It’s been a whole year since we launched this misandrist humo(u)r blog aimed chiefly at women who work as rare book librarians, and here we are! Let’s talk about learning, and growing, and how our second year will see us finally convince Brittney Griner to be Mallory’s girlfriend.
Mallory: It is remarkable to think that a year has passed! Years always do, of course, in a strictly accurate sense the fact that a year has passed since The Toast went live is perhaps the least surprising thing that could have happened. But it is remarkable that a year has passed, and we have had a good time, and found a delightful audience, and made money, and in general achieved a degree of success. Particularly since the path that led us here was so ridiculous! We met because I commented every day on a blog you worked at instead of doing my actual job. Then you bought me a plane ticket to come to Utah. Then a stranger that neither of us have ever met offered me money, unsolicited, if I ever felt like starting a website, and I thanked him but turned him down. Then you and I decided we would start a site and took some of his money after all, and also some of yours, and just…made a website. Do you remember how much I’d writhe when someone asked me what the site was going to be about? I was not a natural businessman. “It’s…shut up, it’s going to be great. Just read it.” What I’m trying to say, I think, is that success was not guaranteed. When did you first start to feel like what we were doing was really working?
Nicole: I remember the EXACT DATE, it was August 30th. (And, of course, this was all before we got Maria, our tech goth [<3 u, Maria], so I was literally trying to physically hold the site together with duct tape and Knowing A Lot About The Mitfords, a time I have basically blocked out.) But it was starting out as a terrible morning, because Seamus Heaney died, which none of us were ready for, really, and then someone emailed me to say that Ta-Nehisi Coates had written a WHOLE THING about how much he liked the site, and I read it, and I literally cried. I sat there, a) bummed about Seamus Heaney, and b) just overwhelmed with gratitude that someone I admire so much liked our site, and after that, whenever shit broke or I thought “hm, today was not our strongest day,” I would think to myself Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks you’re alllllll right, and that helped. Oh, God, does that mean the answer to your question is actually MALE APPROVAL? Did I realize our site was starting to work after we received MALE APPROVAL. Shut it down.
No, really, though, it’s been the best, the absolute best. I know this conversation is invariably going to become a circle jerk about our friendship, but I have to say it: working with you has been a blissful dream. We basically never disagree, and I also feel like I have become so much more confident as THE DECIDER in the process. I have sent at least six crisp emails in the past year, a thing I believed to be impossible, usually because you have said “you have to send this email, because if I send it, I’m going to say TERRIBLE THINGS.” And the content you bring is so prolific and so great, and my favourite thing to read every day, and I’m just really grateful to have you, and Nick, and Maria.
Okay, what do you think you’ve learned? “Not a thing, I was already perfect” is an acceptable answer.
Mallory: I don’t think it’s a circle jerk if it’s only two people. And your crisp emails are wonderful. The only thing I love more than watching you finally send a crisp email is when you LET ME OFF THE LEASH like you did last week and I got to really use my teeth and claws.
I mean, I feel unbelievably lucky to have found you as a creative and a business partner, because I love and respect you more the longer I work with you, which I think is sort of rare. It’s remarkable to me, the more I think about it, that you and I (and Nick and Maria) have formed a stronger partnership over time, when you think of all the things that could have gone wrong. We’ve still never met Nick! He could have easily turned out to be any number of things. We were lucky he turned out to be reliable, and a great publisher, and a constant advocate, and a lovely cherub of a handsome lawyer. We’re lucky I never flaked out or took another job, and we’re lucky the site didn’t just sort of…vaguely exist without ever finding its home. That was a real worry that we had at first, that The Toast would appeal to about six people perfectly and no one else in the world.
Nicole: YEAH! I agree! I think it helps that we try to check in just as much now, even though we almost always know how the other person will feel about something. My aunt and I were talking about her time running a women’s shelter in the early 1980s (soon to be a post!) and she said that attempting to actually structure themselves as a collective drove men CRAZY, they could not handle it, government agencies literally refused to accept that there wasn’t a Person In Charge, but they found it to be a perfectly suitable way to conduct their organization, and I think that the fact that neither of us is in charge of the other has worked out really well. But, like when you said that I let you off the leash, we both clearly know when we want the sign-off of the other to do something ridic.
Okay, what have I learned? Something I’ve learned is how I feel about moderating comments! As you know, we’ve basically never deleted a comment, because if someone goes to the trouble of actually making a commenting account, they tend not to be hosebeasts, but I delete pending comments from guest accounts with regularity, and I love it. I LOVE IT. I find it very fulfilling! Sometimes things that are super trollish, sometimes things that are just: “this post from five months ago about racism…is that described experience REALLY racist?” and sometimes, oh, man, my favourite thing: dudes telling us we don’t really “get” Ayn Rand. Sometimes just comments by men on days when I feel like I’ve heard enough male opinions!
And, you know, it’s a joy. It really is. And I’ve begun to see it as a service I provide to our writers, as well. When someone writes about their sexual assault, or their life as a POC, or as a trans* woman, I have paid them a small amount of money to do so because I value their words and perspective, and theirs is the writing I have chosen to have on my site. I have not chosen to have some TERF show up and explain to us that trans* women are just dudes trying to invade female spaces. So I feel like we don’t have to waste a bunch of time having those conversations.
Mallory: lol TERFs can suck a butt (TERFs, if you are fortunate enough not to be familiar with the term, are TRANS-EXCLUSIONARY RADICAL FEMINISTS, which, what a mouthful and what a hill to die on!)
Nicole: Nor, and I really enjoy this, do we have that one guy (most women’s sites wind up with one) who serves as our reliable devil’s advocate figure. Because I don’t care to have one. We have no vacancy, Male Devil’s Advocate Figure. And I think that we wind up getting some really great pieces BECAUSE writers know that if people want to say offensive, dumb shit about them, they won’t get to do it here. They’ll have to start a Tumblr, which is no work whatsoever, but apparently just ENOUGH work that trolls will have three comments deleted from pending and then just give up instead. I don’t know how writers write for places with completely free commenting environments. The world is full of garbage opinions, but I ain’t hosting them.
Mallory: Yeah, I mean, I definitely don’t think about the comments as much — which is a bit odd, maybe, given that I began my writing career as a blog commenter. It’s fun when people have a good time in them, and if someone’s going to be a butt, I want them to go away. I don’t have time to think about it, I need to write a fiftieth piece about Ronbledore.
You know my sister told me the other day I write about Ronbledore too much and that I need to let it go? Where the hell does she get off?
Nicole: WHAT. No, write about him every day. Life is beautiful. Time marches on. What are your goals for next year?
Mallory: OOOH. I feel like we should have had this conversation in private first. I definitely know there are some areas of coverage I feel like I want to move away/move on from, and some topics I’d like to see us cover more. Nothing enormous, maybe a 10% shift in both directions. That’s a terrible…you can’t move 10 percent in two separate directions.
Ideally, in the next year, I would love to find a perfect next hire. It isn’t a pressing matter, so I want us to take our time, and I want us to make enough profit that we can offer a reasonable, respectable salary. And I want to find someone who’s prolific and smart (maybe in a slightly different way than you and I are smart, maybe fewer Lucy Maud Montgomery jokes and more jokes about the history of unions in LA or public policy) and funny and knows how to balance joy with, like, COSMIC FEMALE MALICE, and who doesn’t necessarily live in New York City.
I would like to continue having fun, and continue working with you, and to write new and different and pleasing things that aren’t all just reactions to the news you saw on four other blogs that same day and also on Twitter. And I want to start getting massive offers to buy us out from plutocrats.
Nicole: Okay! So, we each decided to pick and re-run our favourite piece written by the other editor, as well as a favourite freelancer post for the year, which wasn’t AT ALL daunting.
I….have to go with “Why I Am Leaving New York City” (spoiler: it’s all the wizards.) I literally cannot hope to describe how strongly I feel about this piece. The part about the pigeons is actually the funniest thing that’s ever happened. It’ll be up at 10am EST.
And, for my freelancer post, I’ve decided to go with Caitlin Keefe Moran’s depressingly timely story of working as an abortion clinic escort, because it was wise and kind and open and a little bit funny. It’ll be up at noon.
What about you, Mallory?
Mallory: I was torn, because part of me wanted to rerun your JSTOR sponsored post, because it was so funny, but then I was worried it would seem like an attempt to run another ad. But I had to go with your first Benedict Cumberbatch fan fiction, and your CRTC-Approved Pornography Scenarios, because those two things together make you.
I could spend hours paralyzed over which freelancer post to run, because there are so many wonderful options, but I’m going with Shing Yin Khor’s “What Would Yellow Ranger Do?” because it’s got drawings and Power Rangers in it.
Nicole: Okay, let’s go do jack shit for the rest of the day. And give them an open thread at 2pm EST. Maybe sprinkle in some extra blasts from the past as we go. I love you, man. You complete me.
Beautiful, moving visual reinterpretation of the Footprints story courtesy of Matt “Ofjaya” Lubchansky.
Tags: meta, nicmall, nicole and mallory, what nicole and mallory did this year
Thank you for creating this incredible place. I feel very lucky that it exists.
Also, you could write a thousand Ronbledore pieces and they would still be only scratching the surface of this vast and shadowy conspiracy.
Thank you both (and Nick and Maria) for a wonderful website and creating such a hilarious, fun place to read and to comment. You are all lovely and wonderful and I love to read the things you write and post and comment about. Thank you for creating a place to talk about important issues without totally safe-spacing-out any real conversations, but moderating enough that nothing falls to pieces. (Also not having Your Local Male Devil’s Advocate is so refreshing.)
I look forward to the next year, the next hire (!!!!! EXCITING!), and all the other amazing things you will no doubt publish. Enjoy your day off, guys!
ALSO, let’s all discuss what our favourite Toast articles and stories have been over ONE WHOLE YEAR!
Favorite Toast posts! I think this was my first introduction to the glory that is Mallory: http://the-toast.net/2013/08/22/a-day-in-the-life…
For that reason, I love it, and also for this reason:
“Fuck, he thought, then shit. Also he thought the word cunt. Because he could think whatever he wanted, and what he wanted to think about was swears.”
There are just SO many things but also:
A Day in the Life of Dr. Oz http://the-toast.net/2013/07/05/a-day-in-the-life…
Everything about Dad Magazine: http://the-toast.net/category/dads/
All of Mallory’s monk discussions and art digressions
Every L.M Montgomery post ever (NEVER STOP WITH THIS NICOLE)
Dirtbag Hamlet
This epic thing that I still laugh till I cry reading http://the-toast.net/2014/04/25/fake-lines-from-g…
After the war everything is different: http://the-toast.net/2014/02/11/after-the-war-eve…
GUYS I HAVE TO STOP AND ACTUALLY DO WORK NOW BUT I DON’T WANT TO
Even so, co-human. Even so.
I have to go press my white pants suit now.
There are so many to choose from, but the Antihero is just so exquisitely funny; I always love this bit for some reason:
“He had on like sixteen skinny ties or a fucking cloak and shield and whatever.”
I’m at work so I can’t spend five hours sifting through the Toast archives (but damn I want to!), but one non-NicMall post that I absolutely loved was Zak Smith’s thoughts on Rocket Cats:
http://the-toast.net/2014/06/05/german-rocket-cat…
“War is not concerned primarily with the diminishment and damaging of men–it is concerned with the diminishment of their will. And cats are inimical to all human will, especially just after being shot in the air with rockets. Plus remember like 30% of war at that point was just freaking horses out.”
Rocket Cats is astonishingly wonderful. It should be a genre-founding piece.
Rocket cats!
That one and MacGyver Gets His Period are my absolute faves.
OMG MacGyver! Bliss.
Troubled Male Antihero is my favorite too. It’s so much easier to just show it to people when they ask “why don’t you want to watch Sons of Anarchy/The Sopranos/every other show in existence?”
If you have a chance/follow her, check out Figwiggin’s twitter! She’s been collecting favourites there too.
There are just so many – Food Trolling, Hey Ladies, all the fiction and poetry, Art with Monks, Trains are Wonderful and People are Garbage, Mallory getting stuck in New Mexico…
The one that finally got me to start commenting was the one where we made every song about cats, so I think that’s probably my favorite. Also any time the monks show up I laugh until I cry.
This was the first thing I ever read on The Toast, and I think it’s actually how I found the site. I had been on a roll scouring the internet for good feminist articles about women’s experiences with gaming, and this gem popped up:
http://the-toast.net/2013/10/15/male-gamers/
The moment I realized that it was the most beautifully written satire I’d ever read; I knew. I found the site whom my soul loves.
My absolute favorite is still Male Novelist Jokes, but an underrated one that I still randomly laugh at is Jaya and Matt’s rejected posts column. I enjoyed the week they took over and I still want to read all of rejected ideas posts. The picture of Matt with a fedora and vest still kills me.
http://the-toast.net/2014/03/21/rejects/
Now that you mention takeovers, the week that Samantha Powell was here was really great. She has so many important things to say, plus her writing is exquisite. (Wouldn’t mind seeing her on staff AT ALL.)
I loved the rejected posts column, and the whole week that Jaya and Matt took over. However, I am still waiting for my Prince as a dolphin t-shirt which I absolutely and totally need in my life (even though my Dirtbag Hamlet shirt makes my heart sing).
(Also not having Your Local Male Devil’s Advocate is so refreshing.)
I had never before realized the ubiquity of This Thing until I read that line and immediately thought of all the ones Pandagon has been home to over the years (to be fair, Pandagonians like their punching bags male, devil’s advocacy-cy, and pathetic).
Impossible to pick a favorite but I will admit that “big hair, no heart, that’s the key” has enter the daily lexicon of me and a few of my friends.
Ahh, I do think about the furious bitches a lot.
I have to give props to the Link Roundups that Nicole so brilliantly curates every day. She shows me the way to internet content that is thought-provoking, intensely moving, and rage-inducing that I would otherwise likely miss, and I love her for it.
My favorite is “Who’s Getting Murdered in Patek Philippe Ads?” http://the-toast.net/2013/12/09/you-never-own-any…
It made my dad and brother diehard Mallory fans, and sometimes I read and belly laugh silently by myself. Me and my brother were extremely concerned about “winter’s searing kiss” this past polar vortex.
The one that made me laugh most hysterically was “A Linguist Explains the Rules of Summoning Benedict Cumberbatch.” I hadn’t even started watching Sherlock at the time and barely knew who Bendandsnap Calldispatch was, and yet every single comment was a like a gold nugget of hilarity.
Yes, I loved all the linguistics posts! The one describing ‘Can Even’ I like a lot.
Misandrist lullabies, all of them, but especially this one:
Did you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Did you know the muffin man,
Who lived in Drury Lane?
All his properties and possessions are yours now,
You are the muffin woman,
You live on Drury Lane.
I have a deep fondness for
Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
Let me taste your ware.
Simon was arrested for traveling alone,
The pieman was a Woman in disguise.
Men are not permitted in fairs.
It is forbidden for a man to eat pie.
Oh my gosh, what you said, exactly! (And I’m so ashamed of my long ago “devil’s advocate” comment; please forgive me, Toasties, I knew not what my left hand was doing but have, since then, learned well.)
Too many favourite Toast articles to list, but perhaps the most important one to me didn’t appear on the The Toast at all. It was Nicole’s “The Horse, Explained” that I read on The Hairpin. I absolutely adored that post, pure and simple, and that, in turn, led me here.
God, I love this site; I just can’t express it enough, seriously. Happy Birthday, Toast; long may she reign!
http://the-toast.net/2013/10/22/your-spirit-anima…
Still makes me laugh.
I loved “The Eleven Worst Plants” so much. SO MUCH. I’m a botanist, and lots of people think of plants as lovely background stuff or as pretty flowers. It’s nice to see concentrated emotion directed at them – the hatred! So refreshing! http://the-toast.net/2014/01/21/eleven-worst-plan…
I cannot pick a favorite but I am deeply attached to the first appearance of Dad Magazine and the comments that followed. I love you people.
…how to balance joy with, like, COSMIC FEMALE MALICE…
But, at times, joy is COSMIC FEMALE MALICE. And we love you both for promoting them in our lives. 😉
I love The Toast! I can’t tell you what it means to me that this site exists when on a daily basis the rest of the internet disappoints my soul. I know I don’t comment much/often/at all, but the community here gives me hope for humanity. Thank you!!
I truly love your website! I have been commenting much less since I got a new job, but the Toast remains my favorite Feedly subscription. Congrats, you two!
If I knew how to post gifs, I’d post a gif right now of Whitney Houston singing “And I will always love youuuu” because it’s true re: this website and all its proprietors and also because I have a hard time expressing myself in words now that gifs exist.
Here’s how: < img src=”http://yoururl.com/blahblah.gif” >
Just take out the spaces after and before the “<” and “>”!
I LOVE YOU TOO.
ONE YEAR i can’t believe it. The Toast is the best reading material that’s ever happened to me NEVER STOP NEVER SURRENDER
Thanks to you both as well as Nick and Maria for making and keeping this site going day in and day out. This is the first website I’ve felt comfortable talking about IRL to others on a regular basis, and I do love the overall community we have here.
On a deeply personal note, it was deeply gratifying to be published here as well, as it made me feel like I had something that was worth saying and that people actually cared to hear. I can’t really underline how important that was to me. I’ve always written things like everyone else (essays, papers, internet comments, livejournals) but the whole experience of pitching/edits/responses/publishing is very new to me. So thank you both for the opportunities to do so!
P.S. I do talk about both Nicole and Mallory to my husband as if we know them in real life, which might be really weird if.. I didn’t know some of you Toasties did the same thing. 😉
Being published was a wonderfully heady experience, each and every time. The Toast is really a joy to write for.
Also I totally talk about them too like they are my real-life friends. I start a lot of sentences with “So on the Toast today…”
I am absolutely guilty of talking about the Toast every day and I don’t regret a second of it.
I was at a party a couple weeks ago and MULTIPLE TIMES someone started a sentence with “Did you see the thing on The Toast about…”
And my response was always “yes. YES I DID.”
I need to party with the people you party with. Clearly.
I have started referring to ‘my toastie friends’. All of the commenters I speak to regularly, here and on twitter.
It’s been an honor to have been published here. And it’s a joy to comment here, and to have made a whole batch of new Toastie friends.
Wait, you’ve never met Nick in person??
Also going to add my voice to the chorus of THANK YOU because this is the first place since the OhNoTheyDidn’t_AmericanIdolSeason8 LJ community went defunct (and second place ever, really) that I’ve felt really and truly home on the internet.
Oh no, I’m a “guest”! Please don’t let me drown in the queue.
Your content here is so consistently excellent. After nearly a year of reading great links when people sent them to me I finally loaded y’all in my RSS reader and it’s been the best.
Yes, that is how I started reading the Toast regularly. Except in my case it was one person; my sister was always sending me links to great articles with comments that were always hilarious and wonderful. I started reading regularly for the commenters just as much as the excellent content.
I love this website more every single day, I think I must visit the homepage 20+ times a day just to make sure I haven’t missed anything! Thank you wonderful Toast team for making such a wonderful place.
I feel a bit foolish, because I had this strange assumption that trolls/buttheads just didn’t post on Toast articles, and that the Toast commentariat were just all perfect and articulate.
Now that I’ve read this I realise I am a total numbnutt, and so I would like to say thank you in particular for your amazing moderating skills. Reading comments on The Toast is so much fun, and whenever I recommend articles to people and say ‘don’t forget to read the comments – they’re great!’ people look at me like I’m crazy (as we all know you should never read internet comments) and I have to say ‘seriously, The Toast is different’, so they can all be charmed by your wonderfulness. I’m rambling but basically thank you so much for your awesome moderation of comments; The Toast is truly a wonderful community.
I also was somehow assuming that The Toast just naturally had an amazing commentariat and somehow all the horrible people who post elsewhere never came here. But of course it is because there is strict moderation, and thank you for that!!
“The world is full of garbage opinions, but I ain’t hosting them.”
Thank you! Thank you! Thankyou! Sure, fine, everyone has a right to have an opinion, but not to SHARE their ignorant opinions with everyone. We don’t need to hear and entertain it!
I feel like it’s been far longer than a year! In a good way! Because I can’t imagine what I did with my internet time before The Toast. There are such consistently amazing pieces published here that I feel like I’m just constantly talking about it. I’m sure all my friends and family think I’m in some carb-based cult. Which, yeah, I would probably join that too. But thank you so much for the wonderful year!
I’m sure all my friends and family think I’m in some carb-based cult.
love this
Listen I will join that actual carb-based cult with you because if there’s one thing I love as much as the-toast, it’s ACTUAL TOAST. I’ll bring the avocadoes.
My perfect day is eating a piece of toast spread with salted French butter while reading The Toast.
Carb-based cult you say???? What ramshackle pay phone do we meet at to be spirited away to its undisclosed location?
I am so joining.
Happy anniversary, guys!!! 🙂 So grateful for this site.
These things have already been said, but 1. thank you thank you thank you and 2. HOW have you both never met Nick?!
This website is my favorite place, and it has taught me so much over the past year. I would truly be a less-informed, more-tunnel-vision-ed person if it wasn’t for all of the wonderful things I read here. (Clearly all of the excellent, articulate, descriptive writing has not rubbed off on me.)
P.S. The writers/editors-not-living-in-NYC thing may seem minor but is greatly appreciated.
Seriously, seconded on all of this but especially the note on featuring people who don’t live in NYC. I was once told that I had to live in NYC or DC if I wanted to be a Successful Feminist Writer on the Internet. At the time I heard it, this was really what I wanted to do, and it was a disheartening thing to hear. I love that y’all actively work against that mindset.
YES. It is so wonderful to have a non-NYC-centered website and editors. While I’m sure New York is wonderful, there is a very big wide world out there and getting content from everywhere else is lovely.
I live in NYC and I think it’s wonderful to get content from beyond city limits. I read enough about this city, and (one of the many, many reasons that) I like having the Toast around to break up how myopic the internet can get.
Word! (from Chicago)
I specifically love all the Canadian content here, it just warms my cold, cold heart.
Just chiming in to say I love you Toast!
Thanks, Nicole and Mallory – I hope it comes through how fervently and deeply those words are said. Thanks for this diverse, hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking collection of work and your commitment to keeping a vibrant community.
I didn’t realize this at the time (because one never does) but The Toast really got me through a very difficult time in my life. I had relocated to a city where I knew no one but my partner and my parents and I was telecommuting to a job that (mostly) paid the bills but was utterly soulless and boring.
Reading The Toast every day gave me something to look forward to. It made (and continues to make) me laugh. It was and is a place that takes on serious, important issues around social justice and class and identity and religion and also throws in some Dirtbags once and a while. I cannot stress enough how crucial this is to my life.
Most importantly, the Toasties have provided me a community when I had none. It’s a remarkable commenting space and Toastie Twitter is the best ever.
Thank you so much for everything, Mallory, Nicole, Nick, and Maria.
I cannot agree more. I don’t know what I would have done without the Toast – this website and its community have changed my life.
Me too.
This place is the best – we’re all friends here! I love it! Thank you to all the Toast authors and to Mallory and Nicole and all the commenters, because you have taught me so much about how to be good.
Favorite piece of alllll time? That’s a really hard question, but I think my heart knows the answer: LIBERAL DUDE EROTICA
I hope that someone sent that to the hockey-stick-weilding-selfie-genius gal from yesterday.
Happy anniversary! Thank you for letting me a part of it for so long! I feel very lucky.
EDIT: I’d also like to say that I have met Nicole, Mallory and Nick. Do I get a prize?
Meeting them *is* your prize. And the rest of us are insanely jealous.
You get: a gold star, three magic wishes, and a pretty ribbon that says ‘winner!’ in flowery script.
What, having Matt isn’t prize enough?!? (winky smiley)
“aimed chiefly at women who work as rare book librarians”
HEY NOW some of us are aspiring catalogers.
Anyway I love you guys and I love this place and also I really hope Dolphin Prince shows up today to help us celebrate. <3
AHHH, THANK YOU for everything about the Toast! Everything is wonderful, but especially the comment section oasis. And the lack of a ridiculous New York focus. And the misandry and the compassion, and for making me laugh so hard I almost peed and for making me think about important things in new and different (and challenging and illuminating) ways. I’m so, so happy that the Toast exists. How has it only been a year?
That art is the most perfect thing.
I think my favorite thing from this past year was that “hairstyles don’t exist” piece. I quote that to myself regularly and it brings me great peace when my hair does whatever the hell it wants.
The hairstyles piece is the one I have shared the most, which makes me feel kind of shallow but it really resonated with my hair issues and the hair issues of all the people I am related to. So I accept that.
This is quite literally the only website on the internet which I can rely on 100% to have both amazing articles and amazing comments. It is both a joy and a haven. Happy Anniversary!!!
Favorite article? Male Gamers Only. (But I admit I love anything this site does with nerd and fan culture.)
I liked that article because Mallory told me in the comments that my name was aptly given.
Thank you Nicole, Mallory, Nick, and Maria for all the great work you do. The-Toast is consistently the best thing on the internet, and I love it. Every time a friend of mine posts something from The-Toast (when I have not specifically introduced them) it makes my heart swell with joy and happiness.
YAY FOR WEBSITE
COMMENTERS LOVE WEBSITE
Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!
YOU’RE KILLING ME, WEBSITE
LOOK AT COMMENT, WEBSITE
HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY TOAST!! Thank you for making this a hilarious, welcoming, thoughtful place that makes me push on the edges of my worldview at times. Everyone who runs this site, and everyone who fills the comments with such hilarity and heart, is doing God’s work.
Best articles? Too many to count, but I have a soft spot for “Gabbin’ About God”- it reminds me of the good parts of Sunday school. The Simpsons pictures don’t hurt either.
ETA: Oh, oh- how could I forget Toast Twitter? The Toast readers I’ve met on Twitter are some of the funniest, kindest, all-around BEST people out there. May our discussions of feminism and #butts never cease, amen.
Yay, congratulations!! I don’t comment regularly, at all (and just made an official non-guest account like, two weeks ago) but I have read this site basically every day since you launched and I’m so grateful for it! I have read so many articles that have Taught Me Something Important as well as so many that have Made Me Choke-Laugh In Front of My Coworkers. Thank you for both!
I started commenting on websites again because of this place. Delurkers unite!
Oh, God, we really have to meet Nick, though.
I mean, have you at least done like a video conference?
Oh, yeah, he is definitely not a swarm of bees in a suit.
Oh good, excellent news. Real person of the male variety.
At this point in my own (minor but unfailingly pleasant, professional, and prompt) dealings with Nick, if he revealed himself to be a swarm of bees in a suit or a sentient fungus or a cannibalistic xenomorph, I would have to nod thoughtfully and reconsider my knee-jerk bigotry against swarms of bees in suits or sentient fungi or a cannibalistic xenomorphs.
I would pay cash money for Matt Ofjaya Lubchansky to draw Nick as a swarm of bees in a suit.
I would like to see that very, very much.
This would be such an excellent first birthday present.
And also not a rat wearing several raincoats?
I imagine Nick to be like Charlie in “Charlie’s Angels”. Only a non-sexist, enlightened Charlie. A New, Improved Charlie. Always with ice cubes clinking in his two fingers, three rocks glass of Scotch.
Ha ha, I think that was the best part of the whole thing, actually. 😀
I did not know you guys have never meet Nick?!?! He is tall, handsome, and charming. Exactly what you’re thinking, but better!
Also proposing The Toasties do a kickstarter to fund a group toast trip so we (Maria, Nick, Mallory, Nicole) can all actually meet each other.
Happy birthday!
Thanks for amazing site, with a wonderful community. Thanks to you I have read so many interesting, heartfelt articles, so many weird/creepy/funny short stories, and so much lovely poetry. Some of it, I’d never have read otherwise, so keep being great.
Also, thanks to you my precious words were PAID FOR and PUBLISHED which… you have no idea how important that was to me. My work was good enough! TO BE PUBLISHED! And thank you for the polite and lovely rejections for other things that didn’t quite work for you. I promise to continue sending you stuff I think you’ll like until you say ‘yes’ again.
Just… thanks.
Best article? Oh, they’re so good. I think Archival Mix is my favourite recurring coverage. I think my favourite one-off is that male antihero one.
Okay so what happened is, after I read your comment, I clicked on your name to find the article that The Toast PAID FOR and PUBLISHED but the world wide web took me to a different website altogether, so I clicked back, and here I am. Could you link to your article? Am dying to read it (judging by your comments it’s going to be most excellent so I have abandoned all other plans for the evening)
It is fiction they published! You can find it here: http://the-toast.net/2013/08/21/someone-has-to/
The other place you went to is the apocalypse site I run with some friends of mine. It is funny, spend some time there.
Oh my god for some reason I can’t comment on your story under your story but wow so so so creepy, like the creepiest. I loved it. Are there more? (No pressure). But I would love there to be more.
It’s appropriate because the short-haired, blue-shirted figure (so, coded male) is ruining everything.
I’m at a conference with a panel discussion on women in academia where someone just used the phrase “feminist warrier” in a negative way, so I just wanted to say I am glad for The Toast and its misandry.
UGH let’s be misandrist angry animals together.
Those moments always make me wish I had a breastplate and sword, so I could immediately stand and ask who dared besmirch my name and that of my sisters.
I know, right?! I wanted to stand up and go “I’m a feminist warrior and I love it!” What is more depressing is that this was someone who was giving a talk about measures they were taking to increase the number of women in senior positions in academia. They want to bring equality but not be a “feminist warrior” about it.
WHY THE HELL NOT
The moral of this story is we should really just get in the habit of bringing our (nippleless) breastplates and swords everywhere. Especially everywhere vaguely related to academia… everyone knows those nerds are bad at swordfighting.
Hey now. This academic is pretty good at swordfighting! Olympic style only though, I can’t be having with the SCA stuff.
I genuinely think this site has made me a better person who somehow found a way to give even fewer fucks about what men/society think. Thank you.
Me too! Which is weird, because I thought I had no fucks to give before.
Yes! The-Toast helped me open a window to see the depths of my misandrist soul.
Happy Birthday, The Toast! This place makes working at home feel less like a NASA isolation chamber experiment.
How are people celebrating this glorious anniversary? This morning, a mom posted in a FB group I’m in about an experience where a man told her he felt uncomfortable that she was breastfeeding her baby near him. I told her she should be congratulated on making a man feel uncomfortable. #mommisandry
That man needs to be dispensed with in a crisp and decisive manner.
Anyway, thank you Nicole, Mallory, Nick, and Maria, for the very greatest place to go to work (I occasionally take breaks to attend to business related to my job).
Also, The Toast has the best art criticism in the history of the world.
i vaporized a man with my eyes
Some guy whistled at me as I was biking to work this morning. I flipped him off over my shoulder without turning around, sailing down the street like a glorious bird of prey. #commutermisandry
I had a vehement discussion with my soon-to-be-in-college privileged tall handsome smart white straight male child when he said (not, to be a little fair to him, that he knew it was loaded), essentially, ‘not all men’ in our conversation about women & objectification & harassment & violence. It took longer than it should have (I was shooting vapor rays at him!) to teach him that butting in with ‘but let’s just acknowledge that it’s not all men’ is a derailment and a disservice to the conversation, but now he has some knowledge & a script & is slightly vaporized.
But that was yesterday.
And he doesn’t believe me that 100% of women are objectified (at the very least.)
So in honor of the Toast anniversary, today he shall be taught to believe.
*You* are a great parent.
ALSO, +10000 FOR MATT “OFJAYA” LUBCHANSKY.
YES it took me a second to get it but then I was like, oh, perfect.
I can totally get him to change his middle name to that, right?
If anyone could, it would be you!
A huge mazel tov on the first year of The Toast! I love it’s breadth and depth, the fact that I have snorted with laughter and ugly-cried at this site’s writing, sometimes in the same day, sometimes in the same post.
(And a side note: the last time I was doing some horrible strength training, the thing that got me through my last set was Nicole’s Burnt Toast advice that working out should always sort of suck, because otherwise it’s not work. It got me throoooough.)
You know I thought there was just enough distance between my personal interests and the coverage of this site that I didn’t have to feel like a *type* and now you tell me that you’re planning more coverage of labor history and public policy? So it begins.
I like you both stupidly a lot, and you have created a fucking amazing site. I’m so happy The Toast exists.
Okay, look, I’m in reference and instruction, not rare books, and –
I just proved your point, didn’t I?
I love this place. Thank you for your hard work. In particular, I’d like to celebrate your aggressive moderation of the comments. I guess I didn’t really think about how that worked before I read this post. It’s important, sanity-saving work. Thank you for it.
Oh, wait, as long as I’m here – Nicole, did you hear that the BBC is celebrating the first anniversary of The Toast by announcing a shooting/airing date for four new episodes of Sherlock?
How kind of them.
2015 is a lifetime awayyyyyy.
At least it is a real date, which, short of premature supernovas, will actually come to pass!
It is a bit cruel to film in January then not air it until Christmas, though. Shall we begin our vigil speculating on what Moffat thinks “is the very last thing (we)’d expect …”? Or is this like quantum physics: if we guess correctly, it is by definition now incorrect?
Just saw someone do this on Tumblr, re: “the very last thing we’d expect” –
http://acafanmom.tumblr.com/post/90565899630/were…
We’ve got nothing but time, imagination, and a bunch of graduate degrees: There is nothing we won’t expect, Moffat. You jackass.
A true retelling of events:
*clicks*
*reads list of amusing possibilities someone dreamed up, Mallory-style*
*realizes slowly that they are ALL LINKS TO REAL FANDOMS and falls over*
*is sad that the tunalock one is broken, since bearlock seems less interesting*
*manually fixes the link*
*is ACTUALLY dead now*
The Toast has meant a lot to me–and obviously a lot of other people too!–in the past year, and I will continue to support it with all my heart.
On Twitter I asked some Toasties what they considered to be classic Toast Posts from the first year of operation, and here are their responses:
https://storify.com/figwiggin/classic-toast-the-f…
Basically spending my day reading those links. Thanks for putting that together, figgy!
THANK YOU so much for the Toast. Out of all the humor, geek, and news blog/article sites that I have liked over the years, this one feels the most like a home to me, intellectually and emotionally. I feel good about commenting here even when I think my joke or opinion is stupid. The pieces you run are funny or heartbreaking or just so interesting, or all those things at once.
Your submissions process is a delight, and I have never felt more joyously uplifted as a human being during the whole terror/self-doubt/self-loathing-filled Time of Waiting.
HAIL TO THE TOAST. NO YOU’RE CRYING RIGHT NOW. OKAY IT IS ME I AM CRYING SHUT UP.
It is true. I don’t hate their rejections because I know Nicole just wants Toastiness to be amazing and that is right of her.
Dammit, CAN’T SOMEONE GET THESE FU**ING ONIONS OUTTA HERE?”. Where’s a manservant when you need him, jeepers.
“I feel good about commenting here…” (I’d cut and paste all your words but iPad says “no”).
This, exactly!
ipads and self-doubt never! Toast forever!
Happy Birthday! I’d like to thank you, Mallory, Nicole, Nick, and Maria. I’ve met so many wonderful friends here. The Toasties are my people. (I didn’t know there were others like me out there. It’s been a revelation.)
I wish you continued success forever
I think my Facebook friends and people who follow me on Twitter are tired of me mostly filling up my feed with links to funny things on The Toast, but I don’t care! You guys are far more interesting than what I had for breakfast, anyway. Thanks for a great year!
I shared the first Misandrist Lullabies on Facebook, and my father in law commented: “that is a very angry link”. YES INDEED!
love the toast etc. etc. thank you for everything you’ve done this past year to make life brighter 🙂
Can’t express enough how wonderful you ladies are & this site is.
I was immensely privileged to have known about the Toast before it even existed, to have written for y’all in the early days, and to have personally benefited immeasurably from the support of the strong community y’all have built.
<3 Bergy
Happy anniversary! The Toast has been one of my favorite places on the internet, and the commenters are my favorite people on the internet (and maybe in real life?)
Whenever something cool/interesting happens to me I’m always like, “I can’t wait to talk to the Toasties about this in the FOT!” because everyone here is so supportive and fun and brilliant.
Toast Advice in the Friday Open Thread is the best.
I’m probably going to start keeping a journal just so I don’t forget things that I want to share with you guys. 🙂 And I agree with this so much: Toast people are the best people, and the Toast community is the best community.
THANK YOU. Thank you for bringing so much joy to my life, for giving me an internet hangout and community full of awesome weirdoes (which I mean in the best possible way) and a place where complicated ideas can be discussed along with utter silliness. Thank you for publishing a piece that was deeply personal for me. Thank you for your moderation, holy cow, because you do an amazing job.
I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS INTERNET BAR.
I’m PRETTY sure Ta-Nehisi Coates Approval is a competely different thing than Male Approval.
Truth
I’m late to the game in saying this, but congratulations!!!!!!! This is the best website on the internet and I am incredibly happy to be a tiny, insignificant speck upon it. You two are the best and so are Nick and Maria.
Thank you, The-Toast! I love that you don’t allow a Reliable Male Devil’s Advocate, and I love that you are focused on new and different stuff that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I do enjoy the link round ups, BUT, they’re always like 95% new links and maybe, maybe 5% Things That Are Elsewhere On The Internet. I am really excited about your 10% shift, but that’s because I’m a big policy nerd and can’t wait to talk about it even more AND on my favorite space on the internet.
Also a huge shout out to Toast Twitter – taking to the sea to build a misandrist island with Toast Castle is the only thing that keeps me going some days. Thank you for building such a great community, Nicole and Mallory.
That Liz Lemon image is so perfect and kind of exactly how I picture At-Work-Nicole.
Two things I haven’t seen mentioned yet (though I haven’t refreshed) thank you thank you a thousand times for:
1. The queer perspective and the million ways you assert on this website, and not in a siloed ‘special topics’ way, that being straight is not the only way to be
2. Paying your writers and your general respect for creative work as Work
Love this place like Jolie loves Bleachie.
I can’t really think of any words to express how happy I am that this site is part of my life, and also that, in this one place on the internet at least, reading the comments is always wonderful. So I’ll borrow your words, modified slightly for the occasion:
*stands, raises glass*
Willing friends, and sea room!
A YEAR OF THE TOAST. the toast and its beautiful dragons were the first to give me money and a byline for WORDS THAT CAME OUT OF MY BRAIN, and for that i will always be grateful.
also holy shit the whole community that’s grown up around it, fuck
~we were all young when we were tiny scottish mutants with doctorates in genetics and the weeeeeeeirdest boner for metal-bending hotties
Yay! That is all.
I’m actually more proud of the fact that I’ve been in The Toast more than once than being in the New Yorker more than once. Not kidding.
Also TOAST APPROVAL gave me the push to actually Finish My Damn Novel sooo, you’re all to blame for that.
I blame you Hargrove.
HERE’S TO ANOTHER YEAR.
I believe you!
And we’ve got quite the pile of Toastie Novelists growing here, too, don’t we? So exciting.
When all our disparate but similarly female-centric novels get published, we will form a club.
I’ll probably come back at Thanksgiving and say the same thing, but thank you for striking out into your own awesome website, thank you to the Toasties who come here every day and make it even better, and thank you to the people Behind the Scenes who make it all work swimmingly.
~**~*confetti*~**~
Cake for everyone! Er, except those who would prefer pie.
The Toast is the place that has had the most effect on my vocabulary/online everyday language since Sady Doyle started writing IN ALL CAPS and T-Rex gave up all pretense of using punctuation. Also, I have knitted two hats that say MISANDRY on them, which makes me feel like I’ve contributed to the revolution.
I’m also immensely pleased to have found an audience for a) sad things I write about death, and b) cool things I write about dead lady poets. Sometimes it’s lonely in poetry world!
It’s been so great watching this site grow and evolve, and having a place to relax on the Internet is oddly difficult to find, and you’ve made that. Thank you.
There’s really no devil’s advocate at all? I figured every site had one or two and one of you just kept him locked in the attic, like the deformed sibling in an antebellum Southern household.
NOT ALL SITES
Thank you for being, The Toast. I am so excited/delighted to see you continue to be and exist for many, many more years than just one.
(Signed, someone who opened an account literally only to write this comment. OH GOD THE TERROR)
Spoken quietly: You’re safe here. All your feelings are OK, no matter what they are. Welcome.
::pat on the arm and offer of hug::
A nonsense love haiku in response to this beautiful comment:
This is exactly
why Toasties are my jam; oops,
dad joke just slipped in.
(Thank you, and many hugs in return!!)
You’re my new favorite.
You totally can’t tell through my typing, but I’m definitely blushing.
Happy Anniversary Mallory, Nicole, Nick, and Maria! This site made my last year better, and gave me a place to feel safe writing about trans issues. I can’t even begin to express how much that means to me, and how much I want to see what comes out in year 2: the returnering.
To The Toast, all its authors, all its commenters:
Mighty congratulations and deep gratitude. You have taught me to be more myself and feel good about it. You have become my tribe where I had none. Here’s to many more years of radical truth-telling and kindness.
I agree with everything you just said, especially the part about the Toast being your tribe. I’m not sure I’ve felt such an uncomplicated sense of belonging with any other group of people. Thank you for being a part of it! *hugs*
I’m so glad that I eventually stumbled upon The Toast when on some other site I’ve now forgotten someone linked to Texts From William Blake. It was love at first sight, and is consistently still the best part of my day. <3
To echo y’all: I’m so grateful for The Toast. The last year has been…weird, and hard, for me. It’s so great to wake up every morning and go to my crappy job and have somewhere to, you know, cybersurf that hosts such amazing voices, comments, and Simpsons references. I feel like I’m finally, finally regaining my voice and myself, and I can’t overstate how much this space has helped. (Hopefully I’ll delurk more as this second year starts!) Thanks pals!
I’m just going to add my praise to this heaping pile of praise that yins are getting for running the Toast. Can you believe I was actually happy when the site went down the other week? I had initially thought that my network admin at work had blocked it and I would never get to read the Toast from my desk again (and reading the Toast from my desk is like the single greatest thing about my job). When it turned out to be just a prolonged outage caused by too many people (trying to read the Toast from their desks), I was SO RELIEVED.
glad I missed it! and here I was cursing throughout my entire vacation b/c I didn’t have access to The Toast & had to just, like, talk to my family and see Dublin and stuff.
So many wonderful comments already, so I will just add to the pile of love. This site and team running it are AMAZING. I love having this be cool hangout on the Internet for the like minded. The commenters on this site are THE BEST and I have never felt threatened. It is possible to have honest conversations without being hateful and The Toast proves it. Much love to all of you.
Awww, happy birfday!!! This is such a fun site and you’ve published so many gorgeous things.
I feel lucky to publish here and to get to read all the things. Thank you!
I am crying a little. Thank you for being so utterly mad in a way that brought this place to pass. I am so grateful for everyone I’ve met here. I invited Miss Ella to come stay with me in Rome because of the Toast, and it is my fond wish that we will manage to create something a fraction as wonderful from that meeting as you did from yours. Yay the Toast. Hurrah for all you lovely people. Must stop crying.
Congratulations! I love the Toast so much I can’t deal with it. Thank you so much for all of it. Please never cease:
-All the misandry, especially the lullabies and fairy tales and christmas carols…well, just all of it
-Letters from Chris Kimball (I just went back and re-read all of them for probably the 3rd time)
-Dad Magazine
-Food trolling
-All of Mallory’s artwork posts
-All the iterations of the Advice tag (I will read How to Respond to Criticism forever until I die. THE SKY IS NO PLACE FOR A HUMAN.)
-Everything Mallory does ever
-Everything Nicole does ever
DAD MAGAZINE
Thank you so much for The Toast! Last week I was trying & trying to explain to some friends why it is so awesome, especially the commenting space. There is nowhere else like this in my life, where I can just come be who I am and not worry about all the complicated bits, and talk about things that are important to me like anarcho-queer Ent collectives and the difficulties of paying for health care in the US. But even more than the talking, I love getting to listen to everyone else and hear so many different points of view and feel like I am getting to know other actual people who are sharing their real selves. I said this above, but it had never occured to me that The Toast is not magically free of jerks, but that Nicole & Mallory work hard to make it that way, and I am just so grateful. It has made this last six months of coming back into the present day & the realities of life with two kids and stuff much, much more possible.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY I love you the most.
Wow am I like the only person on here who thought The-Toast had already been going for, like, approximately 8 years already? I’m going to celebrate your anniversary by cutting up a white man and eating him. Thanks for all the amazing content. You’re one of the best things on the information superhighway.
Nope. I was also surprised. But I think that is because I confused Mallory’s Texts from Jane Eyre as a Toast piece (I have never been a regular pin reader).
I think maybe I will celebrate by giving my account an actual picture rather than that grey shadow person.
This piece is great. I’m really interested in the new direction you’re going in! I love the community I’ve found with this, I love how reading this site has opened me to new PoVs and been the whetstone my brain knife has sharpened itself against.
I also cannot say enough in words how much it meant to be published here. My parents now understand my love of writing on a deeper level and try to be as encouraging as they can, even though they still say I could’ve been an engineer, and it’s just been…amazing! In fact, my mom asks about both of you regularly and loves your posts and constantly talks about how I should ask y’all for a job. The response here was very kind too.
Also, Nicole, I wish I could give you like, a kidney or something, that’s how grateful I am for your quick emails and encouragement and Twitter presence. And I will never stop proselytizing on Mallory Ortberg’s Greatness.
Seriously, thank you for the last year. Especially for the religion posts. I love them and am planning to give enough to support one over this summer. They are great and food for a different part of my soul than most of the religion-focused reading I do.
Yes!! Bribe them to do another installment of Gabbin’ about God! Possibly once again featuring a cameo by Dad Ortberg?
Reading all these comments warms my little robot heart and reminds me of several more reasons why staying up around the clock to get us back online when we die is SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT. Thanks for making this website for me to work on and cracking me up and just being generally the best.
Thank you for staying up around the clock for us!!!
MARIA! thank you thank you thank you thank you
<3 and so forth
Your one year anniversary is enough to make me actually comment for the first time, despite constantly singing your praises throughout the year on my locked twitter account to my spectacular 117 followers (probably 50% bots).
This site brings me so much happiness, as does the contributions of both Nicole and Mallory on twitter, I just wanted to say I love y’all (and Nick and Maria). Keep up the good work, fighting the good fight, smashing the patriarchy/building the church of misandry, etc, etc.
I can’t thank you enough for creating this space. It’s not an overstatement to say you have changed my life in very tangible ways.
But more than that, you’ve established an outpost in the frontier of the internet, a place where women speak first and loudest, where we aren’t hushed or shouted down or told (explicitly or implicitly) our voices don’t matter. I thought I had a strong and practiced voice for public debate; using my voice here, where I felt utterly safe doing so (and, I hope using that voice to support others who maybe don’t feel so safe and centralized, even here), I learned to see what I was holding back… and how to unleash it.
By creating a space where support and dissent can weave together into a resilient tapestry, you’ve given (some of) us a training ground to speak our minds and live out our ambitions. It’s a rare thing, and I thank you.
This place is the best place. Thank you for your year of solid dedication.
Happy Birthday! It’s been a joy – an actual, body-infusing joy – to visit this site over the past year. Or, 11 months in my case, but I’m here now & you can’t get rid of me!
Being w/o internet for 2 weeks last month was only difficult because I wasn’t able to play here or on Toastie Twitter.
I can’t think of a better reason to delurk than to congratulate and thank every person who has made this site what it is. I love The Toast so much, and can’t think of another place where I am so fulfilled/entertained/enlightened/challenged.
I read the comments pretty quickly, so I may have missed it, but I can’t be the only one who lives for Children’s Stories Made Horrific can I?
thank you so much for being here! i love love love the toast so much, y’all might as well be called the pizza. that’s how strong my feelings are.
“The world is full of garbage opinions, but I ain’t hosting them.”
I love you guys.
ps I also love that the accompanying Lubchansky cartoon is a “visual reinterpretation of the Footprints story” with Mallory = god
Is Mallory god in the picture? I always thought it was the other way around, because Mallory has such gorgeous long hair, and because Nicole power lifts.
Ooooh that is a good point! WHO IS GOD REALLY
I would wear this as a shirt. #justsaying
Happy anniversary, congratulations, and thank you! Here’s to many, many more such celebrations. This site is a treasure.
Happy Birthday Toast!
This website is the best place on the internet. (Mark Does Stuff being the second best)
As for favourite articles, taking it way way back to a year ago today, I am super fond of “The Comments Section for Every Article Ever Written About Intimate Grooming” aka the only time The Toast will ever talk about pubes. http://the-toast.net/2013/07/02/all-you-can-say-a…
HAPPY TOASTIVERSARY!! Nicole and Mallory and Nick and Maria, thank you for such an interesting, informative, funny, thought-provoking, awesome site! The content is great and the commenters are so amazing and my day is not complete without Toast 🙂
Thank you Nicole, Mallory, Nick and Maria! I never would have imagined that I would feel so strongly about a website, but it’s honestly one of my favorite things. This site you’ve created, and the community that has sprung up around it, is so powerful. I am consistently enthralled, entertained, and fascinated by all of the content, and then the commentariat is just too wonderful for words. Toastie Twitter has been a great recent development too, and I’m so excited about making some new real-life friends.
I just can’t even describe how much I love this site and everyone here. I’ve become more strident, more aware, and more committed to misandry from reading, and far less tolerant of men giving me any kind of shit.
Also no one else has mentioned it so far I think but one of my very favorite posts of all time was What the Posters In Your First Apartment Say About You Now: http://the-toast.net/2013/07/18/posters-to-run-aw…
Oh, I want to say one more thing. I feel like most of the posts that come to mind immediately are by Mallory, since she’s so crazy prolific. But Nicole, I also really love and appreciate your voice! You make me feel so much more comfortable about things like working out and motherhood. And I really like how you manage to be forgiving and warm and open, but with very clear boundaries about shit you won’t put up with.
Also, if I can make one request — I know Jane Marie is working for Rookie now but if you could get her back occasionally, I really miss her too.
OFJAYA
OFJAYA
Also I love this place, and I love the Twitter extension of it. It is absolutely my favorite community on the internet. THANKS MAL AND NICOLE AND NICK AND MARIA. *throws confetti*
I just made a Twitter account so that I could tweet with Toasties. How does one go about finding Toast people on Twitter?
Ahh yes! you can add me, @rosencrantz. But definitely ind @embryoconcepts, she has a whooole list of Toasties for you to explore!
Awesome! I’ve never used Twitter before, so we’ll see how this goes. 🙂
Congratulations, you crazy kids!
Nicole, among many other things, I want to thank you for being the first person in the history of time to write about exercising and getting in shape in a way that did not make me want to throw you out a window into a dumpster filled with condescending people. Brava, sister. I don’t know you, obviously, but you have an amazing ability to see things from multiple perspectives/viewpoints and your writing really reflects that with its compassion – even when you’re being funny.
Mallory, among other things, I want to thank you for being completely deranged in the best possible way and for making me laugh consistently and loudly. And also making me cry, sometimes, too (NOOOOOOO GHOOOOOOOSSSTTTT). I don’t understand how anybody has your energy, but I’m so glad that you have it.
Nick and Maria, thanks for driving this fabulous bus and making sure that the wheels stay on it, too.
My work computer doesn’t allow me to comment with my actual account, so I mostly engage in short burst commenting when I’m working from home, but I’m always reading along with you and appreciating you! A toast to The Toast!
Thank you so much Nicole, Mallory, Nick and Maria for bringing The Toast into existence and maintaining its position as The Best Internet Oasis. This site has obviously influenced the lives of many, many people, myself included, and the community here truly helps me get by some days. And the moderating! Seriously, that’s a good chunk of what makes The Toast so valuable and whole. Here’s to many more years of COSMIC FEMALE MALICE!
Grateful for Nicolle, Mallory, Maria, and Nick and this community. Weirdly difficult year, and y’all made it easier. Please to let us know how we can support you to continue to do what you do. Doobeedoooooo.
Congratulations! Thank you! Please, never stop!
Aw, you guys. We all knew you were going to be a hit the minute you announced it!!!
Many happy returns, Toast folk! I’m so happy to be part of this community. Ugh, community is such an overused word. Commune? I don’t think we’ve gotten to that point, yet. Maybe in the new year.
CONGRATULATIONS GUYS. I’ve been re-reading the Benedict Cumberbatch fanfiction, and it’s the only thing distracting me from the horror of knowing there are cockroaches bubbling up through the sewers, closer & closer to my bathtub drain. (Not an abstract fear: my landlord told me there were thousands of them streaming out of a nearby manhole.)
Even though I sorta feel like the office worker whose co-worker’s birthday card landed last on my desk with the entire staff’s scribbled “best wishes” leaving no room for my lame additions, I’ll just say “Congrats, I love you*, this site totally makes my mornings and evenings”.
*I have never said “I love you” on a co-worker’s birthday card. Evil thoughts, yes.
Happy one year! This is a wonderful place.
Congratulations and heartfelt thanks – I can now mock men in a way that would have been unthinkable one year ago. (I am neither joking nor being snarky – I used my claws – just a little – on a smug neighbour the other night, and it was more fun than I thought it would be. Before your website, I kind of thought a bitch-hole would open up and drop me into the smoking depths of hell if I ever made a man feel bad about anything)
Congratulations!
I used claws on a neighbor the other night as well! He was taking up space in a way I didn’t like, and I don’t think I would have bothered to say anything without The Toast.
I want to add on to the thanks. This has been an unexpectedly terrible year for me and I sort of fell off from here for a while because I sometimes felt like this place was too good and honest and real for where I was and what I deserved and I missed this place every second of that. I’m glad to be back to the goodness though.
Thanks for being here and thanks for helping me to distinguish my true friends from people who don’t regularly talk to me about the toast.
I hope dirtbags and witches are not the subjects you’re moving away from, but I will quietly and gracefully mourn if they are.
Also, now I believe that Nick is actually an elaborate masquerade on one of your parts to the other.
Adding my voice to the chorus: thank you for being such wonderful, talented people and carving out such an amazing, supportive, and enlightening space. I really appreciate your devotion to diverse narratives, queer culture, trans experiences, racial justice, and — of course — female empowerment through misandry.
Here is to many years to come!
Thank you for stoking the feminist/misandrist coals in my heart, and doing so with intelligence and twisted humo(u)r. I sit and cackle each night at my computer, my husband* cluelessly watching A Sport or A Drumming Video, having no idea what depraved, beautiful, essential feminist shit I am getting into mere feet (metres) away. So thank you for giving me and everyone else this space to just be our fucking selves, no apologies, no excuses.
*He is pretty rad but just not hip to cosmic female malice, ya heard?
Congratulations and thank you so much for creating such a great site! I am really happy to have found it and it pleases me to no end to know there are people out there who see things in a similar (or in a completely mind-bending different way) as I do. Thanks!!
Congratulations on all of your success! I hope that you consider hiring a male as your third writer, just so you can consistently outvote him 2 to 1 on all editorial decisions*
*just kidding, kind of.
Congratulation on one year and I love your site even though I am a law librarian, not a rare books librarian.
I read pretty much everything you guys post, ever, and it makes my life so much more delightful each day. Incidentally, I believe Nicole and I were bowing acquaintances, if you will, in college, and I feel that this may be the closest I will ever come to greatness.
WHO ARE YOU? I was so awful in college! Thank you for still reading.
Deat The Toast. I am so glad you exist. You make my life better.
Though I am sad that I now know what a TERF is.
Hip hip hooRAY!
I have never commented before, but have been reading for the last few months (Dirtbag Anne of Green Gables was my gateway drug) and I wanted to say The Toast is my favorite website on the internet. This quote from Mallory perfectly captures why: “New and different and pleasing things that aren’t all just reactions to the news you saw on four other blogs that same day and also on Twitter.” Keep up the wonderful work.
Let me add my voice to the rousing chorus of people saying THANK YOU for doing such a kick-ass job at comment moderation. The Toast: Come for the funny and thought-provoking articles, stay for the insightful and witty dialogue in the comments.
This place feels so safe. I love that. And you.
I posted this to facebook with the following comment that really doesn’t do Nicole enough justice which I regret but otherwise is apt:
I want to take a serious moment here to reflect on how impossibly perfect the Toast is, and how excited I am to see my friends share their (and let’s be real “their” usually means “Mallory Ortberg Possibly-Human Definite-God”) articles with glee. The Toast took me out of the dark hole that was Boise, ID last summer and brought me into a new world of misandrist humor and sometimes non-misandrist humor and sometimes just really smart stuff. It is, almost without qualification, my favorite blog on the Internet. Mallory Ortberg is my favorite Possibly-Human Definite-God on the Internet.
If you haven’t become a regular reader by now, do yourself a favor and consider it.
Since this blog came into my life, I feel like I have found my tribe. I love the stories and art, I love that the comments are full of joyous camaraderie instead of verbal war zones, I love that everyone here seems to get it. It’s inspired me to write after years of just *thinking* about writing. Thank you a zillion times for all of it.
You two(and Nick and Maria) are simply the best.
Probably totally late to this but, THANK YOU. Thank you for existing. I can’t remember when I started reading and I’ve never before left a comment, but today seemed like an excellent day to come out from my corner.
You have made me laugh and made me cry. I realized how much I loved you when you were down last week and I thought IT had finally blocked you. I fear the day that happens.
Looking forward to spamming everyone I know with Toast links for many years to come. Congrats you crazy kids:)
Looking forward to spamming everyone I know with Toast links for many years to come. Congrats you crazy kids:)
The Toast is my haven! Thanks for all your hard work and brilliance, guys. It is VERY MUCH appreciated.
I have to say, though, Mallory, that while I worship and revere your wit and COSMIC FEMALE MALICE, as a lifelong Brooklynite, your vehement anti-New York stance is troubling to me. What did we ever do to you? {sad Bambi eyes}
Congratulations on your anniversary and thank you guys so much for all the work you put into making this site so great!
Favourite articles, aaagh… right, the only way to make this choice remotely bearable is to break it down into Golden Globes-style different categories:
Favourite fiction – ‘Nice Guys’
Favourite humour (with a semi-serious purpose) – anything in the ‘How to Tell What Novel You’re In’ series. Seeing a new one of those on here always makes my day.
Favourite serious piece (but shot through with desperate humour) – ‘His Career Will Be Absolutely Fine’. All the writing on here is perfect but that just made my jaw drop, and the discussion it started afterwards was incredibly sad and incredibly important.
Favourite funny and serious in a ‘Oh God, that describes me exactly’ way piece – ‘A Catalogue of Imaginary Girlfriends’.
But seriously, I feel guilty that I haven’t mentioned half the pieces I love on here. Congratulations again!
I only found the Toast a couple of months ago, now it’s a massive rabbit hole I escape down when supposed to be doing Proper Job, and I apologise to friends who are similarly afflicted since I introduced them (not really). Congratulations on your anniversary !
I would saw off my right breast to become an Amazon if that increased my chances of being the next hire.
MARIA! thank you thank you thank you thank you
<3 and so forth