Name: Ernest Hemingway
Position: Staff Writer
What has been going well?
The days are long and the work is shallow and the only piece of mine that went ‘viral’ this year was ’27 Kick-Ass Things You Learn When You Catch A Marlin’.
Manager’s comments:
Though ’27 Kick-Ass Things You Learn When You Catch A Marlin’ was an unexpected triumph, Ernest isn’t working to the standard achieved by other BuzzFeed writers. ’18 Things You Only Know If You’re Ernest Hemingway’ is our lowest-performing piece of content since we launched nine years ago; 202 people have read it, and I know that three of these were Ernest on different devices. Only 612 have read ‘Buy My Novel For Whom The Bell Tolls’, and most of this traffic came from Japan as the result of a freak technical glitch. ’14 Hats I Wore While Writing A Farewell To Arms’ significantly underperformed, as did ’31 Lions I Still Really Need To Catch’ and the interactive quiz ‘Can You Guess Where Ernest Hemingway’s Pen Is?’. In retrospect I’m not sure why I commissioned these.
What has been going less well?
This job blights me like a sore tooth and our audience is vapid and and the majority of our content is vapid. (I do not include my contributions in this assessment.) Most of my pieces running to more than 16,000 words are decimated and they are stripped of their integrity and filled with infernal ‘Vines’.
I am told I ought to be more active on social media. I see no reason why these cretins ought to be allowed to read my writing for free.
Manager’s comments:
Ernest still struggles to understand that our audience does not pay to read our website. He is confused whenever I remind him that we are not a print publication. He is frequently surly, hungover and verbally abusive, especially in morning meetings. It has not escaped my attention that he has reported to work drunk on dozens of occasions and that occasionally he simply lies under his desk for hours.
Ernest refuses to publish picture round-ups, claiming that they are beneath him and that they ‘dull the intellect’. When shown statistics on how well these pieces perform, he tends to make offensive comments about the ‘damn fools’ that write them.
How is the morale around you?
My fellow workers seem to be having no shortage of LOLs but I find this flippant atmosphere unconducive to fine writing. I wear headphones and listen to a recording of men cutting wood in a forest. The forest is wet and the men are fine workers.
The free ‘BuzzFeed’ coffee is a bonus, of course. Fortifies the spirit. Keeps the voices at bay.
Manager’s comments:
Ernest regularly threatens to damage team morale, ignoring his colleagues in order to listen to his headphones. He does not realise that often the rest of the office is able to hear what he is listening to, because he has not plugged in his headphones correctly.
How do you feel you could you improve your work?
The responsibility lies not with me but with ‘BuzzFeed’. My work is strong and my hands write good words. When I pitch about my experiences hunting lions in Africa, I am told that a compendium of ‘cute baby lion pics’ would be ‘more likely to get 500k clicks’.
Manager’s comments:
Ernest is pitching increasingly bleak pieces, most of which pertain to alcoholism, dead lions, or writing alone in a shed.
Is there anything the company can do to help you?
I should like a pay rise and a bigger chair and I should like my bouts of inebriation to pass unremarked upon.
Manager’s comments:
For the benefit of both himself and the company, my advice is that Ernest’s contract be terminated forthwith.
Tags: ernest hemingway, humor, ralph jones, the butter
I should like a pay rise and a bigger chair and I should like my bouts of inebriation to pass unremarked upon.
The true American Dream.
I’m just going to paste that line directly into my end-of-year review
He’s sort of like a boozier George Costanza.
“6 toed cats who are living their best life”
“OMG! This penny based pool design will blow your mind!”
“10 things that only baby shoe sellers will get”
“10 things that only baby shoe sellers will get”
OMG.
I’m going to be really honest with you guys: I would click on the headline “31 Lions I Still Really Need To Catch.”
But it would probably get more clicks if it were “31 Lions That Still Really Need to Be Cotched.”
This old man caught a GIANT fish – what happened next is SHOCKING!
Oh dear, I just picked up For Whom the Bell Tolls:
Chapter 2 – protagonist meets the only women on the world, woman 1 and woman 2, aka Ugly and Sexy.
And it takes a whole 5 chapters before, finally, in Chapter 7, protagonist sleeps with Sexy.
*headdesk*
I dunno if I sould be really glad I’m only encountering his writing now that I have a full blown feminist awareness or if it would’ve been nice to enjoy his work as a kid and be rudely awakened by the toast…
…Sorry, I’ve been really wanting to rant about this for the past two weeks but any other outlet would’ve made it seem like a brag-whine. Thank you toast for reading my mind and publishing accordingly.
What struck me when I read A Movable Feast last year is that he only ever refers to his wife as “my wife” and not by her actual name – a dastardly trick to prevent the reader from realizing that over the span of the book he went through multiple, equally nameless wives.
Also, he was draining them of their money! That’s why he never seems to do anything! They had maids! hired cooks!
I think I read A Farewell to Arms relatively young and without a full blown feminist awareness and it was still pretty awful. I vaguely remember something about the supposed hero having sex with a woman in a doorway and she felt like a whore and IDK, it made an impression and not a good one.
If anyone at Buzzfeed is reading this, they need to get on those articles STAT.
Very excellent turn-around time on a response to the absence of Manly Journalists on the Internet.
That article was SO CONFUSING cause war journalism in the middle east in more dangerous then ever? Like the kidnapping rates are really sky high right now cause ransom is more profitable then granting an interview? Has this person ever left the house?
It turns out yes, but when he did he left his bike locked up and it was stolen by
[whispers]
*a black*
are you sure it wasn’t
[whispers]
*an illegal*?
No, it was either a black guy or some nuns.
I think Donald Trump would disagree.
My money’s on the nuns.
The little quotes around ‘Vines’ and ‘viral’ and ‘BuzzFeed’ are so perfect. You can just imagine the scowl that is Hemingway’s closest approximation of air-quotes.
OBNOXIOUS CACKLING
“The forest is wet and the men are fine workers.”
My soul blossoms open to accommodate my love for this line.
All I could think of: http://swansonquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/s06-e…
I grew up in the area where Ernest Hemingway lived for some years, did some of his writing, and is buried. So, kind of a celebrity with local connections, usually the sort of thing people in small towns love to embrace. And yet we never ever read any of his work in school. I think the English teachers were making a point of some kind.
As someone who attended school around the corner from John Steinbeck’s house, let me say: your English teachers are heroes.
“I wear headphones and listen to a recording of men cutting wood in a forest. The forest is wet and the men are fine workers.”
It is to LOL
That line is where I lost it. I didn’t quite ‘LOL,’ but I snorted so forcefully that a tear came out of my left eye.
"I wear headphones and listen to a recording of men cutting wood in a forest. The forest is wet and the men are fine workers."
It is to LOL
Midnight in Paris ruined me – I read this and heard Corey Stoll as Hemingway and started to giggle.
https://youtu.be/mpGDkO95KhI
Midnight in Paris ruined me – I read this and heard Corey Stoll as Hemingway and started to giggle.
https://youtu.be/mpGDkO95KhI
I think I read A Farewell to Arms relatively young and without a full blown feminist awareness and it was still pretty awful. I vaguely remember something about the supposed hero having sex with a woman in a doorway and she felt like a whore and IDK, it made an impression and not a good one.
Any article that manages to skewer both Buzzfeed journalism and the terminally unfunny Ernest Hemingway get an A+ and a whole bunch of unicorn stickers from me.