By Well, I didn’t ever really think I’d write this!
Not that I was ever one to assume we’d fail; in fact, anything regrettable in our younger days was based around the fact that we carried ourselves as likely unearned final-word authorities. But Merry-Go-Round Magazine has turned 10, a whole decade old—old enough to be heading into the fourth grade. And when considering what to say for this, I am chuckling, reflecting on the fact that I don’t think I can say there was ever really much of a consistent plan to get here to begin with! It would probably be a more dramatically resonant retrospective if I were able to wax poetic on the inspiring guidelines and motivations that pushed us through to this point, but we kinda just… did it?
Now to be clear, you’ll notice I’m not suggesting it just happened; literal hundreds of people have worked hard on this and made it what it is over the past 10 years, often for free for a good portion of our history, and still for not much more than a couple of beers per article considering the humble earnings of our Patreon. But it’s no secret we’ve never really been strong on a mission statement, and while that probably, in all honesty, led to this never being much of a viable career path for anyone involved, it also in many ways led to us still standing all these years down the line.
I started this whole endeavor out of the simple fact that I found the conversations I was having with my friends in college about film, TV, music, and video games more interesting than anything I was reading in online media at the time. That’s a very senior year of college thing to think, and the first three years of the magazine under the name Crossfader were much more vitriolic, sophomoric, and snarky than the stuff Merry-Go-Round puts out now, but it’s also a very personal and passionate push behind an undertaking such as this—personal and passionate enough to keep the fire lit despite the innumerable obstacles facing anyone trying to get anything off the ground.
How are you going to make money? I don’t know.
Who’s going to do social media? Me, I guess?
Who’s going to read this? Hopefully my friends.
What’s going to happen when you graduate college and get real jobs? Uhhhhhhhhhh…
But it was the perfect storm of being at a certain age (21—oof, wow, that’s scary to type out) and having a singular, not entirely defined, just rawly horse-blinded desire to not really take any of those things to heart that allowed me to take an ambitious swing and just do it.
And we continued to just do it. While perhaps not the most elegant of philosophies, the fact that this was all only ever about wanting to uplift and highlight the writing of my peers—some of the most interesting writing that I continue to find to be out there—let us spread our wings. While after three years we began to feel as if we were in a position to pay people, I never really had much grand design to make money off this myself; CJ proudly shares this aversion to standard business tactics when it comes to Merry-Go-Round Magazine, and we continue to blow lots of our personal cash to keep this afloat because we can, and because while sometimes it’s admittedly not, most of the time it’s fun, and because it’s cool to see the Merry-Go-Round name on things, and because it’s rewarding to get writers in the fold that find their voice and go on to bigger and better things, and because if you don’t just do something, it doesn’t get done.
We’ve always wanted to just do it, not make money off ads, or short, succinct copy that SEO will like, or takes that are reverse-engineered from social media statistics; if that had been the path we’d chosen, we’d end up in the muck like the innumerable other publications with those intentions, more noise without a signal. The fact is, just kind of doing it because you like reading what your circle has to say serves us well; as more people share your opinion that your circle is full of fresh and exciting writers, your circle grows to include more of them. For five years I put my heart and soul into this because it felt more right to keep doing it than not, and as such, it was with definitive clarity that I was able to realize over the pandemic that it was no longer in me to just keep doing it to the degree necessary to keep it afloat. I knew there was only one other person who was more-or-less simpatico with my outlook: As of this week, CJ has been doing this longer than I have in terms of running the publication. Guess I had the right inkling in that regard.
Due to our mutual sense of, “I don’t know, what if we just kept doing it,” CJ and I still can’t really seem to set a distinct goal we’re trying to reach in a longer-term vision for Merry-Go-Round, or a clear, agreed-upon sign that it’s time to call curtains. But at our recent MGRM10 anniversary bash in Los Angeles, two things occurred that let me know we’re not totally out to lunch in terms of keeping this old horse kicking. To briefly explain what MGRM10 was if you are unaware, CJ busted his ass throwing together two nights of live music to celebrate 10 years around the sun, working hard for well over a year to make sure everything ran smoothly. This was very generous of him, and I myself had a great, largely relaxed weekend where I was able to stroll around, taking in just how far this little idea I had in an entirely different lifetime has come. It was one of the most heartwarming, uplifting experiences I’ve had in a year that’s been quite rough for me, and I’ll never forget how I felt staring at the disco ball on the ceiling while Wild Pink played, surrounded by some of my oldest friends and a hundred-plus strangers, almost in tears of gratitude and contentment.
CJ further busted his ass putting together a four-hour DJ set of songs from 2015 (largely structured around Carly Rae Jepsen’s EMOTION), complete with visualizer, to play for a dance afterparty that occurred after the main concert. It was a great time, and anyone affiliated with Merry-Go-Round spent the night happily dancing away on the stage and in the front of the dancefloor. But the general populace of Los Angeles… had some members that were less than thrilled, and poor CJ was accosted multiple times by people demanding he play things other than the songs possible between the clearly advertised goalposts of the music of 2015. With a good chunk of the entire concert crowd happily dancing away, joined by a solid amount of random passersthrough, it was surprising to hear the complaints of these people who were so firmly on a different page.
While 10 years ago this would have likely led me to be angry at these naysayers, in 2025 it just led me to realize that I’m happy that Merry-Go-Round ultimately created a like-minded community of people who celebrate something different, who are willing to stay on the ride for the promise of something exciting just around the corner, and who don’t immediately shy away from something challenging or complex (DJ Paypal and GARDEN OF DELETE were on the setlist). Those are viable skills to have in both life and media literacy. While as a senior in college my friends and I were certainly prone to a sort of savior complex regarding how we needed to bring good taste to the world, last Saturday it was more of a polite but steady desire to stick to the Merry-Go-Round script, showcase what we enjoy, and, well, just keep doing it. You’ll find your people, you’ll reach who you’re meant to, and a lot of people will be up on stage dancing to “Floridada.”
But thankfully, even if there were some sour grapes that loudly came off the vine, the dance afterparty was saved by one enterprising young woman finding her way to the booth to tell CJ she’d love to write for us. Upon hearing that a 2015 dance party was being thrown (largely structured around Carly Rae Jepsen’s EMOTION), she had rolled in of her own accord and was genuinely all-in with the music and vibe. Actually following up, she sent over a resume and writing samples the very next day; while a common-enough platitude for an introduction email, when she said she was excited by the event, the magazine, and had enjoyed reading through our frontpage, I believed her. I’m not really sure there’s more of a distinct sequence of events that proves this is still reaching people and worth doing than that.
I used to get more philosophical in the anniversary reflections I’d offer in the years I was running the show, but I think this is a pretty accurate reflection of where I’m at in my life, Merry-Go-Round or otherwise. At the end of the day, this is culture writing; right around the time of the switch from Crossfader to Merry-Go-Round, I came to the conclusion that this is never going to save the world and that there are ultimately more important things to get involved in right outside your door. That’s true now more than ever, but I would never be so foolish as to pretend that Merry-Go-Round still being here doesn’t matter. It’s good to seek out new things, and it’s good to maintain a sense of curiosity and engagement with the larger culture around you, and it’s good to think about what you consume, how you feel about it, and why. Maybe that initially seems superficial and reductive, but especially with an inescapable amount of tech-beholden dreck now being dumped into all aspects of our daily lives, these are tools that people are losing access to. Furthermore, I think as the two observances from the DJ set show, Merry-Go-Round and publications like it ultimately do mean something exciting and affirming to the right people, and it’s worth keeping the lighthouse on for as long as we can to find and support them. There is something to be said for establishing a network of people that are still doing what they can to find companionship and camaraderie in an ever-increasing sea of faceless, digitally-buffed monoculture. At one point I think we had the hopes of maybe one day beating ‘em, but with each passing day, it’s harder to shake the feeling that the battle has already been lost in that regard. But I think Merry-Go-Round’s still here because we’ll at least be damned if we join ‘em. So 10 years down the line, it’s both as simple and hard as just continuing to do it, same as it ever was.
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