Minus about a hundred words, this story is nothing but poorly written summary. It’s not the detailed type of summary that can blend into scene. It’s just basic description of what’s happening to move the story along. That dismisses and disrespects the reader because it seems like there was no intention to get us emotionally invested, and as the reader cannot establish any sort of characterization for anyone in the story, so there is no empathy, and with no empathy, there’s no care. So what’s the fucking point, right? If the point isn’t to get us to care about the characters, then what are we left to care about?
And that gets me to my second point, which is that this story is a fucking agenda story. And that pisses me off so much. I don’t know how often I can say this: People don’t do what you tell them to do, they do what they care about. No one that needs to be convinced that the world is collapsing and water will be what we fight over in the future will be convinced by this story to change. In fact, by being slapped in the face by this agenda, they will likely move FURTHER AWAY from the desired destination. That’s basic fucking psychology. Case in point, COVID. How much of this country only began to care about COVID after they got it or someone in their family suffered from it? And the flip side of that is how many people overly-cared about it, and lost all sense of practicality about existence? It’s like Pareto up this piece of shit. Trump caters to 10% of fanatical idiots on the one side, and you cater to the 10% on the other side. Because that’s the type of reader you need for this story. Someone who has nothing else to do but preach about complacency and the government and water and climate change and wokeness and blah blah blah fucking blah. It feels to me like you are arming “intellectuals” to have “spirited” discussions at a dinner party this Wednesday, meanwhile alienating the 80% of us who could make the most change; the group that fucking works for a living. And the fucked up part about that is that those fucking “intellectuals” are too stupid to realize the low quality of these fucking stories, yet the rest of us that do don’t have the time to fuck with this stupidity because we keep the world working (whatever sad shape that is). Like, why don’t you publish stories that actually change the world by getting people to care about it? Instead of publishing shit to bolster the already established opinions of your readership while furthering the gap between those readers and the people that could actually make a fucking difference in the world because they, you know, know how to fucking do stuff and have their hands in the work?
Also, the line about Venus being the most beautiful girl in all of the university…gag me with a frozen, mangy carcass of an ermine. Like, what bearing did that have? We have no fucking details at all about these main characters in this story (because you dumb motherfuckers sought to print a children’s book here without illustrations (and this ain’t fucking Sendak, twats)), so why break a detail so late? To characterize the professor? Spoiler: unneeded. This late in the game, we are already so disappointed by this fucking garbage, any new surprises are only more disappointing, not less.
Also, with that little boy, deus ex machina much? Really creative, guys. You really hit this one out of the park. Like an adult knocking a homerun from a T-ball stand in a tennis court, you really showed up. Big time success here.
I swear to God, I have no fucking idea why you make a single dollar on your shit-ass publication. Come to think of it, I have no idea why I do this every week. It’s a waste of my time.
In fact, I have other shit to do. Van saga moves on. I hope to have the engine in this week. And running.
Anyway, what a stupid goddamn story this was. A real, top of the overly-full porti-john pile, such that there is a pyramid of human matter, festooned with used TP, at least 18 inches higher the seat, yet some wizard squatted overtop mini-Giza and dropped a fresh, hot deuce atop it, one with a little curl to it, like a big pickle or a banana, that curl stretching up, slightly higher on one end, yearning toward its only known god, that white plastic ceiling covered in flies just waiting to descend upon this new, glorious meal…yeah, this story is that type-a shit.
Now gobble it up.
Nick
