An Announcement From Jason 'David Wong' Pargin (He Does Not Die At The End)
Hi, I'm Jason "David Wong" Pargin, writer of somewhat beloved Cracked columns like 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person and How Half Of American Lost Its Fucking Mind. I've been serving as the Executive Editor at Cracked and, after twelve and a half years, I am peacefully and willingly moving on. I have some sappy parting words below, but if you want to keep up with me and my work you can find me on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook. You can also pre-order my upcoming book right here. I'm not hard to find. I also intend to keep turning up here every now and then to write and talk about, well, anything other than the goddamned election because, man, I just can't.
I'm confident I'm leaving the site in good shape. The team has some ambitious goals to make Cracked bigger and sexier and that is, in fact, why I feel comfortable letting someone else take the wheel while I gracefully dive out the window. This is one of the most capable and enthusiastic teams on the internet and they're going to be growing, if all goes according to plan. I fully believe the world will always need what this site has to offer -- a voice that's smart but not jaded, irreverent but not bitter.
But it is, without question, time to move on. Past time, some would argue. My brain feels like a car engine that burst into flame and then was driven another thousand miles at full throttle because I kept thinking the wind would put the fire out. Then, when that didn't work, I tried pulling over and pissing on it. By my rough estimate, I've written, edited or reviewed something like 65 million words of content and pitches here. All of my childhood memories have been replaced by trivia and digits. Time is a blur. Readers who were in kindergarten when I started this job now have grandchildren of their own. If you told me "covfefe" happened fifteen years ago, I'd believe you.
The stats say that a lot of our traffic is brand new to the site (welcome!) and I realize that means a lot of people reading this have no idea who the hell I am or why I get a whole special goodbye post. I won't bore you with the details -- basically, this site was the result of a 2007 merger between the old Cracked magazine and a website I had been running since 1999. So this is the end of a twenty year-long journey for me, during which Cracked has grown and evolved to the point that most people won't notice anything has changed once I move on (already I was creating or editing only a fraction of what goes up on the front page).
For those of you who are old fans, this may seem out of the blue, but it isn't for me. This a super long time to stay in a single job in media and it's an even longer time to try to work two jobs (I'm under contract for at least one more novel after the one I linked above, and have other related stuff looming that I can't talk about yet -- I will remain very, very busy). And, again, I intend to write columns for the site and show up on the podcast when I can, which will make this post seem even more pretentious than it already is. It's like when an athlete announces their retirement and does a whole goodbye tour, then decides to play another year.
I want to say thank you to my bosses and co-workers past and present, along with the hundreds of freelance writers I've worked with over the years, the millions of readers, the thousands of fans who've messaged me with support, the dozens of old forum moderators (including the ones I banned), the other employees at the three different companies who've owned this site who all mostly tolerated me and, most of all, former EIC Jack O'Brien for plucking me out of obscurity during the final years of the Bush administration to work my dream job. It may not have always been apparent, but I really was doing my best. Here's all of my various contact links again:
All right. I'm going to go lie down.
-Jason
