Iva Weidenkeller

Like most college-aged members of the millennial generation, I am in near-constant contact with either my phone or my laptop (and, as my ambidexterity grows, sometimes both at once…). Over the past few years, it has become my habit to browse the Internet whenever I have five or ten minutes to spare.

If you were to add up all of my 5 minute “study breaks” over, say, the course of a week, it would likely account for a pretty solid chunk of time. But just where is the bulk of that time being spent? Sure, I’m no stranger to Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, but since coming to college I have discovered the endlessly fascinating yet inescapable time warp that is Thought Catalog.

First brought to life in 2010, Thought Catalog is a digital magazine featuring millennial-aged writers of all kinds. The website itself is simple and unflashy, little more than a plain white background featuring links to the most recent contributions. These “Thoughts” are posted in chronological order, 5 per page, with each link showcasing the author, publication date, title of the piece, a 1-2 sentence snippet meant to grab a potential reader’s attention, and a related picture.

When I started reading Thought Catalog in 2010, I could expect to see anywhere from 2-10 new posts a day. I was able to keep pace reasonably well, reading most “articles” the day they debuted. Occasionally a day or two would even go by without anything new. In the 3+ years since that time, the site has grown by leaps and bounds—earlier this month they boasted no fewer than 65 new contributor posts in one day. At the moment that I write this, there are 3,499 pages’ worth of posts, which amounts to nearly 17,500 different Thoughts. Wow!

In terms of content, I admit that Thought Catalog is a mixed bag. For every stellar submission I read, there are 10 that are some combination of bizarre, offensive, boring, or just plain ridiculous. Most of the Thoughts are in the form of personal essays or lists—some of which include things like video clips or external links—and they can typically be classified into one of two categories: (1) expressing an opinion or (2) giving advice. Some of the posts are humorous (The “Inner Monologue of Bo Obama”; “An Interview with Paris Hilton’s Twitter”), some are uplifting or empowering (“Stop Being Afraid of Happiness”; “6 Things To Know For When You Don’t ‘Just Know’”), some are informative (“How to Buy a Fake Passport”; “The 11 Most Fabulous Beyoncé Moments of All Time”), and some are downright ridiculous (“This Livestream of a Parrot Doing Parrot Things is Disturbing and Wonderful”; “A Letter to the Three And A Half Pairs of Sexy Underwear I Own”).

As stated on their website, the owners of Thought Catalog have 5 central ideals:

Thought Catalog should be fun, smart, and creative, i.e. entertaining, journalistic, and literary.
The site should be beautiful and clutter-free.
We believe all thinking is relevant and strive for a value-neutral editorial policy governed by openness. The more worldviews and rhetorical styles on the site, the better. We want to tell all sides of the story.
We’re about today. But our mission is also archival. We want to catalog the times for tomorrow.
We want to help shape the culture by empowering you to share your ideas and stories with the world.

Out of these 5 basic tenets comes a website full of pleas, confessions, admonitions, tirades, satires, and tongue-in-cheek assessments of current events and cultural phenomena. And while I’m not sure to what degree I can legitimately argue for its journalistic or literary merit, Thought Catalog is certainly clutter-free, creative, fun, and entertaining. The pieces I find on Thought Catalog are perfectly formatted for a five-minute foray into reading and, weird Thoughts aside, I’ve come across some wonderful writing there. I appreciate that many of the lists and essays speak with candor and honesty to my experiences as a 20-something in contemporary America.

What’s your take? If you’re already familiar with Thought Catalog, have you ever read anything there that you really, really liked (or really, really didn’t)? Are there other digital magazines that you’re a fan of? How do you think websites like this one will affect the future of publishing? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

From music to poetry and prose, the practice of artists sampling other artists’ work is nothing new.

Shrek(1)

When a song tops the Billboard charts, it is only a matter of time before it gets chewed up and spat back out in some variant form. The Monkees’ 1966 number one hit “I’m a Believer” was given new life in Smash Mouth’s early-2000’s rendition, featured in the movie Shrek. (I’m ashamed to say that for a long time I was unaware that this wasn’t originally Smash Mouth’s song). In 2009, American rapper Flo Rida produced his number one single “Right Round,” which was more than loosely based on the 80’s pop hit “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by the British group Dead or Alive.

Similarly, popular books are often rewritten in various iterations. The old adage “if you build it, they will come” is never more true than in the case of literary franchises—if there is money to be made or fame to be had, there will be someone willing to make a remix or parody of a written work.

As explained by Chauncey Baker in a previous Snopes blog post, literary pastiche sometimes takes the form of “fan fiction.” Popular books are given new life, thereby generating new sales; the Twilight series becomes Fifty Shades of Grey one, two, and three, as well as Nightlight: A Parody, New Moan, etc. In a quest to fill the ever-expanding “paranormal romance” genre (aka vampire novels), Wuthering Heights becomes Wuthering Bites and Jane Eyre becomes Jane Slayre.

Beyond basic fan fiction, however, and more interesting still (in my opinion) are parodies of parodies. Itself a parody, Fifty Shades of Grey has morphed into its own franchise and spun in a multitude of directions, including Fifty Shades of Mr. Darcy, Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey, Fifty Shades of Pink (complete with sparkles and unicorns!), A Coupla Shades of Taupe, and—my personal favorite—Fifty Shades of Chicken (a cookbook). Many of these seem to me like they’d be a stretch, at best…realistically, how big could the market for these books be? And yet no one would write them if the readers weren’t out there.

Why are we, as readers, so drawn to works that closely imitate other works? Do we value parodies as literary works in their own right? Or are we merely creatures of habit who are more comfortable with tried-and-true plotlines than original compositions? More to the point: is it even possible to still compose a truly original composition, or have all the “good ideas” been used up? Although parodies seem to catch a lot of flak (in spite of its shocking success, you’re apt to hear at least 5 people criticizing Fifty Shades for every one person who likes it), they also carry an undeniable appeal. Personally, I love a good parody. Last year, I bought my nephew Goodnight Moon…along with the more contemporary version, Goodnight iPad for Christmas. My brother and sister-in-law have also introduced me to Go the F**k to Sleep, a charming and hilarious just-for-adults parody of a typical children’s bedtime story. I am even the proud owner of a parody volume entitled Twitterature, in which literary classics (think Shakespeare, Salinger, Byron, Dostoyevsky) are told in a series of twenty (or fewer) tweets, each under 140 characters.

I’d love to hear your thoughts regarding any of the parodies above, or even parodies in general. Do you love literary parodies, or do you love to hate them? Do you have a favorite? Leave a response in the comments below!

The Rise of Digital Magazines

Fan Fiction and Parody