By Hello there!
Thomas here!
There’s a decent chance that if you’re reading this, you have no idea who I am. That’s awesome! It shows just how much Merry-Go-Round has grown and changed since I started it over eight years ago (yikes!). I got this thing off the ground with a group of my best friends in college—eight years down the line we’ve got contributors all over the globe, never mind the country, and if I crunched the numbers I believe I would find that I knew virtually none of our current regularly contributing base at the time I had a glint in my eye that July of 2015. I retired as Editor-in-Chief in the dog days of COVID, but I’ve still been here in the background the past few years, handling the MGRM taxes, paperwork, and copy editing. But because I’m a glutton for homework and tasks, I’m excited to announce that as of this posting I’m going to be getting my hands dirtier than they’ve been the past three years and revamping and overseeing the Patreon! Merry-Go-Round is still here, somehow, one way or another, but we do, in fact, need your support.
It may not seem like it during a particularly slow month for contributions or when life demands all attention elsewhere as everyone involved with this gets older, but we really have accomplished a lot in our very small corner of the online culture publication landscape. Our loose mission statement revolves around the fact that we’re an excellent platform for writers to get their start, and that’s true! Merry-Go-Round alum share bylines with publications you’ve heard of more and more, names like Pitchfork, Paste, Vulture, and Bandcamp, and in these trying times for the digital media landscape, it’s been nice to see Merry-Go-Round’s name included in lists of independent publications to support. Plus, on the site’s own merits, we’re established enough that we’ve gotten accredited at big-name events such as Cannes (Cannes! Our nascent film reviews in 2015 were copy-pasted from Letterboxd and last year we got accredited at CANNES???), our Editor-in-Chief busts his ass to throw concert events coast-to-coast, and the site itself continues to look and run very smoothly.
But I would be lying to deny that the past few times CJ and I have sat down to talk about it, the topic of whether or not to keep this thing running has come up. We are older, we are busier, we are at the point where we can admit that it’s never going to be anyone’s full-time job, and quite frankly, the amount of money we pull in (or lack thereof) necessitates a lot of personal financial contributions from CJ and I to keep the lights on. All money we’ve ever received goes towards mitigating those costs and paying our writers—the payouts are certainly more in the realm of “buying a drink during happy hour” as opposed to “paying rent,” but I said from day one of it becoming a possibility that Merry-Go-Round was going to become a “real company” that my only goal was to pay contributors in some way, shape, or form, and I am proud that we do. CJ and I have never seen a cent from this operation, and our wonderful editors Ted, Kevin, and Ian currently do the editing work for the love of the game as well.
That’s not to mention the writing is better than it ever has been before! Go click on an article! How about our recent list of the Top Films of 2023 to start? Or this excellent profile of an artist we love? Or this essential write-up of the LA premiere of Harmony Korine’s AGGRO DR1FT? I’m going to go ahead and say we’re worth your $2 – $10 a month to keep us in the game! We have pulled and scraped and stumbled and crawled our way this far, through a pandemic and personal and professional changes small and large, happy and sad, in the lives of our ownership, editing, and contributing base, and I would love to get some juice back in the carton and grow a community again, a community like the one that rallied around us when we relaunched as Merry-Go-Round back in November 2018.
And hey, a large part of why that community drifted apart is that we have not been good about maintaining the Patreon the past two years! We admit it! And I do apologize. So this is my own personal recommitment to you, dear reader, that I myself am going to do better by and for you. We’ve got new, revamped tiers:
$2 – You’ll get some stickers (including this fancy new Game Boy one) and have access to a monthly newsletter written by yours truly where I highlight articles that have appeared on the site
$5 – You’ll get the $2 Tier rewards, plus a bottle opener keychain, a beer koozie, and probably some other stuff I have lying around from previous merch packs. There are loose plans to get a podcast going again as well. If that comes together, you’ll get access to that too
$10 – You’ll get the $2 and $5 Tier rewards plus a gosh-darn CREWNECK
It should be noted, all of these items will be available via donation as well, for $10, $25, and $50, respectively. You can donate via the PayPal link at the bottom of this page!
It should be further noted that if you’re a current $10 Patron I’ll be contacting you about a crewneck. In general it might not be the most immediate, but I’m gonna be on the horn, I’m gonna be emailing Patrons checking in and sending you stuff, and if you feel we screwed you over or never delivered on what we promised, you go ahead and yell at me and I’ll make it right one way or another. Trust me! Take my hand! We want to keep doing this, we need your help, and I’m going to make sure it’s worth your while this time around.
I started Merry-Go-Round in what was practically another lifetime for me for a wide variety of reasons, and a few years ago I made the misty-eyed comparison to watching a kid go off to college and grow and mature away from you. I have read every article that’s appeared on the site in my various capacities over the years, and CJ has done a lot to raise the overall quality and expand the depth and breadth of the contributions and contributing base, in addition to what the Merry-Go-Round name is capable of, as I knew he would when I handed over the reins three-and-a-half years ago. I still believe in Merry-Go-Round. I still believe that there is a point to smashing your head against the wall of online publishing. I still believe that culture writing is valid and valuable, and discovering something new or thinking about something in a new way or having your own thoughts and beliefs challenged is worthwhile. I still believe that culture writing is fun! It’s writing, it’s allowed to be entertaining and quippy and engaging. And I still believe that we are among many publications that are worth your support.
Consider becoming a Patron or donating via PayPal to help those truths continue to hold.
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