So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

The final goodbye from Justin.

Dec 31, 2024

by Justin R.

Well…this is it. The Big Goodbye. The Grand Finale. The Last “Adios.” After eight years of writing for The Banter née The Daily Banter, the time has come for me to bid you all, my beloved audience, farewell.

I have to say, this is a new experience for me. Most of the time when I leave a writing or editing job, I get fired. The now long-defunct (Ha-Ha!) Addicting Info fired almost half the staff, including me, for kind of, sort of unionizing in 2016. My first editing job fired me in 2019 after the SEC closed the place down for being a $100 million ponzi scheme (true story!). I lost my second editing job to AI a year ago. It’s been a vexing decade.

Ben Cohen, however, snatched me up right after Addicting Info dumped me. I had been reading TDB for years at that point, led there by Bob Cesca’s blog and the podcast he did with the late Chez Pazienza. I really liked The Daily Banter and it annoyed me that their FB page had so little traffic. Mine was significantly larger so I started pestering them to put their articles on my patch of social media real estate. Ben didn’t know who I was. None of them did. Despite this, I was…persistent, and eventually they started to post their Banter articles, probably just to shut me up. They picked up a nice bump in traffic and kept in touch with the weird stalker guy.

I didn’t ask for anything in return because that wasn’t why I was doing it. I certainly wasn’t looking for a job and I didn’t think I was good enough anyway. Who? Me? Write at the same place as Bob and Chez? Don’t be stupid. Bob was literally the reason I had started to write and Chez? Well, Chez was intimidating. If you’ve ever read his articles, you’ll understand.

Regardless of what I thought, Ben has an eye for talent (humblebrag) and even though I had been writing shitty clickbait for the rapidly downward spiraling AI, my earlier work was anything but. Presumably Ben had done his homework because god knows he wasn’t going by my contemporary stuff. This is how I found myself writing with Ben, the very talented Brit, Bob, my original inspiration, and Chez who was, as far as I was concerned, the reincarnation of Hunter S. Thompson.

Imposter syndrome does not begin to describe where I was mentally. Later, when Ben told me after Chez’s death that he really liked my work, I almost fainted. I never got over being on a podcast with Mr. Professional Radio Voice Cesca.

Still, I muddled through and honed my craft. I started to write longform articles again. Really longform, much to Ben’s eternal regret. When he told me I could write about literally anything I wanted, he probably did not anticipate 3,000 word odes to how awesome my kids are. You, my beloved audience, ate it up with a spoon so I guess I must have been doing something right.

It’s been eight years. We’ve talked about politics. We’ve raged about injustice together. You’ve watched Jordan and Anastasia grow up. You’ve seen me more or less adopt Lila and be adopted in return while struggling with what it means to be a surrogate father. You were with me as my family and I struggled through Covid together. I was there for you as you struggled through the same.

We fought against Trump for four years. We watched the press turn on democracy and sabotage Joe Biden for another four. We watched Kamala Harris run an amazing campaign only to see her fall to propaganda and the millions of very stupid people who swallowed it. Now we’re dusting ourselves off and getting up to fight for another four years against Trump, his enablers in the press, and the fascist tech bros backing him.

It’s going to be tough but we beat them once and we’ll fucking do it again. I, sadly, will be fighting the good fight elsewhere.

What comes next?

A year ago, when I realized I was almost certainly going to lose my editing job, I decided to start my own Substack newsletter, The Opinionated Ogre, because what else was I going to do? Get another editing job? And then be let go in six months when they inevitably turned to AI as well? No thank you.

I could look for another writing gig but it’s awkward writing for two places at once. I’ve tried it. It sucks. Also, no one in their right mind would give me the kind of freedom that Ben has. Jesus, I turned in an article about Supergirl once just to see if he would actually publish it and he did. This would be the first time Ben is hearing of this and is probably not amused. What’s he going to do? Fire me? Anyway!

I started up the newsletter more for something to do than to actually make a real go of it. Much to my surprise, it’s doing far better than I would have ever expected. That turned out to be really convenient because recent events have made my little side project really really important to me and my family. Which brings us to why I’m leaving The Banter in the first place.

There is a very real possibility that, after 16 years of being a stay-at-home parent whose financial responsibilities have been limited, things may change. The money I’ve made as a writer and editor has always been “earn some extra to help pay a few bills and put something on the side to go to the movies or maybe a small vacation.” Now I may have to make sure the rent is covered every month and that requires me to pursue my newsletter full time. Full time there means I will not be able to work part time here. Throughout the years, my job as a father has always come first and this is no different.

Change is unsettling. Trust me, I know. I’ve been dreaming a lot about working at my old jobs at Gamestop and KB Toys. Prior to my eight years at The Banter, those two are the places I worked the longest. I am, apparently, contemplating what it will be like to not work for anyone ever again. No deadlines. No one to answer to. Just me writing for…you. It’s both liberating and quite scary.

But we do what we have to and this is something I have to do. I hope you’ll join me at The Opinionated Ogre. I hope you’ll continue to follow The Banter. The legacy media is hopelessly compromised and we need every independent voice out there shouting as loudly as they can.

So this is not goodbye, this is just “See you soon.” Thank you for indulging me all these years, Banter peeps. Thank you for showing me the way, Bob. Thank you for inexplicably laughing at my jokes, Chez. Thank you for giving me a home and a place to grow as a writer, Ben.

And with that, the curtain closes, the lights go out, and I’m gone.

Adios.

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