Ok, I know McSweeney's has its problems and all...

Still seems to be basically the same dynamic where the web stuff is kind of stupid, but the actual magazine sometimes publishes great short fiction. I really enjoyed "Raw Water" by Wells Tower. Actually I always seem to like Wells Tower stories. Maybe I should get his book.

I stopped in to say "how did a thing that I remember as one of the best small-press literary magazines somehow turn into an extremely normie collection of Borowitz-level humor columns that you see other middle-aged people link to on Facebook," but looking at this thread, maybe this happened a long time ago?

I submitted a couple of things to the website circa 2000 or 2001 because it seemed like they were publishing a lot of short pieces that were just kind of random/quirky and frankly didn't seem all that hard to pull off (although mine weren't actually accepted). The website has always been very different from the magazine.

Like, I haven't read it in years, but I feel like the website's early days were animated by a spirit of "hey, it's the Internet, we can put up whatever weird stuff we like!" that was fun and novel at the time and has probably since calcified into a recognizable hackneyed style.

You are bringing me back to a time in my life when decorative gourd season motherfucker felt fresh

an extremely normie collection of Borowitz-level humor columns

Apt comparison in that a friend shared a “Fran Liebowitz’s Amazon Reviews” parody and people weighed in in the comments assuming it was real.