The Complaints Department Is Closed
Right. Some things need saying once, clearly, after which I’m done discussing them. Four recurring complaints, addressed in order, and then never again.
The first: it used to be more personal, now it’s all mainstream. Yes, this journal has grown—that required actual investment, time, writing, building a name in a space that doesn’t hand them out. More readers means finding a balance between the intimate and the accessible, which is a genuine challenge and not a direction that needs apologizing for. Personal essays about friendship and loneliness and growing up alternate with posts about music, fashion, art, and whatever else holds my attention that week—because that’s what this is. An honest mix. If you want a blog that does only one thing, there are thousands of those. This isn’t one of them.
The second: always tits, always dicks, always fucking. Correct, sometimes. I grew up reading Vice and obsessing over sites like LastNightsParty. Human sexuality has always been part of the furniture here, posted without guilt or elaborate justification, alternating with everything else because that’s how life actually works. The fact that in 2009 I’m still expected to explain why I post a nude photograph says considerably more about the person demanding the explanation than it does about me.
The third: a writer named Hannah, who had been part of this for almost a year, left abruptly and for her own reasons, which I respected. It was a shock at the time—I won’t pretend otherwise. But people change direction; it’s the most natural thing there is. Her work is still in the archive, all of it, readable any time. Miss it if you want. I do, occasionally. Don’t make her absence a reason to write off everything that came after.
The fourth: too many ads. Traffic grows, servers cost real money, and the fantasy of running something like this on enthusiasm and a cheap shared host evaporates quickly when your audience keeps doubling. Revenue is how independent publishing survives without becoming someone else’s content farm. I’m careful about who I work with—I’d rather have one partner I respect than carpet-bomb every pixel with noise—but I’m not going to apologize for wanting this not to be a money-losing hobby.
What all four complaints share is a fantasy about what this place should be: smaller, quieter, frozen at some earlier version of itself. I understand the impulse—nostalgia is reliable and change is disorienting. But this notebook moves with me. It shifts because I shift. We fart, we fuck, we have opinions. We love things passionately and hate other things just as hard. If that’s too much, if you need something more curated and less alive, there are hundreds of calmer options waiting. I genuinely wish you well with them.