Phetasy News - Thank You

Dumpster Fire 101 Live - Extremely Hardcore, Factory Settings 9 - Regret, Yasmine Mohammed On Fundamentalist Islam, Politically Homeless - No Happy Ending, and Limited Edition Phetasy Merch

Nov 25, 2022

Greetings from the Phetaverse!

It’s Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday—a holiday devoted to food, family, and gratitude. I’m grateful for so many things: my health and the health of my loved ones, Matilda, Jeren, and Hope, having a roof over my head, running water, coffee, Cousin Maggie, my family… the list could go on and on and on.

But this newsletter is dedicated to you, dear reader, because I don’t have a career as a writer and a podcaster without you. Maggie and I talk about the early days of Phetasy Inc. back in 2006. I would go to the backend of my website and look at the analytics. It would be exciting if I had two readers on something. TWO.

Now I regularly get thousands. The I Regret Being a Slut piece has 350,000 views. Walk-Ins Welcome has over 2 million all time downloads. Phetasy has thousands of subscribers and I’m making my living doing what I feel I was born to do. In a world of chasing analytics, it’s easy to take all of this for granted.

This kind of reach was unfathomable to me in the early days of writing columns and blogs. Some of my readers have been with me since the early days of Playboy. Some of you go back even further to my first writing gig—an in-print column I wrote for my hometown local newspaper. Writing is a weird gig. It’s so solitary and yet you’re doing it in the hopes that people read it, connect with it, share it.

I’m nothing without my readers and listeners. You inspire me daily. Glenn Beck gave me a piece of advice I’ll never forget. He said, “Never waste your audience’s time.” He’s right. Your time is a gift. It’s something that motivates me to work harder and produce content that is worthy of your attention. I’m truly grateful for all of you and hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving.