Editors on fire.

One of the reasons I got burned out on life for a while was that I took on a new client at the end of last year. Unlike the book and Internet publishers I've been editing for, this was a magazine.

Despite the fact that the magazine industry has been basically getting screwed by the Internet for the last 18-odd years, magazines still pay better than book publishers. Of course, the Internet by and large hasn't done book publishers a lot of good either. Well, I think I'll read this weighty tome about the Slavic independence movement and--- Oooh, puppy videos!

While book publishers tend to have pretty normal office hours, magazine publishers periodically go berserk. Closing an issue means late nights and grumpy editors and tense production people and Why isn't this ready didn't we already fix this dammit! 

I'm still a freelancer and I'm still working from home. So I'm not seeing all this. What I'm getting, around ten p.m., sitting around in my Bat Pants watching TV, is a call or an e-mail saying WOuld you look at thIs REALLLLLLLY fast PLEASE?

But that's only part of the problem with this gig.

Being a product of a media giant, the pages of this magazine drip with political correctness, "wokeness," and other bravado, sounding like a screaming mob of children playing Protest March. It has decided to make itself political although it is historically a fashion magazine, and in fact is no less vapid for its pretense of gravitas.

Of course I find this stuff difficult to endure, because I am a white straight male Catholic and as such am pretty much the target of everybody's hate these days. I probably own lots of assault rifles! As Megan McArdle wrote in the Washington Post, "Many places that voted for Trump never had many factories to lose to China or Mexico; many factory towns turned to Trump only after decades of decline. What most consistently motivates the Trump supporters I’ve met is not jobs or racism but anger at a culturally powerful elite that veers between ignoring them and disrespecting every facet of their lives." Some of the projects I've been given for this media giant make me complicit in the actions of this culturally powerful elite.

But that's not even the whole story. Just as I wrote about the site Cracked last year, this stuff is all so depressing. In trying to celebrate the plight of victims and bring out the readers' inner badass, such cultural projects set bars that are just as out of reach as the old ones, and just as oppressive to anyone who really isn't on board with their philosophy. To enjoy this magazine you had better hate Trump, hate conservatives, enjoy no more than a fluffy and non-demanding faith, and love every bonehead that manages to break the surface to achieve the rank of celebrity. Furthermore, you had better be young, successful, fit, love to travel, love to shop (and I mean really love to shop, although it's okay to say you don't), and have extremely sexy partner(s). Otherwise you might as well be a fat lump of trailer trash.

I can't help but think that, just as social media can isolate while giving the appearance of connection, so too do these things seem aspirational while actually being depressing. I know I'm not the target audience. But I am a human being.