Aftermath remains a humble mom ‘n’ pop ‘n’ two cats operation, but we have grand ambitions. Slowly but surely, we grow more powerful every day. Thanks to your subscriber dollars, for which we’re eternally grateful, we’re now able to welcome two new writers into our regular rotation. You might have heard of them.
Former (until, you guessed it, layoffs) The Verge reporter Ash Parrish and prolific freelancer Joshua Rivera will soon be contributing to Aftermath on a regular basis! Ash is gonna be blogging one day per week, and Joshua is the monthly columnist prophesied in our subscriber goals. Both have written excellent pieces for Aftermath before, if you’d like a sample of what’s to come. We couldn’t be more excited to have them wandering the labyrinthine halls of our headquarters, by which I mean Slack.
I cannot emphasize enough that your subscriptions made this all possible, just as they did when we brought on Isaiah and Nicole as regular contributors last year. However, in the interest of disclosure, I will now share with you some less thrilling news: Our budget is pretty much tapped! We have even grander long-term plans – for example, hiring people full-time across multiple disciplines (and doing so at a wage that’s actually livable) – but we’ll need a pretty big boost to realize them.
This is where you come in: Consider subscribing if you haven’t already! Or tell your friends! At 5,000 paying subscribers, there is still ample room for this beautiful baby website to grow. If even a small fraction of the over-100,000 who follow us on social media or who’ve signed up for our free newsletters subscribed tomorrow, we’d be set. As is, we’re doing our best, and regardless of what the future brings, we can promise you that we’ll continue to do so. Further, we recognize that times are tough. Any support you can give – even if that means only an email address – is nonetheless appreciated.
If you’d like to get to know Ash and Joshua better, you can listen to the latest episode of our weekly podcast, Aftermath Hours. We discuss our shared histories at Kotaku, as well as current beats and interests (ask Ash about monster fucking). Then we delve into the media landscape at large, which can’t even go a single week without, for example, The Washington Post laying off hundreds of people. Next our light and breezy conversation takes us to Epstein Island thanks to alleged communications with the convicted sex criminal from individuals in and around the world of games. Oh, we also talk about this week’s Nintendo Direct and Overwatch, which is no longer Overwatch 2, but is also not Overwatch 1.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can eventually buy The Washington Post.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Ash: Now I have been laid off for the first time in my adult life, and rather than freaking out knowing what the landscape is like – knowing that there’s a very good possibility I will never have a full-time job like the one I left again – I’m not really that worried about it. I’m fighting against things I can’t control, so I’m gonna do the things that are within my control. I know my work is good; people wouldn’t ask me for it if it wasn’t. So I have to find more of those people, and I think I’m gonna have to at least try to see if I have the strength to continue that. We’ll see.
It’s not good advice [to other writers who might be struggling]. You can’t eat that kind of advice. You can’t eat hope. Because it’s really cliche when people ask you “How do you do this when it’s all so bad?” and I’m like “You just have to keep doing it and hope.” That has to be your main fuel, because it’s not gonna come from anywhere else because it is so damn bleak. And if you don’t got it, you don’t got it. That’s fine. It sucks because that’s not really actionable. You just have to have it. But it is what it is. I hate saying that shit.
Nathan: Next Aftermath subscriber goal: a machine that dispenses edible hope.
Josh, what about you considering that you’ve been in the freelance realm for a while longer and have had to hop between those ice floes more regularly? What does that actually look like for you?
Joshua: It’s tough. When I left Polygon about a year and a half ago, it wasn’t quite starting over, but it felt a little bit like that. I was at Polygon three-ish, almost four years. Even that stretch of time, it felt like the scene had changed entirely. Even now, I feel like I’m figuring it out every day. I feel like quitting every day! It’s very much like Goku training at 100x gravity.
But I don’t know. For me it’s a sense of malcontent; I have this restless itch to say something – to figure things out and put out work that means something to people. That helps them understand the world and the things they engage with a little better. This feeling of being useful and being responsible with the platforms that I have in the time that I have them.
I don’t know how much longer that is. We’re seeing institutions collapse all around us, and we can only respond so quickly. Like, Aftermath has been growing to the point that y’all could bring me on for a monthly column, but to replace some of the outlets that we’re losing is gonna take a lot of work and time and investment. Every day I’m pretty conscious of the fact that I could be out of the game tomorrow, so what should I say today while I can? That’s kind of what I think about.
Which makes it sound like my work is a little more serious than it is. Sometimes I do find the value of being a fucking goober – and not letting them beat that out of me.
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Ash Parrish
