MALLORY: WHEW. First of all, we should start by saying No, this is not a joke and Yes, this is really happening. We would never joke about this, we would not do that to you! But we are closing the site, and it’s funny to be talking about it with all of you guys now, because Nicole, you and I have been talking about this for what, six months now? At least?
NICOLE: I think that is EXACTLY how long we have been discussing it! The conversation started when revenues were down, and I had to carry payroll for a month or two out of my personal account, which I had not had to do since shortly after we started this whole project. We tweaked some things (added an ad or two which we had stripped back for the redesign, reminded people about ad-blockers and their impact on our ability to turn a profit, etc.) and revenue went back up a bit, but for a hot minute, you’ll remember I was like: “Theoretically, if this industry went further into the ground which it most assuredly will, would we want to keep running the site as a vanity project? Probably not! We would just stop doing it.”
And having said that out loud, we both felt a FRISSON OF ENERGY, which took us by surprise, because we have loved making this site together so much. I honestly do not remember which of us was the first to say “well, revenue is sort-of getting back on track, but how long do we want to keep doing this anyway?” but I do remember what a relief it was that we both felt that the answer was “less than a year.”
MALLORY: Yes! That is the beautiful cardboard background of this diorama, and it’s very much what sparked the conversation, but I think we’d also both been talking about the three-year mark as a natural transition, because we’ve been working at a pretty furious clip with no signs of anything letting up, and were really hoping we could step back and become more Toast Emeritus Founders rather than Write And Run The Site Both Every Day Guys.
NICOLE: We really started to feel it while talking to our publishing team about ways to improve revenue, I think. Every time I shared another John Herrman article on Twitter like, “yes, ad revenues are down across the board and indie digital media is on the bubble!” I felt like Cassandra. We considered making one of those (excellent) deals with Medium, but only briefly, because of our relatively unique community and what it would do to that community if we lost our ability to meaningfully moderate comments, and also because it had become clear that the bigger issue was not money, really, it was just…not wanting to do it anymore.
MALLORY: It’s difficult to convey an accurate sense of how much we both love The Toast and everything it’s become and also being ready to stop! Both are true, at the same time. We’d both, I think, started to notice the ways in which we just couldn’t keep up the pace we started three years ago.
NICOLE: I had to step back and look at how my responsibilities at The Toast had gradually drifted from writing and editing over to day-to-day administrative WORK and watching the money, and calling accountants and dealing with lawyers, etc. And to realize that I didn’t trust anyone to take over that chunk of my duties, nor could I pay someone to do it even if I DID trust them to do so responsibly, unless I started privately bankrolling the site on a regular basis, which Ayn Rand made clear is a mug’s game. I have bailed out the site on a couple of different occasions, but there is a big difference for me in one-off unexpected emergencies and part-subsidizing the site month-by-month, which was starting to be more of a reality.
MALLORY: And we looked at our different options – running a lot more ads/generating a ton more content that’s pegged to The Cycle of News, trying to sell (which, in order to do, we’d probably have to go back and do that first thing), hiring replacements who were willing to take on our pretty intense workloads (which, you still don’t take a salary! Where were we going to find that extra salary?), and none of them seemed very good. Most of them would have necessitated turning The Toast into something we didn’t like, or continuing to work ourselves into the ground forever. Which we found unappealing!
NICOLE: More and more it was clear that “Just close it” made the most sense. So then we told Nikki. And then we told Jaya and Marco. Which was hard, but we got to have a lot of good conversations around the future.
MALLORY: And now we are telling you, the beloved people!
NICOLE: What is going to happen on July 1st, exactly? We’re just going to stop adding new content with any regularity. I’m going to keep the site up until the heat-death of the universe, and the ads will still run so I get fifty cents every few weeks or whatever, and from time to time we might run something just for funsies.
MALLORY: Yes, if you’ve ever written for the site, your work is not going to disappear; the-toast.net and all related archives will not vanish.
NICOLE: Owls will always have faces, raccoons will always be trash-cats, monks will always draw horses badly. What am I going to do? I mean, I hesitate to say “step down to spend more time with my family,” like I got caught with an intern, but you know that my family obligations have gotten a little more complex over the last year or so, so it actually IS relevant. And I want to write more things as a freelancer (I’ve been having so much fun writing for The Guardian), and longer things, and read more books instead of just trawling my RSS feeds and Twitter.
MALLORY: I’m going to sleep for a month. I’m not going to write anything. Oh, my God, I cannot wait to not write something for a little bit. “So, what’s next for you?” “LESS.”
NICOLE: You have a WHOLE OTHER JOB and a book in progress, I think you’ll stay busy. Oh, let me state for the record that we do not do NOT want anyone to start a Save The Toast campaign of any kind, even though it would be so obviously lovely and kind of you! We are done.
MALLORY: No Kickstarters, please. If you start one I promise I will waste every single penny sent my way on expensive single-serving cakes and various perfumed unguents designed to enhance my beauty.
NICOLE: We would very much appreciate your continued pageviews and tote-purchases (BECAUSE I REALLY AM GOING TO SELL THEM NOW) over the next month and a half, to help with severance and bills and so on, but there’s no Solution that we haven’t considered, honestly.
MALLORY: In a sea of imperfect options, this is the one I feel best about! We made something great for three years, and now we’re going to go do something else. The only regret I have is that Bustle will outlive us and I will never be able to icily reject a million-dollar check from Bryan Goldberg, but that’s pretty much it.
NICOLE: I know this is not our actual goodbye post, but I love you, and Nikki, and Jaya, and Marco. And I love the readers. I’m ready to be done and move on, but I have definitely had moments of big sadness over the last month or two when we run something I really love, or that really connects with people, or when I look at the genuine relationships people have formed in the comments (giving each other KIDNEYS, even.) And guilt, too! I feel guilty, knowing how hard this will be for a lot of our readers, even though I do not think I should feel guilty. There are a billion websites on the internet, but this one was special, and I’ll grieve when it’s over, even if that’s not where I’m at right now. And I want the readers to know they can be sad and they can talk about being sad. The Toast was never just a chance for people to tune in to The Mallory and Nicole Show, it was also a true community and it will be missed.
MALLORY: I’ve never felt guilty about anything in my life, but I’ll miss everyone who helped make The Toast The Toast. (Remember when we were going to call it “A Reasonably Good Time“?) I have no illusions: this is the best job I’ve ever had, and I’m not likely to find a better one; which is not to say life is a guaranteed downhill slide from here, just this – this job has changed my life for the better. You, Nicole, have changed my life; The Toast readers have changed my life.
NICOLE: I have loved it so much. With you and Nikki and Jaya and Marco, I think we all exchanged emails and texts that were just “we’re still going to be friends and talk all the time, right??” And the answer has always been “yes, of course!” Nikki felt like this post should be just us, but will have her own goodbyes and thank-yous when the time comes (as will we.) I think Toastie Twitter will endure, as well, long after The Toast has packed up its bindle and headed down the road. This summer, let’s go to NYC together and throw a big going-away party for the readers, okay?
MALLORY: YEP.
NICOLE: Ultimately, I want capping The Toast at three years and then preserving it in amber like a Jurassic Park dinosaur to be our Freaks and Geeks transition, where people will remember it as being at least 20% better than it really was, because it ended when it was on top. But it WAS pretty great, and also, we have another month and a half to go. I’m currently editing an eleven-thousand word piece by Carvell Wallace that is making me realize what a privilege it has been and still is to do this job.
Let’s have a little more fun before it’s over.
MALLORY: Now I can finally start writing without censoring myself.
NICOLE: Mallory.
(tentatively hits publish button)
This is the worst link roundup you have ever put together, this didn’t improve my day at all.
This is the only time I have opened The Toast site and regretted it. Although extremely unlikely (I check in multiple times a day), I wish now that I’d forgotten to open The Toast until Monday, and my weekend would have been blissfully ignorant.
I thought I was OK and the moment i read your comment my eyes got teary.
Must be allergies? [sob]
I was all ready to drop some X-Files level Romanian cave creatures on the LR and…
shit
Thank you for providing me with A Link to read this morning. Evolution! So cool. Also reminds me of how I started packing my apartment yesterday and found a cave full of Giant Spiders sealed off by my college notebooks, so… same?
One of the many Weird Old Converted To Apartments houses I have lived in had this like… whole room in the middle, when we found the floorplans, that was sealed off from all sides? Probably it was nothing but also this is what sprang to mind when reading the words “giant spiders sealed off” in that order soooo.
(I hope it was just giant spiders and not like…… bodies???)
The attic in our current house is completely sealed off. I’m nervous.
A room sealed off from all sides? Exciting! Maybe a dumbwaiter (full of spiders) or an extra stairwell (also full of spiders)
Bodies is where my mind went first, tbh. Treasure second. Spiders never
If we’re talking horror movies, it was totally probably a body. Someone’s spouse/lover/parent that they sealed up in there to keep with them forever. *shudder* Oh or maybe it’s an old house so it’s one of those old sad nurseries that got sealed up because the child died and we must NEVER SPEAK OF IT.
Many have also developed longer legs and antennae to feel around in the dark.
NOPE.
Thats still pretty rad. I am always ready to hear about slime based cave ecosystems
I love you all.
Thank you for everything.
What she said. Love you all — you have been so much to us the past few years. And thank you, for everything.
Yes. Thank you so much. This has been an absolutely delightful run, and a fabulous community. And I appreciate the advance notice.
Lots and lots of love.
^^^ THIS.
once again, aravisthequeen has royally summed it up.
july first is my birthday! and what a sad birthday it will be in the-toast-dot-net land.
this will eternally be the best site on the internet.
Ditto, not the birthday present I ever would have wished for, but so grateful for everything The Toast has done and been!
Mine too! We should all eat birthday toast that day.
This, yes. Thank you so much.
Also: WHY DON’T I HAVE A MEEELLION DOLLARS TO GIVE YOU? WHY?
aravisthequeen I love your blog! Are you on twitter? I’m joining so I can try to keep in touch with toasties
Thank you! I am, @dreamsincanada and I always post my new blog reviews there! (Next week’s is going to be TRAGIC.)
Agreed, I am so thankful for all the things I’ve learned here and the amazing community.
Perfectly put…and may I add this PonyAlong will always have Toasties as her riding companion.
Adieu, mes amies. Adieu.
What she said
Yes, this. Forever. I love The Toast and Nicole and Mallory and everyone here, and I’m totally Not Crying You’re Crying, but mostly I just want to say thank you for creating this beautiful place and keeping it beautiful for three years.
*sniffle*
*nods*
Thank you for your writing, moderating, and facilitating. I will miss you, and I will have to learn how to movie-yell myself.
On the same day Peggy got cancelled. ;___;
It’s a terrible day for misandrists.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
AND GALAVANT. Everything is awful.
And, on a personal level, I received some very sad and tragic news from a friend. Friday is off to an awful start.
and Nashville. This week.
And the same week I found out my church organist is leaving, and the day after our awesome mailman at work told us he’s gotten a new route and we won’t see him anymore.
oh jeez oh dang man oh man
jeez
I KNOW.
dang
ugh
blech
Not even six hundo can fix this.
braak, come join the reddit thing, I’ve never gotten around to discussing weaponry with you. :\
also braak I am going to miss you as much as I can miss an imaginary person I don’t know who only exists in the internet.
Oh, no.
I mean, I know this site had to end one day, and I’d rather it have a good, clean close than slouch on indefinitely like a Hairpin-style zombie, but I didn’t think that day would be so soon.
My thoughts exactly. The Hairpin just made me sad.
Exactly. I think a whole lot of us made our way here from other sites (including the ‘Pin) which turned into shadows of their former selves after changes in management/shifts in quality and tone.
This news makes me sad, but I am also happy that they decided to end things definitively on their own terms/schedule.
I came her from the ‘Pin. You guys will tell me where we’re going next, right? I don’t want to get left behind.
This is actually warming my heart, thank you.
Of all the things in this thread, this is what is making me cry.
I see we are discussing this below, phew!. I just don’t want to lose the community here. The open thread has helped me work through things more times than I can count.
Same same same. When the goodness of the Hairpin died I came here. Where are we going now?
I get it. But I’m so, so sad right now.
Same.
Yep.
Me too. Unexpectedly sad, even. Not that I expected the Toast to ever end, really, but if I had, I wouldn’t have expected to be *this* sad. But I love you guys, Nicole and Mallory, and I get it.
Right? I was surprised to find myself crying a little. I first got into internetty stuff way back in 2002 with TWoP and Fametracker, and this has gutted me way more than the closing of both of those.
This site has been a daily part of my life for two and a half years. I’ve had houses I lived in for less time than I spent here, and it does feel like I’m losing a home.
Yes! And I’ve made real life friends here, and talk about the Toast with my long distance life partner bff and I’m just so sad. I understand of course, but sad.
Yes, me too. I’ve been on the Toast through multiple jobs in multiple cities. And I’ve probably spent more time in the comments than I have reading the articles, and I read almost all the articles. I get it, but I’m sad.
yep. 🙁
Exactly this, yes.
Same. I really didn’t expect to cry.
Me too.
Welp.
Definitely such a WELP. 🙁
Also an Oof.
Wow, I am way sadder about this than I ever have been about a website shutting down.
Well, this fucking sucks.
Which is to say, I’m grateful to have lived in a world that had something as great as The Toast for 3 years, and I’m happy that you guys are making the choice that feels right for you, but I’m very sad that this is happening.
Exactly this.
But what am I going to do when I’m supposed to be working now? 🙁
I get it. But it’s very sad.
Actually, you just made me realize that the upside is this will be good for my productivity levels. So at least there’s that?
but who wannnnnts to be more productive? not me.
Freelancers. Our success/pay depends on it directly so….
Oh!
That’s. 🙁
I only found the Toast a few months ago, and I’ve dropped by almost every day since. I’m so sorry to hear it has to end, and more sorry still for all the people who called it home.
Good luck in your future endeavours, all of you.
Read all the backlog forever. It Holds Up.
SAME. I just found it and started commenting recently.
I am inordinately sad.
Also I think there needs to be some sort of network for Toast refugees, you are all lovely people and I don’t want to lose track of you.
Toast Slack group maybe? Or something, idk.
This feels like the time to create the Slack channel. Gather the remains.
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
Yay! I don’t have Facebook and Twitter is not my favorite. So I just made a Reddit account (never say never, folks- you’ll be eatin’ them words eventually)!
I also came here from The ‘Pin. I don’t comment here much because my work schedule means I’m not reading articles at Peak Times. But I read every day. I read the whole dang open thread even if it is on Sunday. I love The Toast so much.
::stares at eminent gaping toast-shaped hole in life::
Same exactly. I don’t comment as much as I used to, but I came here from the ‘Pin by way of Jezebel oh so long ago. I recognize some of our commenter names from all of those sites over the last 8 years or so. I want somewhere to go next! And I want Nicole and Mallory and Jane and Roxane and Edith and Anna and Dodai to all write for it in some kind of feminist-humor super star party in the sky.
I would also like to clearly state that I totally get the disinclination to keep shouldering the whole burden of running something like this. #noguilt #noregrets #yolo
Yes, for sure. I don’t really want to do the twitter thing but if that’s where we all go, I’ll go too.
I agree that if we could set up a Toast refugee forum somewhere that would be ideal.
I don’t even have a twitter account.
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
Oh crap. Reddit is one of the web sites my work blocks. Gonna be spending more money on the data plan for my iPhone I guess… 🙂
If there’s still an Open Thread today, maybe we could make a masterlist of Toastie community groups and side projects to follow and join?
A+ I agree!
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
I just made an account (and was very lucky to find MsJinxie available to me over there!) – I wouldn’t have joined Reddit for anyone but Toasties.
Same here! (except Es_Petal, obv, I’m not stalking your username)
amazed that i joined reddit without a second thought at the words “toast subreddit”
username there is “aspecialprovidence” because all sparrow related things were taken 🙁
I’m in a Facebook group for refugees of a different late, great website (RIP The Dissolve). It kinda sucks because Facebook is clunky and hard to search and generally just not great, but it works because a lot of us were there anyway and you can get notifications and whatnot. They also started a forum, but it was harder to get in the habit of going there.
Yes! What I’m already mourning is the community here. There has to be a way to keep that going.
Exactly. I have no doubt that everyone involved with running the-toast will go on to do bigger and better things once they’re no longer spending all their time deleting comments from men/raccoons and I’m super looking forward to reading ALL of it. We just need to find a new place where queer librarians can hang out.
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
Where will we all go and what will I do with my time???
It’s oddly fitting for me that the Toast will be stopping the summer I quit my job and move. It has been a great distraction and support for me these past few years and I will be forever grateful.
That is *EXACTLY* what is happening to me! I’m moving from one huge Texas city to another, from a horrible inner-city teaching gig to a new teaching job in a really nice district, and from a long-distance relationship to living 5 minutes from my dearest love/primary partner. I feel like The Toast got me through all the rough stuff that led me to the awesomeness I’m moving to (literally started reading it my first year at this horrible job), but I’m also super sad that this amazing place won’t be part of my new life. I’m actually grieving a bit. 🙁
Your new huge Texas city probs isn’t San Antonio but on the very small chance it is, drop me a line! #toastrefugees
DFW to Houston, but really want to visit San Antonio some time, plus it’s Texas, so we’re used to the long drives! lol
But we should have like an all-state, Texas-sized round up of Toasties to mark the glorious end! Remember The Toast!!
(…is that Texas blasphemy?)
NEVER. Remember The Toast!
SA is fun! And it’s only 3 hours from Houston, and there’s a Buccees on the way. Come visit and we can go to my favorite coffee place, that is in a little house and run by French people who make their own everything including pastries and also keep chickens in what used to be the backyard.
Also, tacos.
You had me at Buccees and coffee chickens. 😉 How does one DM so we can set this up?
*waves* I’m in SA! What coffee house is this? I live out in the suburbs, so I feel like I miss a lot of cool stuff more centrally located.
Hello!! Commonwealth Coffee in Alamo Heights. I know there is cool stuff in the suburbs but I live in midtown so I am a font of knowledge for stuff near me, but outside 410 get sort of “IDK, is that near La Cantera” for everything.
lol that’s me for stuff downtown unless it’s near the zoo or the art museum! I will have to check out Commonwealth Coffee, thanks for the rec!
What?!? Obviously I spend way too much time at work if there are delicious French pastries being served in probably a 2 mile radius of where I live and I have been blisslessly unaware.
Also, breakfast tacos.
#TexasToasties forever!!
As long as we can do it close to San Antonio, I am SO IN! (sorry to be picky, I have little kids and it’s tough to get away for too long)
I’m not local to San Antonio but its such a pretty city, and an affordable little mini-vacation that this isn’t a difficult request.
I live in Houston! But #TexasToasties should definitely plan this!
ditto to you – join the Houston meetup group sometime! mel @ melaniegreene .com for details.
I just started a Texas Toast group as well:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/texas-toasties
We have a Houston pod! Email me sometime – mel @ melaniegreene .com – and you’ll get invited to the next gathering. Fair warning: the next gathering might involve moving me into my new house.
(It won’t, but how awesome are Houston Toasties, that they’ve offered!)
WOAH, hi. I’m in San Antonio!
Join the google group! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/texas-toa…
*waves* are there enough of us for a mini-meet up?
I would love to do a mini-meet up! Or a not-mini meet up. Tbh, I moved here without knowing anybody and still know fewer than 12 people in this whole city.
I’m in SA too, yo! I did t know there were so many of us!
Join the google group! #toastiesforever https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/texas-toa…
*waves* me neither!
Yes, me too. And I think the Toast has been at lot responsible for the positive changes I’m making this summer.
Me too!!
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
The Toast is ending for me my last day in the U.S. I feel like crying because the Toast really got me through high school and I wanted it to be there for the future! Seriously anything that made me feel a little less alone in high school is something I’ll appreciate forever.
When Videogum got shut down (still not over it) those of us with the fewest coping mechanisms started a community blog of our own which has been nice.
Maybe a Facebook group. I’m in an FB group for my favorite podcast and I love the community there.
I have to ask – is it Can I Pet Your Dog? Because that’s MY other internet happy-place, too!
This can definitely work, I’ve been in a closed group there before.
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
Please!
I will lay down on my sword and use Twitter again if I have to.
No twitter, we have a subreddit! Come join us.
This is the motivation I need to finally join Twitter.
I’d love to see the equivalent of a Link Roundup/Open Thread somewhere where Toasts can share and discuss interesting things we’ve been reading as well as talk about our lives. Toastie Twitter is wonderful and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but there’s something great about being able to contribute to a localized conversation.
I wondered a few weeks back at some foreshadowing on Mallory’s Twitter, so this doesn’t feel like a surprise to me, but I am still really sad.
That’s exaaaaacctly the website I want, if the toast is no more. I’m sure we’ll still be reading the writing of these ladies elsewhere, and I’m grateful for that. But I really love the link roundup and open thread discussions, and we can’t get that on The Guardian or Slate or from a book.
Agreed, I love the conversation starters the links provide. (Now I’m extra sad about Google Reader, because what a perfect venue to continue the LRs!)
I dislike Twitter strongly, I find it overwhelming, but The Toast has been an amazing way to help me get through my days without cracking (I work in human rights and the world can get you extremely down some days). If there was a forum somewhere I would 100% join.
When Nikki posted “It’s HAPPENING” on facebook & we were all guessing at what GOOD news it could be, except someone mentioned Twin Peaks & I was like, uh-oh. And YUP. Twin Peaks–the Giant had warned us. So, I guess I’m not surprised either. But very, very sad.
So we olds/ tech curmudgeons may need a primer on how to join Toastie twitter – I definitely want your reading lists, advice, general commentary in my life
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
Yes!! honestly the Link Roundup is how I both keep up with the goings on on the internets/world and the ensuing discussions were so great. I don’t actually comment that much, but I read SO many of the comments!
agreed! i’ve been reading religiously since day 1 but very rarely comment (and absurdly still feel so part of the community, mainly because everyone here is a goddamn delight)
it’s once-weekly, but i do send out a link roundup that borrows from nicole’s style [and has similar links] — tinyletter.com/sfbillimoria
Subscribed, thank you!
Me too!
I think Reddit should be considered as a Toastie refugee camp. Moderation is easy, most folks can access it at work, and those of us who prefer to be anonymous can still use pseudonyms (vs. our real life Facebook profiles).,
But Reddit is also Reddit, and if we want a haven from dudebros then we need to look literally anywhere else.
Reddit allows individual seubreddits to moderate themselves however they want, so it’s definitely possible to have a subreddit that’s pretty much free of dudebros.
Also, we can make subreddits private and prevent posting except by invitation.
This is definitely an option, but I think I’d prefer if we tried a public subreddit first. As someone mentioned in the other where-shall-we-go thread, private communities have a very different feel.
I think maybe down the road, it might be worth it to go private – hopefully since Reddit is, well, Reddit, people will get it? But while we’re still in GATHER THE LIFEBOATS mode public makes way more sense.
I think there is a risk that going private would be a slow death sentence to the group. Regardless of whether the group is public or private, some people will trickle away over time. If the group is public, then new people can join if they like what we build, even if they never visited The Toast while it was active, and that might offset the losses. If it’s private, then few such new people will appear, and the group might eventually shrink below a critical mass. Even if there’s a mechanism for requesting an invite, having to ask will cause some people to turn away.
That said, nothing lasts forever anyways, and it’s possible that as a community we’d want to stay focused on people who do remember when The Toast was active. So it’s certainly possible that private might be the right option.
I…actually tentatively like this option. I know that a large portion of Reddit is a raging trash fire, but there are some pockets that are very polite and helpful. Mostly I like the idea of being able to have posts and threads–I like Twitter, but sometimes it feels like yelling into the ether, and also those of us on the more verbose side would probably like a means of contributing complicated multi-paragraph thoughts to a conversation.
A while ago I would have rejected this idea out of hand, but now that I’m addicted to r/relationships and have gotten to know Reddit a little better I can actually see it working.
Also tentatively endorsing.
I am wholeheartedly endorsing this option. Yes.
Provided a solid mod team can be put in place, I can get behind this.
Yeah, I think that may be a better option than many. Twitter is great but diffuse, a separate forum requires a lot of setup, and a Slack channel will become unwieldy quickly. If there’s a way to keep out the dudebros, Reddit may be the answer.
Oh, the irony of that!
Well, what about Tumblr?? I mean, you have to follow each other, usually centered around a main themed blog, but it’s not Reddit, and you still have the ability to post, link, and discuss! Takes a little more work, since everything isn’t in one place, buuuuuut I’m already on, and even with people’s reassurances that the particular Toast subreddit is ok, I’m still uncomfortable creating an account and using Reddit.
There could be groups of us on multiple websites, afterall!
On Tumblr I’ve seen other Toasties, as well. All it takes is one main Toast themed blog for people to easily find and Follow, and from there we can follow eachother!
My Tumblr name is: godzillasflyingpizza
If someone creates an r/toastrefugees, I might actually go back to Reddit after four years.
If someone creates an r/toastrefugees, I’d actually make a Reddit account!
same. I’ve been resisting, but I would join for toastrefugees
I’ve never really been on it, but would be willing to learn.
I have tentatively created https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastRefugees/ just to babysit the name, but happy to hand it over to people more well placed in the Toastie community.
I sorta dislike the usage of refugee, actually, since there are real refugees whose problems do not compare to ours.
I created http://reddit.com/r/burnttoast
I admit I had a kneejerk negative reaction to the idea of Reddit, but I have joined other online platforms when my communities migrated and it usually works out excellently, so I am warming to the idea.
Protocoach created one: Toast Crumbs
WELP time to make a new Reddit account then.
My coworkers have tried for years to get me to Reddit and I refused, but this did it. Signed up!
Signed up, am using the same name (lemonack) as here!
I’m not a redditor but I would learn to be one if this was our refuge. It seems like the best option, tbh. I don’t want to use facebook and twitter isn’t really a “community.” Are there reddit experts on here who can lead the charge? If you need moderators, I have experience moderating even shittier websites (you don’t want to know. Unless you do. In which case maybe I’ll share that some day. Let’s just say it starts with 4 and ends with WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. it was 2005. I was naive. ANYWAY.)
Oh god, you’ve been in the trenches. You’ve SEEN things. I second your nomination, most heartily.
I normally hate Reddit but I would gleefully spend 6 hours of my day at work on a Toastie subreddit.
I also ditto this idea.
I second all of this. Twitter confuses me.
Thank you! I mean, I think I sort of get Twitter, but I find it really hard to keep up with… Even though most comments sections are awful, the Toast’s has been fantastic. I am, like, so much smarter thanks not only to the amazing posts on the Toast, but the comments that happen on those posts.
Hopefully a subreddit can somewhat replicate those conversations. Because they’re awesome. Even if I’m not sure I have anything worthwhile to contribute, I really enjoy reading them.
Replying to this to voice my support for the idea, and to keep up with updates.
I have tentatively created https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastRefugees/ just to babysit the name, but happy to hand it over to people more well placed in the Toastie community 🙂
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
I have no idea how reddit works, I am a facebooker! Will it be scary?
For this and this alone, I would finally join Reddit.
I’m very sad about The Toast closing, though of course I understand, but I am BEREFT at the idea of losing the community. Why did I lurk so long before beginning to participate?!
And why did I wind down my participation after being fairly active two years ago? If I’d known it would only last three years, I would have made the most of every week of this.
I guess that’s true of life in general – you never know how long something is going to last, and sometimes it’s a lot shorter than you expect. But jeez, this is hard.
Don’t lose it! Come with us: r/ToastCrumbs. It’ll only be scary and new for a while.
I HAVE DONE THE THING. Thanks so much for setting this up!
Joining the thread because I would like to be a part of this. I don’t really have a social media presence, but maybe this is the time to start one!
Me too, I don’t really do much social media but I would absolutely join a Toastie reddit page. If someone who understands how to use reddit (unlike me) makes this, can they post the link in comments on a later post?
Same here. I don’t have any social media presence, but was finally deciding it was time to set up a real (vs. burner) account to comment here because the community is so awesome. 🙁
If this were all to move over to Reddit, would the group have to hire someone to moderate? Or does Reddit handle that (and would they handle it according to the specifications this community would want?)
I think we would just have to have some people commit to moderating it. A lot of reddit moderation can be automated, and the community itself can be locked down pretty thoroughly on top of that. Then we would just have to have some volunteers to moderate.
There’s also downvotes on Reddit. Downvotes are not my favourite thing, but they do provide a reasonable way for the community to deal with out-of-line comments when there’s no one doing the sort of highly dedicated full-time moderation that The Toast has now.
there’s a boston toast/pin group on the facebooks still!
Yes! I am sad to be losing the Toast but I would be even sadder to lose all of you.
^^^This this this this this
As a refugee from early xoJane (before they jumped the shark), I can recommend ProBoards.Com for a good free forum. As a bonus, it even has an old school-style scrolling chat box built in.
When I started crying reading my phone this morning, Mr. Editor was legit worried and came over to attend to me. And I just showed him the headline, and he gave me the biggest hug because he knows what this community means to me, calling Toasties “My People.”
As he was trying to comfort me, he said, “Hey, Dead Heads still managed to keep going after Jerry died. If they can coordinate, surely Toasties can too.” He also added that tote bags are a great idea, if we are going to learn anything from the Grateful Dead: merchandise.
Probably a safe assumption that, on the whole, Toasties are a more organized contingent than Dead Heads? We have so many google doc spreadsheets!
I’d say it’s a fairly safe assumption that almost anyone would be a more organized contingent than Dead Heads.
Imagine how organized Dead Heads would be if ~80% of them were librarians?
Posting this in a few places because I’ve seen people mention it: there’s a google sheet for information of toasties on other platforms:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_26MiL9WN…
Feel free to add your info!
Erm, sorry to be a total idiot about spreadsheets, but how do I insert my info without messing up the rest of the sheet? Do I add my stuff in row 1 and then press enter?
Put yourself in the next available row. Don’t write over anyone’s info. What you put in is how it will look, because Google sheets saves continuously. You may even see text appear as others are adding things in real time. Best of luck, let me know if you still have issues!
Real-time updates in shared docs are the weirdest thing.
spooky right??
I was doing a live tutorial with a tech support person the other day, and we kept stealing the cursor from each other.
Yay for this!
Goodness, this is gold! Thanks so much!
that moment when you unexpectedly stumble across your good childhood friend in internet comments…I’m honestly astonished I haven’t lurked hard enough to see you before. hi, autumn!
I don’t comment a ton, but I read everything! Did you make it to the slack or reddit groups? The slack one seems like it’s working pretty well for people.
I saw something in open thread about you doing a comedy thing, something about bananas? Was that you?
Yes, yes, and yes (I’m in slack and reddit now and also am responsible for the bananas)!
I missed the slack link, help!
Ughh I know, without this one central location, tracking you all down and making everyone be my Best Friends Forever and Ever and Ever is going to be way more logistically challenging.
I got twitter- and tumblr-followed by some Toasties today, so I’m going to have to make sure to a) follow people back, and 2) become better with my social media presence.
No! Thank you for giving us so much joy but no! I’m so sad!
Oh no! I was waiting for the Link Roundup so we could all mourn Agent Carter together, but this is way worse. I fully understand your reasons (I’m an editor for a magazine that’s basically surviving on love and a piece of shoestring, and I dread the moment that we may be faced with this decision), but I will miss this space terribly.
Oh, fuck.
Actually crying rn
Same, and I’m at work so this is great.
Me too. Thankful that the library is empty. Jesus.
Me too! Where are we going to go now, back to Jezebel? I totally get it but it really sucks.
protocoach created a subreddit. There are people there. Our people. Most of whom, like me, are currently weirded out by having a reddit account. So, join in the weird.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs/
Crying and thinking about taking a Xanax.
Me too 🙁
I had a really, really bad week already and this is the absolute down low.
My week has been full of endings and loss, so this is especially upsetting.
YEP, literally in tears at my desk, thank goodness no one else is in the office today.
SAME. I was going to blame it on pregnancy hormones but glad to hear I’m not alone and this is a normal reaction.
Yep. Me too. I do want to say that I’m glad you guys are doing what you need to do, or at least taking the best of a bunch of bad options. But I’m really sad for me.
I have to take a final and finish packing and work on a final paper I got an extension on and beg a teacher for a SECOND extension on a different paper and find some way to fix the cracked casing on my laptop and embark on a 2-day drive AND start looking at jobs today, and this was still the worst part of my day.
Joining the crying party
I’m just grateful I’m not on desk until 11. If I’d read this news on desk, that would have been… bad.
I’m so glad I didn’t see this until I got off desk. Now at least I have an hour to get all my crying out in my office. I really feel for all the Toastbrarians who are reading this on desk right now. 🙁
I read it on the desk. I don’t want to think about what my face must have looked like.
“It’s…it’s the old books. Yes, the old books are very dusty. I’ve been down in the stacks.”
I keep thinking I am finally fine, but won’t stop reading everyone’s comments, and … just teared up for the fifth separate time. It is hard to transition from knowing people are wondering why the hell I am laughing at work to why the hell I am crying. I am just, I have this crushing feeling and actual heartburn, I don’t know how I will get over this and OF COURSE I NEED TO GET OVER THIS, it is not about me. I just love this place too much.
I am traveling IN PRAGUE and I am legit crying! If being in Prague can not stop me from crying, nothing can. (My poor mother is so confused.)
This is so so sad. :((
I just found the Toast and now it will be going away soon….
So super sad. The loss the too heavy to contemplate right now.
Actual tears are forming in my actual eyes, and I only just discovered this place 6 months ago. I can’t imagine how sad the 3-year veterans are. But thank you for existing, The Toast.
maybe when we’re 90 or so the toast will come back and save the world from aliens
There is no justice that The Toast is closing when [long list of other sites] are not.
Bustle!!!! *shakes fist*
fucking. bustle.
lol Bustle
And Brian still hasn’t given Mallory a massive brick of money!
“Dick Cheney remains alive” is always the metric I go by.
How do I explain to anyone why I’m welling up and not sound crazy?
We get it.
Explain nothing. Let the plebeians stand in awe of your majestic eye-water.
And henceforth, that will be the only worthy name for my tears.
this is sheer perfection
Go back in time and convince everyone you have a severe allergy to X, and you got a face full and so it’s JUST ALLERGIES GUYS.
Never been so glad to be able to hide in my cube.
Only talk to other Toasters …?
🙁
thank you so much for everything.
Seconded! I’m mostly a lurker, but I love you all (staff, commenters, contributors, whatever).
I AM SO SAD.
Me too… but your username just made me smile, because there are lots of bumblebees in my garden, and I’ve never imagined them farting, but now I’m imagining wee bumblegas escaping their bumblebottoms, so thank you for that!
The fact that it made you smile made me smile too 🙂
“Wee bumblegas” is exactly the kind of thing I will mourn not stumbling over on this site anymore/soon.
Aw dang
I wish you guys the best, and a part of me knew that the magnitude of maintaining a site and a community was maybe too much to be sustainable. You’ve put so much work into it and I will always be grateful for that! Thank you thank you thank you.
Still hurts though. Getting through Upcoming Life Changes will be a bit harder without this daily haven of humor and support, I suspect.
NO NO NO NO NO
I realise that you are at perfect liberty to stop doing the Toast whenever you like, and it is a lot of work, and the financial return is shit (I was going to set up a standing donation to the Toast! It’s in my financial spreadsheet already!), and we are all just very lucky that you chose to do it at all and give us all of this delightful content and community without sticking it behind a paywall. But I am really sad.
(It is the middle of my work day and I feel like I am going to throw up from misery; this is the worst.)
Same. I should leave the bathroom stall I’m currently hiding in and do some work but I can’t make myself.
I was on the enquiry desk (library), so I am grateful I did not start crying. I just feel terrible.
(Nicole, you are completely right that you shouldn’t feel guilty! You created an excellent thing and brought a lot of joy into your readers’ lives, and you have no obligation whatsoever to keep running it just for our benefit! Sorry if all of the wailing is making you feel bad.)
Oh gosh I just pictured libraries around the world full of sobbing librarians. I should go pick up my holds (Everything I Never Told You, and I am already looking forward to reading Ng’s Toast interview when I’m done!!!) and offer gentle hugs.
I am excited for anyone who is about to start reading Everything I Never Told You! Such a great book.
I took today off because it’s the end of the semester and I’m burnt out! I was not planning to spend this morning crying about the toast!
NO I JUST FOUND YOU GUYS
And like, I want to say that closing the site is obviously in the best interests of the wonderful writers, and of course I wouldn’t want them to continue doing this solely out of obligation
But in my short time here I’ve just been overwhelmed at what a lovely community the comments section has fostered, and while I don’t think I was here long enough to properly be a part of it, I’m just so so sad for everyone’s loss. Like, to the point of tears, here in my cubicle.
NOBODY LOOK AT ME
It’s your loss too! <3
It’s also your loss!!! 🙁 we grieve together!
this probably shouldn’t make me cry but i think i’m crying anyway fuck
crumbs!
No!!!
Please point us to where we can find some of your other past and future writing!
This is sad news for us readers, but congratulations on making what must have been a very difficult decision. I (we) completely respect your decision, and of course I (we) wish all of you at the Toast great success and happiness in your myriad next steps.
“It’s difficult to convey an accurate sense of how much we both love The Toast and everything it’s become and also being ready to stop!” I think we understand this. Just because I loved my college and the experience of being there doesn’t mean I wasn’t ready to graduate. And in Nicole’s case, at least, it sounds like the alternative to graduating isn’t so much staying in college as abruptly having to become the person who makes sure all the students’ meal points accounts are working, which is to say, not what you signed up for.
Best wishes all around. Thanks for spending three years giving us access to wonderful writing. (And I’m looking forward to a month and a half more!)
Oh.
Ohhh.
Ohhhhhhhh.
*presses handkerchief to eyes*
It’s fine. I’m just allergic to sweet, candid, for-the-best announcements, is all.
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
(we love you both)
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
eep!
but guys today is my birthday
PARTY IN NEW YORK BETTER HAPPEN THO Y’ALL
TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY TOO AND NOW IT IS THE WORST OF 34 🙁
Tomorrow is my birthday. *weak birthday high five followed by lolsob*
Wow. We super love you guys. I can’t wait to see what new avenues this opens up for you. Thank you so much for your hard, tireless, (payless!) work over these years. ♥
If there is any interest in creating some kind of toast refugee message board, I would be willing to set that up.
I would love that. Even if it was just a space replicating the once-a-day Link Roundup and the Friday Open Thread, that would soften the blow.
ETA: Moderation would be important though.
Yeah for sure. I would need to think through logistics, but man, this community is so great!
I would definitely be up for that, and I’d offer any help! The community is the best part of The Toast for me, and besides that, I am definitely gonna miss the daily Link Roundups (and the talks about them).
I always, always read your username as “burning opossum.” I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while but I never got around to it. Now that the clock is ticking on our time together, I thought you should finally know.
LMAO. You are not the first tbh, it is also my tumblr url and I’ve had someone tell me the same thing! (Possums ARE awful, as we reiterated this week thanks to Mallory.)
Thanks for making me laugh!
Well I’m following you on Tumblr now
Me too!
Having been a member of a Jez refugee message board or two in my day, it can work, but it can get real, real tough.
(hahahahha ohgod)
I vaguely remember all the scandal revolving around Bluestocking, but for the life of me I can’t recall much of it. It’s probably better that way.
yes absolutely, I would love this
Yes, we definitely need this. I think we’re a clever enough group that we can figure out how to moderate if effectively.
This would be excellent! If it gets too much, I will say, I’m part of a closed Facebook group that only allows posts on Fridays and works sort of like an open thread, and it’s pretty darn good. The group is pretty self-policing and I totally think if anyone could do it, Toasties would be able to maintain a similar sort of dynamic quite successfully.
oh man that might just get me back on fb
Having just created a reddit account for the purposes of joining up with Toast refugees, I am currently buying into the theory that a) a moderated reddit group will be just fine, because Toasties will make great moderators, and b) it’s better than FB because you can make up a username and not have to post with your real life identity which might just be Too Real for many of us. Such is my current take on it, which I’m testing out at the subreddit protocoach created for us, https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs/
This I like (the closed FB thing). Up thread there was talk of a Reddit group but idk…FB, as problematic as it is, may be better than Reddit. I’m in, is what I’m saying!!!
Please and thank you, yes, yes I want that thing.
Let’s give it a go, at least.
If this was back in the day I’d suggest a livejournal community. AND NOW I’m crying over missing LJ too, lmao, GREAT.
LJ may be gone but what about Dreamwidth? They’re still around right?
I… think so, although I never used them (except to create an acct back when they first opened lol). Insanejournal is actually still around, too, but mostly only RPers use it. Technically livejournal IS still around it’s just… really weird now I think, I dunno.
Yeah, same 🙂
But I believe that it has all the features of the old (good) LJ and might be a good place at least temporarily?
Can confirm that Dreamwidth is still a thing.
Oh my god, this prompted me to find my old Livejournal. Both of them – the standard angsty stream of consciousness one and the secret Harry Potter fanfic one (Tonks ftw!). My most recent post is February 2011. This is terrifying.
I’m in. As long as there’s vigorous moderation, and a schedule for link roundups, we will live on.
I would also love that.
I would be interested.
I am both strongly in favor of this and also have like 8000 cautionary tales for you that houblonchouffe can corroborate. But yes, continued community SOMEWHERE please.
(Someone upcomments suggested a FB group and while FB is sort of Of The Devil it also is probably the easiest platform from a gathering-people standpoint? Going somewhere totally stand-alone can be weird community-maintenance-wise.)
YES IT CAN, CAN CONFIRM THIS
It sounds super counterintuitive, but keeping it at least pseudo-public can somewhat help, because for the most part we all at least kind of filter because hey, public place, and when that level of self-censorship goes away… it can get ugly. There’s the flip side of STRENUOUS moderation for public fora. It’s a weird balance.
Yup. I saw this years ago when a forum I participate in closed down and some people went elsewhere and oof…
Aren’t a lot of people blocked from using facebook at work, though?
Yeah, this is a good point. I just think Semi-Public And Connected To Other Internet Places is a good plan and that was the first one I thought of? But definitely there are others.
I am up to my ears in moderator cred if any additional iron-fisted volunteers are needed.
Can vouch for IoL’s mod cred through DISASTROUS times.
I still bear the psychic scars of the Fametracker closing and diaspora.
Oh, man. Those were some days.
pleasepleasepleaseplease
Absolutely, and, yes, moderation is super key.
I would definitely be interested. Please, please, please do this. I don’t have any time to help but I will donate money towards this endeavor.
I am willing to be an iron fist of moderation/help in any way possible! I seriously would not know what to do without you lovely people!
I am 10000% interested – and if you want any help, I am glad to volunteer!
I am free and open to help in any way necessary.
I could totally donate a domain name and space on my web hosting package.
*mourns*
Yes please this community is so important. I would be super willing to help as best I can.
Yes, I am here for this and to help moderate or whatever is needed.
Posting this in a couple places just so the info is out there: there is a google sheet with toastie info who are on other platforms:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_26MiL9WN…
Feel free to add your info!
I will do whatever I can to help with this – Reddit actually popped to mind, god help me. I’m a mod for the Chicago and DC groups, so I have a way of rounding up folks.
I am also pro-Reddit idea.
I am highly supportive of this move and will do anything I can to help. I’m already one of the DC toastie group mods and have excellent/annoyingly conscientious organizational skills.
Adding my voice to those who would suggest a subreddit (/r/toastcrumbs would be AMAZING). Anonymity is key for some people and really there are a lot of non-terrible pockets in Reddit. I think we are niche enough that it wouldn’t be a major problem, esp with enough mods.
The other thing that would be great is we’d have a place to aggregate things like links to local meetups and the spreadsheet of users on other platforms linked below.
Brand-new subreddit: r/ToastCrumbs.
!!!
I was scrolling down this thread, thinking “yeah, this is all great talk, but is it actually going to happen?!”
And THEN IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Brand-new subreddit: r/ToastCrumbs.
i’d participate. toasties are intelligent, funny, cool broads. i want to chat with y’all regularly.
This was a site that spoke to my sensibilities much of the time. There are no others like this place.
Hear, hear!
Oh, oh no. Oh, I’m just so very sad. Thank you for keeping the archives up. Oh, dear, I need to go cry now.
Normally I’m only a little sad when a website closes,but the Toast is different. This is grief. I feel like I made friends here, real friends, kindred spirits. I don’t want to lose this.
We will miss you terribly, but leaving when you are done is ALWAYS the right move and I salute you for it.
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel. I am sad and missing things already, but I am glad that it’s ending on your terms.
I am repeating “nothing a woman does should ever be criticized” to myself to get through this day
My heart is broken, but I completely understand the why, and it’s not like y’all haven’t been pushing the idea out in the last few months to make it a gentler announcement.
Please be sure to tell us where to find the writing by the regulars, like Mary J Breen, when the time comes!
I am sincerely happy for you guys that you are closing up shop on your own terms and I wish you the best.
I am also nauseous and crying at my desk, but that will pass. I’m going to miss this community so, so much.
THIS IS MAKING ME SAD. THE ACTUAL TEARY-KIND OF SAD. I love you guys so much, and obviously you must do what makes you happiest, and thanks for everything, so much, but this is so sad, too.
i AM SAD AND UPSET AND WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US? I know you all have good reasons, and I will look forward to so much of your writing elsewhere, as well as your fantastic tweets. The Toast has been majorly important to me in the process of coming out this past year – especially Femslash Friday (how was that Big Bang Theory essay so wonderful?) and If X was your Y (shout-out to Nicole’s “If Colbie Smulders was your Platonic Gym Buddy”, which I printed out and handed to a friend while saying “This is how I feel about most girls, but never boys. I think I’m gay”). I will always love the Toast for that.
I’m also a PhD student in Religion and have found all of the engagements with religion on this website to be just what I needed. I love this site very much, and I’m sad to see it go.
^this. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a website so devoted to literature, religion, classic movies and the weird niches of pop culture I am so paradoxically fond of.
I know I won’t. But it was so beautiful while it lasted.
Sam, there are a bunch of RELI nerds who love the Toast (Krista D. even got Mallory to visit the AAR last year!) and mourn its passing. You’re not alone.
lol there are two of us just going by Sam! I’m an undergrad in history, my favorite Toast post is “Questions for my Mugger’s Friends”
All the best things end too soon. Long live the Toast! In our hearts, that is.
Also, Friday the 13th, appropriate!
So that’s why there was finally a Tom Hiddleston “X was your Y” post.
Ugh, man. My heart, guys.
Man, that is an excellent point, we should have seen this coming.
nothing could be more beautiful than this week’s anti-possum, anti-raccoon, pro-Tom Hiddleston content.
I had the exact same thought.
It’s true, yesterday I had an “omg this is like Peak Toast Day” thought but I didn’t say it out loud because I didn’t want to jinx anything and then look what happened anyway. 🙁
Thank you so, so much for everything you two have done. Y’all have brought so much joy to me and my friends, and articles here have made me change the way I think, and this community has improved my life immeasurably. I am so grateful.
Well, I agree it’s better to end when you’re on top…
I’ll miss this place.
Fuuuuuuuuck. You have been heroes and pioneers of a better internet! Thankyou for everything
This … this saddens me deeply, but also thank you guys for everything you’ve done here. It’s been real.
So, it really is Friday the 13th. Damn. My nightmares are coming true!
of COURSE it is
I was actually so shocked by this news that I didn’t even realize… (I also slept through some alarms and mindlessly rushed to work. You know, to read the Toast comments section.)
Can I go back to bed now plz?
I love you.
I wrote ^^ really quickly on my way out the door to work whilst sobbing. But what I wanted to say:
I’d been reading The Dash Toast since it started, but casually and always for a hearty laugh about texting my fav literary heroines & occasionally lurking comments. But then I got laid off from a job I loved and then replaced by an incompetent mansplainer & I was beyond devastated. And you guys were just…here for me. It’s been exactly a year since I really joined this community and I love you all and am grateful to you all for helping through a Very No Good Terrible Year. But with you all, it turned out to be one of the most fulfilling transitions of my life, and ultimately, I wish the same for Mallory, Nicole, & Nikki. And I hope to get to know you all better in another place on the internets.
I am relatively new to The Toast (only since Mallory became Prudie) and have loved it. You guys publish great stuff that’s fun and interesting and expands my universe and I have loved it. Best of luck to all of you!
So many complicated feelings! You all obviously know and can and will see how special this place has been for so many people, myself included. Thank you for all your hard work and so many great jokes and hard things and beautiful things and comment moderation. It has been a gift!
Since I definitely missed out on when Toastie Twitter got going–anyone want to share handles? @ me, please. @melissamsmc
I think there’s a document floating around somewhere, but I don’t know the link, so… I’m @ibelieveinher.
@headonist
@OshKoshMalosh
@jessenigma
For this very occasion, I just started a new twitter account that doesn’t have my extremely unusual actual first name in it: @EitherAda
Please don’t fear the egg. I will be dressing everything up properly when I get a moment.
@syntaxmoot
@bindavisdraws
@elitesemicolon
I am @indiamos, and I am making a Twitter list of you all.
@smrtestcookie
I just signed up. I don’t know how to twitter but I will learn for y’all.
@ideasoflight but I am not a real Twitter person who knows how to use it? But maybe I would be if my Twitter feed had more Toasties?
It’s a lot more fun to use when you follow good people! (But I’ve been on it since like 2007 so if you need any help lmk!)
I’m in the same boat. I never feel like I can find what I want to.
I am @gripyfish (currently locked for jobhunt reasons, but I accept and love all Toasties!)
@combledore
@actualmeg
ETA:
@catmanscrothers
@annecara
@Vincennes
@tekkah here!
@pomegranatefish
This twitter list has a bunch of us on it!
I have been meaning to create a separate twitter account for toasties (as opposed to my professional-oriented one) for ever, and today it must actually happen. I will return to this list once it’s set up.
ETA: Ok, I am now on twitter as @ofTrebond. I am currently an egg, but will get properly set up later.
@bastardsnow
@foxaboxen, here
@booksisbest
Fair warning, I’m going to be mostly drunk tweeting about hockey for the next month. Sorry.
I mean this seems like more of an endorsement than a warning to me! (@thephantommilk, but I’m a Bruins fan, so uh…)
followed immediately for that reason tbh (@mmsees, considering using twitter for real now bc of toastie twitter)
Following everyone on my account which is also connected to my real name!
I’ve just followed everyone who posted their twitter, but have “for reasons” not wanted to link my real name to Toast name. So when random lady who looks totally boring follows you… that’s me!
@Moar_Cheese…. I just signed up today
@scbecker, rapidly running through following all of you! (Also if anyone happens to be a Hannibal nerd still clinging to the season four dream I am occasionally @damnslippyplanet as well for Fannibal purposes.)
@enorwood here
My Twitter name is my real name, which I don’t quite want to post here. I have just followed everyone in these replies, though!
@__heck! I’m also on @embryoconcepts Toastie Twitter list, which is invaluable.
@schmassie
@mizshellytee. And a shoutout to hawthorn_tree for linking the Toastie Twitter thingie.
@nolasuffragettes
@mmsees – I’ve mostly been using twitter to lurk, but have wanted to get involved with toastie twitter, so now is as good a time as any
@cbdavidson
Well this blows.
(But if this is what it takes to get those totes, tho…)
Also, I’m going to have to tell my mom and then SHE’S gonna be sad too. Goddammit.
I actually think a Kickstarter for expensive single-serving cakes and various perfumed unguents is a fine idea, you all deserve it, and I would be pleased to contribute!
Thank you very much for all the happiness and may you all have success in the future, whatever that would mean for each of you.
Oh and also I hope you have one last “Children’s Tales Made Horrific” left in the pile 😀
Yeah, I think expensive single-serving cakes and perfumed unguents are the way to go here.
Oh.
*puts on tragedy mask and dances around to “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish”
🙁
Uhhhh I’m hungover in Myrtle Beach and wanted to check out some fantastic and thought provoking links before I went and hollered at animals in the aquarium but now me and my sunburn are going to cry in the shower.
I get it, truly, but I am the saddest fish in the sea rn.
Oh I feel for you. Go to Peaches Corner and grab you some corned beef hash. 🙂
And maybe Garden City next year? Quieter with less human trafficking. (Kind of not a joke, stay safe.)
Will I still somehow get Sansa pictures on a regular basis?
Follow Nicole’s Twitter, she posts most of the LR Sansa pics there first.
I can’t be coherent right now. I’m going to an cry in the office bathroom and then see if I can put some words together.
I’m still not really together (I am literally bawling my eyes out in the bathroom. I think I might need to go home and lie down.)
I feel like I only just found you, and in a world where I am completely alone, and really fucking lonley, The Toast has literally become my best friend. Whenever I do something or think of something funny I think ‘I can’t wait to tell The Toast about this.’ Or when I’m feeling really shitty, I know all I have to do is get through to 2pm and then I can forget about it and enjoy the LR.
I know there’s gonna be attempts to keep the community going, but it won’t be the same and I don’t really know what I’m gonna do without you guys. Everyone I’ve interacted with here has been so intelligent and amazing and has helped me grow and learn more about the world and myself (I’ve been shocked by how many times someone has had the same weird emotions or feelings as me. I’m not a complete freak it turns out.)
I’ve been contemplating my life plan for the next few years and I was so looking forward to sharing my new adventures with The Toast. I understand why you’re doing this, and I’m so grateful for all of the work you have done, I wish I had found you earlier.
Sorry for making this all about me, I’m having a lot of feelings right now.
Aw, honey! *hugs if appropriate* you are one of the posters I always look out for, so if we find a post-Toast home, I hope to see you there!
You expressed so many of my feelings.
<weeping>
Thank you so much for creating this wonderful community. I look forward to whatever y’all do next.
The only really fresh and hilarious thing I find on the Web in 2016 and it’s…toast. Thanks for the monks, and good luck…you’re dear, brilliant, and have many wonderful projects ahead.
Not allowed.
I’m torn between “NOOOOO THIS IS MY ONLINE HOME HOW WILL I SURVIVE WORK NOW?!?!?!” and “I’m super stoked that you guys get to cut down stress and find other exciting projects” but there isn’t a word for that (maybe in German?). So pretty much what I have is:
NTIMOHHWISWN?!?!?!?!Isstyggtcdsafoep
Which, weirdly, seems to fit.
Can I echo that? I echo that.
I’ve been lurking here for about two years. It was only a couple months ago that I finally decided to make an IntenseDebate account and start commenting on occasion, but this site has been part of my daily routine for much longer than that. Thank you for all your work, and I’m glad you’re able to shut it down with dignity.
/sweeps up broken heart/
But yes, thank you, and wind to your wings.
Oh.
But, oh.
But where am I going to get my lady-run site? Where am I going to get my funny and insightful lady bits? Where am I going to go to procrastinate at work? The Bargain Bin just came back!
Oh I’m so sad.
Commentariat, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
only commenting to giggle at “funny and insightful lady bits”
The sea, in this case, is Reddit: Toast Crumbs!
My HEART, though..!
I get it but also N O O O O O waugh
I was just starting to nose my way into this community and I feel like probably I have not gotten far enough to follow it anywhere? Waugh.
I’ll drag you along.* We’ve made it before, we’ll do it again.
*unless Tumblr in which case IT IS ALL ON YOU, I do not understand that ish
Twitter is the one I have never totally worked out, despite having one since like 2007.
But yes BRING ME WITH YOU. Is it bad that my first impulse was like START NEW COMMUNITY and then I was like oh wait A. people do not know you here B. YOU HAVE TRODE THIS ROAD BEFORE IT DID NOT GO WELL, IT WAS DARK AND FULL OF DRAMA-TERRORS
WHICH STILL REVERBERATE THROUGH THE INTERNETVERSE, HOW IS THAT
ANYWAY
yes, we have maybe learned a thing or two, we will navigate this world as best we can. And you can camp on my couch (*we actually have a spare room now with actual bed!*) and bother the cats anytime you’re back.
I feel the exact same way! What do we do now? Do I finally sign up for Twitter?
I totally understand and better to go out clean. But my inner 3yr old is still saying POOOOOOOS and finding a patch of dirt to kick. Man.
This makes me *so sad*. But thank you both for creating a great space.
Thank you for the work you’ve both put in, and the work of the rest of the team! I’ve enjoyed this content and this community enormously. While I’m sad to see it go, I’m really glad you’re getting out before you’re all completely burned out. That’s the best way to finish up a good thing – while it’s still good for you. 🙂
July 1st – so that gives us all plenty of time to plan our mass commenting move elsewhere, yes, Toasties?
I know there’s lots of talk about social platforms upthread (Reddit and Twitter and so forth), but I do like to imagine us picking some site at random and just descending on the comments en mass, the mods of said declaiming, “Whence came all these insightful, hilarious, and all around lovely people?”
I found the Toast just a few months ago, but I’m going to miss you so much! Thank you for all of your work!
If The Toast was Your Dying Girlfriend
Ngl, trying to come up for my puffy crying face for when people inevitable ask and thinking is ‘my best friend is dying’ too much?
“Death of a family friend”?
Going with my old standby, “allergies”. An oldie but goodie.
*Trying to come up with AN EXCUSE for my puffy crying face for when people INEVITABLY ask
As usually, I’m sorry people of the Toast for my terrible quickly typed comments.
Nooooooooo!
It’s been great, though, and no regrets. Thanks for all of this, and best of luck in future endeavors. Now let’s take it out with a bang!
Sad but it’s been great!
I will miss the commenting community, too! (facebook group or anonymous continuation of some kind, anyone?)
Time to totally revamp my twitter to follow all the toasties and nobody else.
Time for me to finally become a twit(-terer)
I guess so!
The problem being, Twitter is not safe. I mentioned TERFs and a TERF gets all up in my mentions (for example) and you know, that’s fine, that’s what I expect of Twitter. I try to keep my Facebook safer but just yesterday some asshat came in about Ghomeshi. (I deleted all the comments except the one where a male friend of mine took him to task, and then I blocked him, but not before I, and a bunch of other women, had to read it.)
Which is fine. The world is not safe. I had to explain this to my partner one time where a dude in a meditation group made some fatphobic remarks – I can’t stand in line at a grocery store without seeing magazines that tell me my body is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. I can’t expect anywhere to be free of all the phobics and the isms. But… here was. It was something special that will probably never happen again. When someone fucked up it was pointed out to them gently. And I fucked up! And it was pointed out to me gently! And I read a book Nicole suggested and am ongoingly getting my knee to be less jerky about Christianity. I am a better person now!
So thanks Toast. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Same, girl, same.
I respect the consideration you have put into making this very difficult decision, but THIS IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
This is sad but understandable and right. As an educator I’m constantly repeating the refrain “You can’t build a sustainable profession on the goodwill of its members” and this is kind of the same thing. The Toast is such a haven of self-care for its readers that it would be unethical/hypocritical for its editors to bleed themselves dry keeping it going.
That said, I still want to grumble and kick things, and/or propose unwieldy schemes to keep the site going. Say, why don’t we put on a show?
Well-said.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
I’m sad that you’re closing The Toast, but happy for the joy and silliness it has brought.
I now dream of several more Hey Ladies! before the end.
I agree!!! I would love at least one more Hey Ladies!!
My heart 🙁
But thank you for not selling out this cozy little corner of the Internet. I remember what happened to TWOP and it was … bad. I will miss you guys and this community more than I have words for.
*Puts in time off request for July 1st so I can cry at home instead of at my desk like I’m doing right now*
I AM CLINGING TO YOU THROUGH THE AETHER
My only solace is that at least it is July 1 is a stat holiday in Canada
I am kind of crying at my desk because I love you (toast community) all so much and also want you (toast runners) to have lives.
The toast started publishing right when I was in the middle of university and basically taught me how to be a grown up in a world that sucks and never ever care about men. And then I became gay and it taught me how to be a grown up queer lady while still giving no fucks and I will miss it A LOT.
Also you should publish the greatest hits as a coffee table book.
Toast coffee table book is a FANTASTIC idea! I would buy that so hard!
I was actually thinking a Best of Humor/Best of Serious box set. Would buy and relish while sadly noting it’s definitely Not The Same.
Bon voyage, you crazy kids! Can’t wait until I read something in the future so magnificent and I check the byline and go “I knew about this incredible writer way back when.” I was one of the original Horde in TNC’s comment section, I read The-Toast from day one, I know we’ll all find each other again in this crazy Internet universe and I will miss this space. Godspeed to you all.
Thanks largely to Twitter, I’ve started keeping track of writers instead of publications/websites. I get to keep reading their work whether they’re posting on Slate or The Guardian or Tumblr.
You guys are like a great British TV show that does its three seasons, says its piece, and then waves goodbye. Leaving us wanting more (infinity) but grateful for the perfect portion we got.
Thanks for being my favorite site for three years.
I feel so sad, and I feel so much like I don’t deserve to be so sad because I found The Toast so much later than all of you. It has meant so much to me every day for the last five-or-so months.
Thank you for everything, you guys. I will miss you.
I’m in the same boat. Newer, but love the toast with all my heart– I only wish I had found the community earlier.
Come with us: Toast Crumbs! I know it’s Reddit, but trust me, we’re going to do everything we can to carve out a chunk of it and remake it in the Toast’s image.
I will be there! Only for my dear Toasties would I ever swim into the sea of Reddit.
It doesn’t have to end: Toast Crumbs! I know it’s Reddit, but trust me, we’re going to do everything we can to carve out a chunk of it and remake it in the Toast’s image.
You were a staple, though! The time you joined doesn’t have much to do with it. I enjoyed your comments immensely.
Thank you so much for saying this! You have no idea how much it means to me. I would have replied sooner but I was in the hospital for a week and didn’t know.
This makes me so sad, but money aside, burnout is a very real thing! I will relish in your last month and a half and then find somewhere else to be a blog refugee (I’ve traced old timey balk/choire gawker to the awl and videogum to the hairpin to here – and shall continue to survive), and then you all can get some very well-deserved rest.
Thank you. You are all talented and wonderful and this place has been a true gift.
Okay, sorry, that was brief, but that was a rollercoaster of seeing your tweet and thinking ‘Surely not..?’ and then finding it to be ‘Yes, actually!’, then finding after reading this post that i’m happy for you guys? And kind of excited that you’ll have more time and freedom to get out there and do even more cool stuff, that I will then get to see.
This site has been a boon and a beacon. LOVE TO YOU ALL.
All the respect in the world. Thank you for giving us this wonderful gift for so long.
Please PRIORITY MAIL any news about ways to keep up with this community because it 10,000% rules harder than anything else on the internet!
Ah! My heart.
Once upon a time I did something for four years and it was enough years, and the Toast started just as that thing was coming to an end. It was so important to me, to have a place to come and joke with the commentariat, secure in the knowledge that if I were inappropriate it wouldn’t be public, I wouldn’t be shown as so unintentionally harmful.
This has been the funniest website and the most comforting and I am so happy you did this thing for three years. The Monks have led to a road-trip game so funny and irritating my partner and I managed to play it for two hours without noticing. The Toast is a book of books, go on with you, I look up to you so much, from the first Meetups to the last set of food-trolling, all the way down the piste.
Have a lovely summer.
Ah shit.
I mean, this must have been a difficult decision for you and it’s great for you that you made this decision, that you’re closing the site because you want to and also at the time you want to.
But still. So sad.
I’m really going to miss you all. 🙁
Thanks for a great 3 years.
I found The Toast almost a year ago, and I’ve been reading it almost every day since. It’s been a real pleasure, and a real joy.
The Toast: truly too good for this flawed world.
I mean, I understand and respect your choices, and I’m glad we have a little time to mourn and throw one hell of a wake, but still. I’M UPSET.
it me
oh wow. Thanks for all you guys have done, but I will miss this place a lot, especially the community, reading y’alls comments was the best way to distract myself at work.
<3
also would 100% back a kickstarter for a book of some of your best articles you guys have published on here if that’s ever a thing you’d consider doing!
May I say:-
a. Fuck this. The shitty topper to a shitty week.
b. I love you guys.
c. Despite being horrified personally, this seems like a very sensible decision.
Things come in threes, right? First Bowie, then Prince, and now this?
My heart hurts but we all understand. Thanks for giving me faith in humankind & great epithets for yelling at animals in my yard.
BRB going to go listen to Time Of Your Life all day
A suggestion for a Toast Post spin-off: Maybe we could arrange a ‘Closing of the Toast’ care package exchange?
That’s a lovely idea.
I am in, definitely.
I love this idea!
beautiful
I’m down.
Yes! Count me in.
Yes, that would be lovely!
I’d be in for that 🙂
Yes! I’m not involved with Toast Post, but I would do this.
Seconded!
Great idea.
YES GOOD GENIUS IDEA ME WANT
yes yes yes
YES.
Hear hear! I will totally give y’all a taste of Texas Tost(ies) to help ease the pain.
YES
Good idea!
Sign me up!
Yes plz.
I posted this in the OT, but figured I’d re-post here too –
Toast Post Summer Care Package Exchange!
If you would like to participate, please email the following info to toastsummerexchange(at)gmail(dot)com:
-Your name and address
-Your username here, if you’d like to share it
-Care package preferences/interests
-Any allergies that might be applicable
I’m thinking a small box of care package items such as snacks, books, fun bath products, stickers… If you send me your info, I will match you with another person. I’ll continue re-posting this throughout the next week to get more views, since I know I’m late today.
Yay this!
I’m crying at my desk like its the last day of school already! I’m so happy that you, Nicole and Mallory, are at peace with this and I’ll be generating a billion page views for y’all in perpetuity.
I will miss you, and your wonderful commenters.
This is one of the only sites I even created an account so I could comment because you are all so nice here.
Thank you for everything you have ever written here, everything you have done to boost new voices and all the work you have done in shaping the community.
I love you all.
Thank you for everything you’ve done. my favorite place on the internet.
I understand, but I’m so, so sad right now.
I am happy for y’all that you’re doing what is Officially The Right Thing in this situation but I am also BEREFT and also ANGRY that so much crap on the internet gets to keep going forever and ever and ever and ever but that my beautiful Toast must die.
THANK YOU x 1 million for creating this amazing nook of the internet, I will miss it SO MUCH but also can’t wait to see what pops up next.
Worst Canada Day ever.
I genuinely don’t intend this as an attempt to make you feel guilty about your decision or anything – but so much of my time every day is spent on this website. And then I go home and tell my husband what happened on The Toast and what hilarious comments made me silently choke with laughter at my desk. I’ve learned so much and met so many great people through this website and through Toast Post (evieskye and I talk every single day). There’s going to be a hole in my life that I would never have thought a website would be capable of leaving.
I was already peeved when they moved Pride (in Toronto, at least) to coincide with the Canada Day long weekend because I’d like to celebrate both, thanks (even if I celebrate Canada Day with a healthy dose of colonialism critique.) And now. Now this will be a very sad Queer/Colonial day celebration.
Thank you so much for creating this wonderful community and doing so much amazing, important, hilarious work for so many years, this is my favorite place really ever and even just being a mostly lurker here has improved my life in so many ways and I will miss it so, so much. I can’t wait to see what everyone does next.
now I go cry in the bathroom at work
I don’t have a gif for this.
okay this legit made me cry
me too, I was holding it together until this.
Same!
Oh gosh this comment
(If I had your skills I would post you that Jennifer Aniston hug gif)
Absolutely crushing
I just wailed ‘oh Manka, no!’ and started weeping at my desk
exacccctly
ok this actually made me tear up 🙁
oh no
Girlfriend. I managed to not sob until that.
ahhhgh my heart
Oh, fucking damn it. I’m going to miss you all so much.
For those who are unaware, there is a vibrant community of Toasties on Twitter! I’m logicbutton there too. I understand that it’s not the same, but if it’s community you’re looking for, you can’t beat Toastie Twitter.
I’ve stayed off Twitter because I’m afraid it’d be bad for my mental health (so much triggering stuff goes down on Twitter) but I’ve been tempted by Toastie Twitter in the past and this may push me to try it.
This is a good idea and thank you for the invite. I’m going to start following Toasties! I’m phillyfilly77!
How would one go about finding this Toastie Twitter space? (I am a non-twitterer, but plan on becoming one now)
Nice! I’m @annecara on twitter as well.
My old person brain can’t understand twitter.
I am an old and I have come to understand it… mostly. Sign up and follow all the lovely toasties; you don’t have to tweet if you don’t want to, and you can watch the cool kids while they do their cool kid stuff.
@teamwybro – I probably post about my kids too much, ha!
I am leider_hosen on twitter, too, and happy to follow Toasties (especially if it’s clear that you are one)!
in the interest of putting these in a centralish locationish:
@cosetthetable
Okay, *this* is what finally made me join twitter. Apologies if I’m being a creeper. I am now @toastie015 because I lack imagination.
This is the thing which has finally made me accept Twitter into my life. I’m following everyone i see here and can be found @toastiebrujaja I guess?
Learning opportunity!
I’m @gileshasatv. I keep my account locked for safety reasons, but I should let anyone here through!
I love your Twitter handle. “He’s shallow like the rest of us!”
Count me in. @kittenzerg
Legit tearing up at my desk.
Thank you for all the work you have put into this place – it’s the best place.
DEEEEEEEEP HURRRRTING
First Peggy, now The Toast! MY HEART, you guys. 🙁 I do want you to know that The Toast and all its brilliant contributors have inspired me to continue to write, create, and build snarky true-to-me content. So thank you. <3
Thank you! Guys, without you I wouldn’t had made it past the first year on my office job. I will be forever in debt for a thousand suppressed laughter.
Thanks for doing this for so long, for teaching me that “no” is a complete sentence, for inspiring me to buy a bed tray, and for being the metaphorical taking to the sea on a lot of occasions. I’m glad to have known this site for the last three years.
Friday the 13th is the wooooooorst.
IT REALLY IS
I have never been superstitious before, but now it feels like I might start.
I thought this was a one-off thing for Canada Day and I just thought “wow the patriotism”
Thank you all so much. This site and the work published here has meant a lot to me and a lot of people I love, and I will miss it. I’m really excited to read your work in the coming forever.
I am unbelievably proud and happy to have been a visitor these past three years. While I’m sad to see you go, I’m mostly just grateful you did it for so long. You created something really delightful.
HOLD UP is this because we figured out the thing about raccoons? Did we blow your cover? Were you all raccoons the whole time?
I was assuming this column was written under the menacing eyes of a host of vengeful raccoons who have tied them up and are going to disappear them in a few weeks, after the Toast has published a series of Odes and Hymns in praise of Raccoons. What a legacy.
Wow–this has been my haven for over a year now and I am quite sad. I wish you both all the best in your editorial endeavors and know that you, Mallory, will be making me chortle in my cubicle with any and all of your riffs on past centuries and Western artwork.
Is there any interest in some folks taking this on as a labor of love? How does one do that? Or like another poster said, opening up a forum for Toastie commenters?
You guys are the best. I’m going to miss this site :'(
NO YOU CRATCHLE-SCRABBLERS, NOOOOOOOO (but thank you so much)
The Toast has given me so much (and you guys published me!) and I’m just so grateful that you existed for as long as you did. I look forward to creeping on the Twitter and reading the undoubtedly great things you get up to in the future. Thanks so much for The Toast!
I’m just going to forget I read this and go along my merry way and have a very nice weekend and then re-read this on Monday and begin the mourning process then.
Where are the toast totes??????
I’m so grateful for the warmth, support, and genuine community I have found here. You wonderful group of Internet strangers have helped me through rough work and family situations. Nicole and Mallory, you have created something really special here, and I hope it can live on in some forms. Thank you for all you have done to entertain us, support us, make us think, bring us together.
Oy. You guys.
Thank you for having built the hyphen toast dot net, and for having populated it with such wonders.
Thank you for planning to keep it online so favorite articles can be revisited unto the heat death of the universe (and so they shall be).
Thank you for the prodigious amounts of learning and laughter that you’ve gifted us all with.
Thank you for having the minerals to stop before the thing you made because you love it became a chore and then a thing that you opposite of love but can’t quit.
Thank you for burning so brightly while (narrowly?) evading burning out altogether.
Just…
Thank you.
I mean, I totally get it and I actually only ever lurked the comments and I wish you both the absolute best and so on
but I’m def crying rn.
PS THANK YOU FOR LEAVING THE SITE UP I WAS STARTING TO PANIC ABOUT SAVING IT ALL. I LOVE YOU.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
I can’t believe I’m commenting for only the second time to say: Ahhhhhhhhhh, no! And also, I’m glad you feel freed up: I get it, I mean, my life feels like this, too, so I truly, truly get it, but I love(d) this place so hearing this news makes me actually weepy. I hope we keep hearing from you both.
Nice going, jerks, you made a pregnant lady cry.
But seriously, thank you for everything, you guys. I’ll be following you too and Nikki and Jaya to whatever you do next. This site has been such a wonderful presence in my life.
Ah, the number of publications I am interested in pitching to just went down by one. Sigh.
You ran a wonderful site with ace content, and the next six weeks are gonna be great.
And to think that I didn’t sign up for Toast Post because I thought, next year I’ll do it.
Send your address to me at cheeky.cl at gmail and I’ll send you toast post!
ETA- This goes for anyone else who missed toast post, I have stacks of postcards!
Thank you, SmrtCookie! I’ve been trying to figure out how to get in on the Toast Post but I didn’t want to be the pushy kid demanding info on the party everyone knows she’s not invited to. You are great!
To be clear, I am not the Official Toast Post! I am just a toastie with a lot of post cards who is happy to send them to folks who missed out on official toast post!
You’re great, thank you.
Same :(((
Me too
🙁
I already planned my fall ’16courses so I would always be free for the Open Thread. I think my free hour will instead be devoted to gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
I did the same thing–I missed this time around and went, “Oh, well, I’ll definitely catch the next go-’round.”
I don’t even know what Toast Post is and that just adds to the sadddddddddddddd 🙁
I wonder if there is a way of safely archiving all the posts and comments for long-term preservation? So that there’s a record, even in the distant future, that The Toast existed? I know there’s a few archivists on here – anyone know of any web archiving initiatives that could manage this kind of material? I feel like Internet Archive wouldn’t be up to the task, especially when it comes to the comments.
Also, sharing in the sadness and gladness that you guys are doing the right thing. I intuited that this day was coming soon, so it’s not a shock, but it’s still sad. But I have faith that the community will find a new home!
That was my thought too!! I’m not sure on comments, but I, of course, have a (internal only) libguide for a bunch of archiving initiatives to fight link rot…. here are some sites (You can more proactively submit websites to Internet Archive)
Amber : From Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society: Drupal and WordPress plugin that stores snapshots of all links within a post, so readers can view how websites looked when they were linked to
Archive.is : personal collection of captured webpages
Internet Archive: Archive-It : lets other institutions create their own specialized archives of web pages
Journalism Digital News Archive : “Our hypothesis was: Aggregated news archives from small markets have value to academic researchers and could be a revenue source for journalistic enterprises.”
Mementoweb : aggregates archive pages and searches Wayback Machine and every major public Web archive for the view of a webpage on a specific date; Chrome extension available to do within browser. See Robust Links to create your own archived links.
Wow, thanks, this is so cool!
http://33.media.tumblr.com/5b70b16a3607ff6936b23f…
This site has been so special to me in feeling like I have a space during the day that feels calm and welcoming and wonderful even if everything else around me, is not. Thank you for putting so much into it over these past three years.
I am very sad and also I love everyone–the writers, the commentors, the fierce editors; fuck, I even love the deleted raccoons.
I’m going to go write some Toast post in order to make it through.
The Toast has become such a treasured part of my daily routine that when I too-casually informed my partner about this, his face got quite stricken and he gave me a big hug and I teared up a little.
Thank you Mallory & Nicole & the rest of the Toast team for creating this special community and of course, all of the amazing content. Thank you Toasties for always finding the perfect gifs, telling the jokes in my head 112% better than I could have, and for your thoughtful responses on every topic ever. Special thank you to Nikki for always eloquently putting my feelings regarding race into words. Stay too witches, everyone.
-hides under desk until emotions go away-
This post has compelled me to make my first comment here on The Toast. I was mostly a lurker,just reading the always smart and funny posts and the smart and funny comments. I always felt better about awful news things on the Link Round-up knowing there was a community of folks out there who for the most part saw and cared about the world the same way I did. This is a unique place and I’m going to miss reading it every day.
i AM SAD AND UPSET AND WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US? I know you all have good reasons, and I will look forward to so much of your writing elsewhere, as well as your fantastic tweets. The Toast has been majorly important to me in the process of coming out this past year – especially Femslash Friday (how was that Big Bang Theory essay so wonderful?) and If X was your Y (shout-out to Nicole’s “If Colbie Smulders was your Platonic Gym Buddy”, which I printed out and handed to a friend while saying “This is how I feel about most girls, but never boys. I think I’m gay”). I will always love the Toast for that.
Sorry to hear this! Right now The Toast’s the only site I visit consistently and read almost every post. It will be missed.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done here, and good luck with whatever you move on to next.
Mallory, I would totally Kickstarter you some cupcakes and expensive spa treatments. Your awesomeness has earned them. Also a break.
It feels weird to mourn a website but I AM MOURNING A WEBSITE. Love everything that you do, Mallory and Nicole, I will miss you and this place. <3
Mourning is EXACTLY the word I’ve been using for this.
OH MY GODDDD just as I was building up the balls to contribute more and more to the comments. I definitely support your decision, wise over-ladies, but I will probably cry about this. Thank you for the joy, the education, and the distraction that you’ve provided over the years. I love u and will continue favoriting your tweets from my private account. XOXO
Mannnnnnn…
I am going to miss this place, since it was my chance to be a wallflower at a party with all the Cool* Kids**. 🙁
* Queer
** LIbrarians
I am going to hold a Toast farewell party and the queer librarians will almost certainly be present.
Should we all get matching tattoos?? I feel like we should get matching tattoos.
I would get a toast tattoo!
Oh shit I actually want to get a little Toast icon tattoo now.
Yeah, I was kind of kidding and then kind of not kidding?
I also think I would?
I mean, at least we know it’s never going to go south and make those tattoos embarrassing in the future.
Hmmm…an upper bicep Toast icon tho…
um, same? crap.
Yep, this is absolutely the kind of feel I am having right now. The Toast will always be a permanent part of me; this community has absolutely left its mark.
LETS ALL GET TATTOOS.
I know a shop in London that would for sure do a Toast flash day.
I’m going to feel so sad when people ask me about my tote and I have to tell them the site is no longer active. But at least it’ll still be up! This is assuming the totes don’t sell out so quickly I don’t get one. New fear.
oh fuck
I really hope they don’t sell out so fast I can’t get one
aaaaahhhhhhh new fear also
This was my first reaction also.
WOULD GET
If tattoos aren’t your thing but feel the need to commemorate, Toast is also an excellent name for an animal or first-born child.
Hey — can you guys keep us updated on the site when you publish work elsewhere so we can follow you all? I don’t want to miss Nicole’s Guardian pieces or anything else you all do!
I got the majority of my feels out on Twitter, but:
Thank you all so, so much for existing. Without The Toast, making friends as an adult was a painful and challenging process, but here, we found a home. I’m so sad that the site is closing, but I’m happy that you were able to make this decision rather than being forced into it.
Now seriously, all of you who aren’t on Twitter, come join Toastie Twitter so you don’t lose us, ok????
First Videogum, then the Dissolve, now you all? I’m starting to think it’s me…
This means I really on need to get a move on and join Twitter so I can continue to enjoy the wit and wisdom of delightful Toast people.
It’s just — I have never been good at socialising and connecting with people and doing stuff, and feel very lonely a lot of the time. A lot of my interaction with people is online, which is easier in a lot of ways. LJ has been dying slowly for years, but then The Toast (and The Hairpin!) came into being, and there were all these great people, and lots of interesting conversations, and it was so easy to find people with similar tastes and who also happened to be really funny and interesting. There were great new opportunities for interaction every day, and it made me feel like I was less alone. To be utterly pathetic and quote Luna Lovegood at her most heart-wrenching, “It was almost like having friends”. I don’t know what I will do without it.
Wait wait are you on LJ? Will you be my LJ friend????
MAYBE US FORLORN TOASTIES CAN BRING LIVEJOURNAL BACK FROM THE DEAD
Wait but can we though?
I am on LJ! (I do not post enough, though, and it’s almost entirely friendslocked.) What is your username?
I’m elyse.livejournal.com – please add me! 😀
I will totally resurrect my LJ for the Toastie community.
Also since we both live in London and I’ve been meaning to say it for ages (I thought there was time!!), will you be my friend? Are you on the London Toasties fb group? (I cannot keep track of peoples names vs online names, if we have already met I apologize in advance, I know I’m a terrible person.)
I joined the FB group a couple of weeks ago! I will friend you on there. (You’re not a terrible person.)
Um, I haven’t just my LJ in a decade, but now I kind of want to if Toasties would just take it over.
It really has been almost like having friends. I’m lonely and isolated too, uncomfortable with a lot of social media, and will be isolated for a while yet – the Toast made living in central Missouri tolerable. I literally msged my partner “we’re gonna have to move up our Missouri escape plan to 12-18 months; the Toast is closing” when I saw this.
I think it’s very good that Nicole and Mallory and crew are protecting themselves, but I’m gonna miss this safe haven so much.
Welp, I guess I need to start actually posting in my LJ again. Perhaps we need another friending round of Toasties?
Sending Toastie hugs, if you would like them. I feel very much the same way. I’m not easy around people anymore, and none of my friends really share my same interests. I have treasured being part of this wonderful, kind, nerdy, smart and funny group, and have felt a kindred spirit with all of you. Losing this community during a lonely time will be very hard, but I hope we can all try to preserve it as best we can.
Come to reddit with us: Toast Crumbs! We love you, and we’re going to try to keep this good thing going.
I have never ever ever ever in my life cared about a website shutting down to the point of tears, yet here I am, awkwardly sniffing at my desk. You were the first website to publish something I’ve written. You were the first website where I could find articles and lists that fed all my various weird tentacle-y nerd interests. And the most wonderful commenters on the internet, seriously!!! Thank you so much for all of the everything. I hope only good things happen to you all. <3
p.s. I hope you weren’t joking about the NYC party because I am THERE.
I am trying to word a comment that is somewhere between “yes, of course, I always support you all doing whatever is best for yourselves” because YES, THAT, but also — “I am seriously trying not to cry at my desk about this” because the Toast has meant so much to me and I’m trying to imagine how I will fill this void in my daily reading/thinking/get through the work day practices.
I have so many random thoughts and chaotic feelings.
1 – good for you guys for figuring this out and leaving at the top of your game. I respect and adore you even more.
2 – Nooooooooooooooo
3 – seriously kicking myself for not actually submitting the piece I’ve been secreting writing for the toast for a year (tentative title: My Life in Flashbacks; a PTSD memoir)
4 – crap, maybe I should make a Twitter account (I’m afraid it will be bad for my mental health, but maybe if I stay on Toastie Twitter it will be ok).
5 – Noooooooooooooo
6 – thank you Nicole and Mallory. Blessings on everything you do.
7 – definitely a sign from the universe that it’s time for me to get a real job.
Yeah, I kept thinking, “I should write about [Thing] and pitch the Toast!” No more.
Well, I can’t say it comes as a complete shock, since you’ve all been open about the challenges of online publishing, and I’m also glad The Toast won’t continue on like a sad ghost of itself, but I sure will miss it.
Thank you so much for all the work you’ve put in to nuture this awesome community. I would be far lonelier without the people I’ve met here.
Thank you for everything!!! This is incredibly sad but you all have done so much for us and I am so glad you’re doing what’s best for you!
I am legitimately crying about the end of a website. But thank you for a wonderful three years!
Without detracting from the vigor with which I wish Mallory, Nicole and Nicole a month or a year of decent sleep-ins, the world is a most Cruel Place and I shall rend garments and gnash teeth most markedly.
Thank you so much for having made The Toast a wonderful corner of a sometimes awful and sometimes magical world.
GUYS– can we get one more Hey Ladies? For the road? Please?
So, 2016 continues at its astonishing level of shittiness.
You did great stuff. Best of luck.
This is so sad. I get it. But so sad.
Because I am an anxious person who needs immediate soothing: Toasts, what other websites/blogs/internet havens do you frequent that give even 5% of The Awesome we get here? I have some standbys – The Billfold, The Hairpin, a few random tumblr blogs… but I know there are so many other awesome spaces online and goodness knows I’ll need some sort of fix come July. Even if there is a good series on an otherwise “meh” website, please share!
I’ve been following the Fug Girls (http://www.gofugyourself.com/) for over a decade, on and off. Not the same content, but very often the same feel – good-hearted snarkery, with fashion and royals. They are lovely people on twitter, too.
Metafilter and AskMetafilter
A Practical Wedding has a very good community in the comments. The site content and comment topics go far beyond weddings too. I suspect there’s a bit of overlap between Toast commenters and APW commenters.
Captain Awkward, Ask a Manager, Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and AutoStraddle are also on my regular blog rotation – they all have good commenting communities with overlap with Toasties.
I’m so sad to see you go, but thank you for ever even existing!
This is very sad and I totally understand and I have the utmost respect for you guys and the Toast changed my life. Thank you for everything
love the site, love the commenters, excited to see what everyone will do next, especially the commenters
Wonder what the two-monks will invent last
This sucks so hard. Now where are we going to go escape reality? Understand your reasons though, thanks for the laughs.
Whew, it took me ten whole minutes to breathe again after reading this. I had a feeling things were winding down (all the greatest hits posts tipped me off, I think) but this knocked the wind out of me all the same.
Shock and sadness aside, I would rather see Nicole and Mallory go on to illustrious and well-paid careers than struggle with this site. Thank you for not letting the site descend into a zombie state and best wishes for your next adventures.
Toasties, looks like I’m joining ToastieTwitter because I can’t bear to lose all of you. I mostly tweet about politics and content marketing. @mementovivendis
This is the saddest day. Doesn’t help that I was listening to Tegan and Sara’s “100X” when I read the news…
It seems internet business is so unsustainable that nothing gold can stay.
This is my favourite site in the history of websites, and I am so grateful for having the chance to read your brilliant work and be part of the community you’ve created. Thank you both so much for founding The Toast. It pleases me to know that you have such rich creative futures ahead of you.
All I ask is that you continue to set world on fire with wit and humanity.
Thank you.
I haz a sad now.
The Toast saved my sanity.
You are all amazingly talented writers and I’m sure we’ll see more of you.
Where else will I find a site that tapped into EXACTLY MY BRAIN??
And I never did figure out how to login properly from my iPad.
Thank you so, SO much for everything, for creating this wonderful and safe community full of interesting, curious, and compassionate people. Thank you for excellent articles and comment moderation, for your jokes and for being yourselves, and thank you for ending the Toast in the most graceful and kind way possible. It has been SUCH a pleasure to be here for the last three years and it’s been so important in my life. I’m very much looking forward to what you do next, but now I might need to cry in the bathroom for a minute.
*screams uselessly into the void*
Well darn. I cannot blame you guys at all. There has a growing sense over the last year that N&M might need to be taking a step back from the site. I’m thankful for everything The Toast has been. But ugh, I’m so sad right now.
I have learned so much from this site – from finding fascinating long-reads in the Link Roundups to crying over Nikki’s pieces about adoption/racial identity to getting cooking and crafting tips and book recommendations in the Open Thread… where else can I go on the Internet that will have the same positive energy and open communication and kickass feminists as part of its community?
Checking The Toast every day as I walk to class has been my routine for over a year now, I’ll be very sorry to see it go.
If anyone has any advice for websites or sources I can start visiting to try to compile my own Link Roundups as it were, I’d appreciate it.
Yes the link roundups were part of my every morning, something I looked forward to with that first sip of coffee. If anyone knows how Nicole gathered the links …
Check out Longreads!
I love longreads, and also Longform!
i send a weekly roundup via tinyletter– and i would love nothing more than to have more toasties on it! tinyletter.com/sfbillimoria
This looks lovely! Subscribed.
I would request if at all possible that our M&N&N overlords, once Toast Commenter Diaspora routes are more firmly established than they are right this second, maybe make us a dedicated post on which to work some of this out/put up big SAD TOASTIES THIS WAY signs? Because this really is one of the best commenter communities out there and keeping in touch is always made drastically harder by like, multiple little secret clusters trying to sort things out. Some kind of community organizing masterpost would be GR9.
(I say on like, comments page four)
I believe there is a Toast Masterlist Google doc somewhere that lists folks’ twitter, instagram, etc handles. Not sure who runs it, however.
Commenting so’s to get all IntenseDebate updates on this topic!
Yes, please! Would some kind soul lay out a trail of breadcrumbs or a line of beacons leading to wherever Toasties/Toast refugees eventually land? Whither thou goest, I will go.
Commenting just to get updates…
We made http://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs/ ! Reddit is weird but there are Toasties!
*ugly crying*
*understanding nodding*
*thankful hugs*
I’m double-sad because not only will the Toast be gone, but this just feels like another nail in the coffin of the idea that good things can exist online. If The Toast can’t stay, what can?
Having the exact same thoughts… If any site deserved to be an online success, it is The Toast. The medium is used to its fullest, the range of tones is extraordinary, the quality of the writing and community is truly phenomenal.
Seriously, it hurts my heart and brain to think about a world without The Toast. Honestly, this is where I went on Sunday mornings when I would wake up and feel strange or not great about things, and I would laugh or I would feel intensely…
And yes, if The Toast can’t make the internet work for them, I’m not sure what other sites of a similar tenor and quality will be able to.
Wait, but how am I supposed to occasionally piss off Mallory by claiming that The Courtship of Princess Leia was a piece of garbage?
What a shit start to a Friday. But we will love this place in our memories
SIGH. Too beautiful to last. The dedication. The niche interests. The feminism. The strangeness. The unashamed nerdiness (can I get this kind of education anywhere else? Unlikely.) The top notch comment moderation that protected vulnerable people who wouldn’t otherwise have a voice. This place has been such a refuge the past couple of years, when everyone around me gets so normal and blinkered and monochromatic and poorly read and dim on purpose. It was what I read when I was starting the business and life was downright terrifying. It opened up the world for so many people. It gave so many people confidence and the Open Threads were the best place for reading how to handle all the difficult interpersonal problems in life. I got better from having read it. So much.
Thank you, thank you, thank you is what I’m trying to say. I wish you all of the best in your future endeavours.
This was a beautiful ode, thank you for capturing how I (and I’m sure a bunch of us) feel, in words. <33
Thank you! The Toast gave me the tools for helping a woman in a domestic violence situation last year and it empowered me to insist on change in my personal life, talk about my feelings when that is a behavior that just does not get rewarded and make changes to a shitty thing that I thought would be shit forever. I can’t lie, I’ll be in reading and brushing up every now and again.
First Prince and now the Toast?? Too much, Illuminati, TOO DAMN MUCH. My first question is Jane, where will your bargain bin live now? It is my reason for living on Friday mornings.
I feel like the world has been pulled out from under me. I love you all. I will go forth in misandry with the knowledge that The Toast lives on in all of us.
i just… this place means so much to me, you guys. even if mostly all i did was lurk.
As a fellow mostly lurker (would go through periods of commenting, then being silent for a long while), I echo your sentiments. Honestly, I enjoyed reading the comments even when I didn’t feel like I had anything to contribute. They were like the wittiest/most insightful marginalia.
I have never actually been sad about a website closing before. I’m going to finally have to learn to use twitter just so I can keep track of so many wonderful, interesting people. Thanks for everything.
Toastfriends, this comment will be buried, but I had a couple of shower-thoughts in between reading this post and getting to work:
1. Ugh, there are Toasties who we know are struggling, and they ask the Toast when they need money or internet-hugs, I hope we can keep coming through for them!
2. Don’t a lot of us give The Toast $5-10 a month? Or have those “save the Toast kickstarter” urges our editors just told us to suppress?
3. Oh, dang, these thoughts are RELATED, we could possibly turn a lot of Toast-support into Toastie-support.
If anyone has thoughts to add to those thoughts, please do…
Those are Very Useful Thoughts, and I completely agree. We gotta keep the Toasties in touch!
I don’t know much about the logistics involved, but I got very sad thinking of the gofundme links that get dropped into LR posts sometimes! But I feel like with some more, less emotional more practical, thinking, we can help out a lot.
This was a very kind and useful set of thoughts, and I commend you for it.
thank you! I’ll re-post sometime when we’re not as swamped with comments & FEELS. I like the couple of suggestions to send thank-you gifts to the mods and support other websites that pay awesome writers.
I’m deeply sad about this. I understand that it’s time for you to call it quits, but I’ll miss everything about this place. I hope there’s a way for all of us to follow you, and all the amazing freelancers wherever they go. And that other people carve out a community as amazing and inclusive as this one set out to be (and is).
Okay, wait, sadness will always come second to curiosity: KIDNEYS, now? Please can someone tell me that story.
(Denial, first stage, etc etc.)
I will always be so grateful to you for this site and for sharing your amazing selves and your writing and your enthusiasm and, just, everything!
You gave us all a place to be our best selves on the internet. (And you published me, which I am of course separately grateful for.)
I am so excited to see what you’re going to do next.
So thankful for The Toast and all it has added to my life and lexicon. We are all too witches for this world.
Any Toast academics are welcome at our Toasties-who-are-dissertating/grad student/professors slack! Reply here or send me a twitter dm and I’ll invite you 🙂
I’d very much like to be added to this. Should I make a slack account first? How does this all work? (I’m also @abigmess on twitter)
I don’t know what a slack is, but I am a Toastie professor and I need all the Toastiness I can get. I’m @poppyannfry on twitter, and I think we are mutual friends with betsaroo, so maybe we can connect that way too.
Hey, if you can dm me (@diana_monkey) your e-mail, I will invite you!
I am a dissertating toastie and would very much like to join, but also don’t understand what Slack is! should I send you my email address? make a slack account and post that here?
That would be great – either here or on twitter (@diana_monkey)
@iorikusano on twitter, am not 100% sure how to make a slack? But I want to be here!
great – just send me your e-mail either here or on twitter (@diana_monkey)
I figured out how to make a slack and my username is lemonack if that helps! ([email protected])
So long and thanks for everything and also for the best commenting community that has ever existed!
I’m heartbroken.
Thank you for existing. It was nice to have this site in my life, even if I rarely commented.
Good luck with whatever you all might choose to do next.
I don’t have words for how sad this makes me. I mean I totally understand the reasoning here and I am wildly appreciative of the everything that is this site, but so sad.
Thank you for making such a fantastic thing for us to have participated in.
Thank you for everything! The new internet routine I will have to cobble together will never be able to give me the perfect archivist/librarian-related content, the joyous comments, and the sheer joy of reading that The Toast has given me over the past few years. I thought grantland and milihelen’s shutdowns hit me hard, but this is the roughest of them all. But! I can’t wait to follow you out into the wider internet world and wish you all the best.
I’m so sad but thank you for all the wonderful content!!!!!! tytytyty
Mallory, I really hope that you will continue to write the occasional column about the horror of bugs and rodents and the dirtbag versions of various characters (Dirtbag Tess made me laugh at random moments for weeks) and weird humor related to C19 novels (especially Villette), somewhere. Dear Prudence is not enough. You are the only internet writer with whom I thought I would like to be friends. Boo.
I got hooked on the Toast over July 4th weekend 2013 with the post about books we hate. It was the MOST fun I had ever on a literary website and you have never let me down since. All the very best to all of you. Thank you SO MUCH for creating the space for such a wonderful community. And thank you to all the Toasties who have reached out over the last few months in support of various problems I’ve shared about in the comments. Sometimes it’s hard for me to respond after I post in the morning and then I feel overwhelmed at night when I see how many of you have responded with support or advice. But it is so, so appreciated. I hope the party in NYC is really happening, I’ve just cleared my summer schedule.
Well, I finally saw Hamilton last night, so I should have known something like this was coming to balance it out.
This sounds like it’s the right decision, and I’m very happy for you guys, but also so sad. Especially this past year when I was in a new city and a new part of my life and spending a lot of time alone, knowing I could click over and read some LR comments and laugh and feel normal and grounded again whenever I got too far into my head…nowhere else on the Internet is like that.
Oh, guys, I was doing work-related things and came late, and my heart just broke. In such a short time I have come to rely on this as a place for community and will miss it so much.
Yet, following Nicole on Twitter and seeing her honesty about what they’ve put into it, it was so clear that this was not sustainable. But I didn’t think it would be so soon?
I love you all. Best wishes and enormous thanks to Nicole, Mallory, Nikki, Marco and everyone who kept this site running. I’m glad for Twitter, but I will miss this space more than I would have thought possible. I’m glad we have time to figure it out.
Love and hugs and… I have to go to a meeting now. I’ll try to keep it together.
This is such, such sad news, but I get it. Still, DAMMIT.
Awww man! This makes me so sorry-grateful, regretful-happy! I feel a bit bad that this is the first time I’m commenting (I’m a dyed-in-the-wool lurker on all my favorite sites), but I just wanted to express how thankful I am for The Toast. Not only was The Toast such a joyful, thoughtful place to begin every day, but it made a very real difference in my life. (I won’t go into details, but submitting an essay to The Toast [and reading The Toast every day] led to some very specific Personal Epiphanies that have changed my life for the better.) Thank you, Team Toast! <3 <3 <3
Could there be an Open Thread posted every Friday?
Or every day? Those don’t require a whole lot of work.
I’m still in denial, moving into bargaining.
I VOLUNTEEEEEEEEEEEEEER
i was thinking this too! But perhaps they also have to be moderated heavily? I’m not sure how much moderation goes into comments on things like Open Threads because it all happens like magic behind the scenes!
I would also volunteer some time. I am somewhat literate, I have minimal but reasonable web development know-how and experience and good resources to draw from, and I have moderated highly flammable gaming forums, so this would be cakewalk.
Come to reddit (what?!)! We are at: reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs.
I’m shouting into the void of page three (maybe four, by the time I hit submit), because today is the day I was like “man, it’s Link Roundup time, but I’m on a roll with this work thing, so I’ll just keep going for a bit and check in later.” But on the off chance that anyone is reading this deep, I want to add my voice to the love and the sadness here. I have never felt so comfortable being me anywhere else, except with my wife in person. In a workplace where I can almost never be me, this little IntenseDebate textarea was my lifeline. The Toast helped me navigate the craziest two years of my life. This special space was a beacon of sanity for me.
I am sad to realize (or to allow myself to realize, as it’s something I should always have known) that for Mallory and Nicole and their amazing staff, it was an excruciating amount of work to make this place so wonderful. I’ve always talked a big game about the importance of work-life balance; I wish that the Toast had been able to offer you that balance. Thank you for three amazing years.
Ugh I hate to be critical but I really don’t think you guys took sufficient account of my emotional needs when making this decision??
…jk mostly, but goddamn I will miss this place and its community of raccoon-hating ladies.
HOW WILL I SURVIVE THIS ELECTION CYCLE NOW!?!?
Right?
OH SHIT, I hadn’t thought of that yet.
Fuck.
Well, at least I can always take to the sea. If nothing else, I’ll always have that.
Oh, wow. I am at work (a place where I will certainly be more productive after July 1st) with actual tears in my eyes.
Thank you SO MUCH for creating this blissful grove on the interweb, and for several wonderful years of A+ quality content. I wish you all the best.
I’M SO SAD
But thanks an absolute million for getting me all the way through my 3 years of uni with minimum screaming, you will be irreplaceable.
You guys are fucking brilliant, and I can’t wait to see what you both create next! No pressure 🙂 Congrats on such a successful project, and enjoy the time off to recharge your batteries.
Oh, wow. I can’t say how sad I am about this, but thank you for all the lovely times. <3
Well, damn. 🙁
Ummm can Mallory and Nicole go on a multi-city tour for Toast closing parties? NY is kinda far for me. I would pay admission and we have a wonderful local bookstore in Phoenix (that also serves alcohol and dessert) that hosts literary events all the time.
Seconding this request.
Will miss this and all of you. I am hoping we will still bump into each other on Instagram and Twitter. You all have seen me through some really crumb times, and have made having a desk job tolerable.
I am both distraught and oddly cheered by this. On the one hand, all my favorite media outlets and content creators seem to quit right when I’m starting to fully integrate them into my intellectual-spiritual being; on the other hand, that means I both have to seek out something new and maybe make something of my own.
I feel like how you do in magical-friend stories where you’ve just reached the landing pad or forest clearing where the 8-foot-tall-pink-furry-beast-who-can-make-flowers-grow-and-also-teaches-you-to-stand-up-to-bullies looks ahead to his family come to claim him and then down again at you, exhilarated but just a little bit sad and you want nothing more in that moment than to go with him to his island home or somehow let him stay with you forever but you know that can’t happen and that it would be too painful to ask so you just hug him, hard, and breathe deep once more the sandalwood scent of his fur, and suddenly the whoop of sirens jolts you back to reality, and you both know it’s time to leave, and as his pod ascends into the sky and you’re surrounded by police you can’t stop smiling even though the tears are like a river on your face.
Wow, so that is what I’m feeling.
Okay, NOW I’m tearing up. Thank you for that comment. Wow.
…and now to the ugly crying.
Saved only by the laughter caused by, “and suddenly the whoop of sirens”.
Well played.
You guys came along when I was in the middle of getting my MLS (I actually remember first clicking the link from the hairpin while at my internship) and you molded me into the misandrist librarian I was always meant to become.
I am bereft.
Oh man, this makes me so sad, but as others have said, it makes sense, and I knew it had to come to an end some day. I don’t think I can properly put into words how special or important this place is to me, or how much it’ll be missed. Thank you so much for your incredible, hard work and for shaping this community into one of the most thoughtful, kind, and hilarious places on or off the internet. Shit, now I’m crying. Look away! Look away goddamnit.
What to even say about this? Thank you, and I love you?? I’m sure we’ll have a more formal goodbye later, but for now my Feels are all over the place so all I can say is that I will miss every single thing about this site and its people. For the past three years it has truly been my home away from home, and it’ll be hard to let that go.
I’m so sad, but I am glad to have had the Toast, because of all the lovely people I met through it and all the open threads. And because of the Hey Ladies, who appalled and entertained me so much.
This made me think of the Hey Ladies taking to the sea, and squabbling over duties via post-it notes left around the ship.
I’m going to have to actually start reading Twitter now, aren’t I?
This has been the best place.
I don’t know what else to say. Thank you for creating it, and giving this lovely group of people a place to talk civilly on the internet. <3
Man, I am going to miss this.
Oh dear. I am surprised by how legitimately sad I am about this! It feels like a real loss. I haven’t been a super active commenter, but I followed Nicole and Mallory since The Hairpin days, and have been reading the toast since the beginning. i’ve been to Toast meet-ups and even met Nicole at one.
I will mourn part of my day that The Toast occupied, while looking forward to your next endeavours!
Thank you both so much for making such a wonderful place to be! I stopped commenting a while ago to finish my dissertation (I AM A DOCTOR NOW!!!), but I always stopped by at least once a day to read and keep my spirits up.
Is anybody else interested in a gofundme or similar to buy the Toast itty thank you cakes?
Ok so unless I am asked to take it down by (and I will! I don’t wanna make anybody uncomfortable!), I started a page to give the Toast a thank you gift!
https://www.gofundme.com/thankthetoast
Oh, wow. I will miss the articles but especially all of you. This has been the best comments section I’ve ever beheld (and occasionally participated in) in my whole life ;___;
I’m so grateful to have even had The Toast in my life! Thank you guys so much for everything you’ve done, for just being amazing and wonderful people, and I’m so glad you guys get to do this on your own terms! I’ll miss this place so much!
i just tweeted you both (@sarahsayssoo) but same thing here. we love you, thank you for creating this space, thank you for fighting for it and for preserving it and for quitting before it had to be so radically changed just to stay in business that it wouldn’t even be the toast
No, no… I understand. It’s fine. I’ll be strong, you’ll see. We’ll all move on and have great lives, just you watch. I… um.
I’ll miss you folks so much 🙁
Seem to have had a sudden allergy attack or something, because I am definitely not tearing up at my desk.
I don’t think I could ever adequately explain how much The Toast means to me, so I’ll just say this for now: thank you for giving me this beautiful safe corner of the internet.
Oh, man, this was going to be the toughest day of the toughest week for many reasons already, but this is even harder news to hear. Thank you so much for your work and your enormous grace here which allowed the kindest, smartest, funniest place on the Internet to thrive. I wish I had the time right now to come up with something better, but my day won’t allow it. May all the best things come to you and I am Up For anything that keeps Toasties together. I love you all.
This is making me so sad. Maybe saddest because I’ve been reading this site obsessively for ages, and loving it and laughing at it but almost never commenting. What was I waiting for?
I second, third, fiftieth the people who want to keep this community together elsewhere. Tell me where you’re going and I’ll come too.
Listen, I’m sorry I got upset at the ratcat post yesterday, but this is a bit of an overreaction, no?
(Please don’t leave me)
Thank you, dear Toast editors, contributors, and commentariat. You have actively made me a better person, and I will always cherish our time together.
A friend of mine warned me before I checked the site, but it still was gut-wrenching to see this post. As a community member-turned contributor, The Toast holds an especially close place in my heart, as the first big place to publish me as well as *pay* me. I don’t know if I’m going to find another site that is such a close match to my peculiar sensibilities.
Thank you for being a place for weird girls. Thank you for all the writing on religion. Thank you for being one of the best places for writing on Asian American experiences. Thank you.
I just made a twitter, please post your handles! I was just starting to get more active in this community and thinking about submitting some writing and now it’s gone. And I am going to a funeral today…this is wretched.
But much love to Mallory, Nicole, Nikki, and Jaya for all their amazing work, and I can’t wait to see where their talent takes them next!
My twitter is just my name, Marissa Fillmore
Oh my God. I don’t really have anything to add, except I just don’t know what I will do without the Toast. It has been the best place on the whole internet, ever, no exaggeration, and I don’t know if there can ever be another.
I will miss you guys SO MUCH UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH WHAT EVEN IS LIFE
This song is first on my breakup songs mixtape, always and forever:
Don’t ever change, PeterCetera!Chicago.
I guess I thought you’d be here forever
Another illusion I chose to create
You don’t know what you got until it’s gone
And I found out a little too late
I was acting as if you were lucky to have me
Doin’ you a favor, I hardly knew you were there
But then you were gone, and it all was wrong
Had no idea how much I cared
Now being without you takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it but I don’t want to
Being without you is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier, it’s the hardest thing to take
I’m addicted to you babe, you’re a hard habit to break
You found someone else you had every reason
You know I can’t blame you for runnin’ to him
Two people together but livin’ alone
I was spreading my love too thin
After all of these years I’m still tryin’ to shake it
Doin’ much better, they say that it just takes time
But deep in the night, it’s an endless fight
I can’t get you out of my mind
Now being without you takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it but I don’t want to
Being without you is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier, it’s the hardest thing to take
I’m addicted to you babe, you’re a hard habit to break
Can’t go on, just can’t go on, on, can’t go on
Just can’t go on, on
Now being without you takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it but I don’t want to
Being without you is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier, it’s the hardest thing to take
I’m addicted to you babe, you’re a hard habit to break
Such a hard habit to break I’m addicted to you
You’re a hard habit to break
Such a hard habit to break I’m addicted to you
You’re a hard habit to break
Such a hard habit to break I’m addicted to you
Can we make a Toast mourning Spotify playlist or something?
gnashing of teeth et. al.
I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed this site and its community. It’s the topical, off-beat, literary, penetratingly intelligent, heartfelt, and amusing friend I didn’t think I would find online. You’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.
I love all of you here, in this beautiful orbit you’ve created, that’s been such a place of joy and safety and strength for us all. That is all.
Out of protest, I will become even less productive at work.
(Seriously though, you guys made something wonderful and I’m really grateful to you.)
Also can I say for the zillionth time that I LOVE how honest and open Nicole, Nikki & Mallory have been about finances and dealing with moderation and burnout etc etc etc? It’s refreshing in contrast to other media sites I read, and makes me love & support this place even more knowing how much work and thought goes into it.
July 1st is my birthday and my two moms are breaking up. 🙁
That is a super tough hand, and you’ll be in my thoughts. Here are some internet hugs if they’ll help at all: {{{ }}}
It’s my birthday too! We’ll be all right.
Ok, I’ve calmed down, crying a bit less.
Thank you for having created The Toast and giving us all these amazing things. I hope for the very best for all of you!
*proceeds to obsessively follow everyone on twitter*
Yeah, didn’t think you were gonna get away from me that easy, did ya?
I am super sad but of course I understand. Where am I going to get my medieval monks fix, and new pictures of Sansa? Please tell me you will tweet pictures of Sansa.
I’m so sad about this! But it’s also completely understandable, of course. I mostly just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading The Toast and how much it’s become an appreciated part of my weekday routine. The Toast has been so entertaining, but it’s also introduced a lot of new-to-me perspectives on important things that I’ll always appreciate. And it’s been heartening to see that such a great commenting community is possible. (Shout-out to the Toast team for the time and care they’ve put into moderating the comments!)
I should probably save this comment for what will be the saddest OT ever, but.
I am a lurker by nature — always have been, probably always will be. And it has meant so goddamn much to me that this was a place where a) I would want to read all of the content, because it was so fantastic; b) I would not only want to read the comments, but look forward to reading the comments to see what people were talking about; c) if I ever did need to say anything, or ask a question, or needed advice, or just needed to shout into the void, the awesome moderation job would let me through.
I didn’t realize how much I needed a space on the internet where I felt like people valued each other. But I did, and I’m going to miss that so much.
Absolutely gutted over here. I only really properly caught on about a year ago, and I think I’ve only been brave enough to comment a couple of times (massively regretting not getting more involved now). Hugely thankful for the love, the warmth, the humour. Never before have I spontaneously burst out laughing at commenters’ comments 🙂 I’m conscious that it must feel weird for an online community to learn that there may be further legions out there who read and feel the impact of your words in a big way but don’t contribute… but I feel compelled to say that even though I didn’t comment, I read the Toast every day and it’s straight-up changed many corners of my life! I’m sure it’s the same for loads of others. I can almost recite the ranked owls post, most of the two monks, and the things our white relatives have said… truth hurtz.
Rambling rambling. a) What’s this about the tote bags? I wasn’t aware they definitely were on sale yet? I NEED ONE PLS HELP. b) I guess I’m joining that Twitter now too. c) Is there like a UK Toastie online place?
I’m not sure how websites and all this work, but if the site itself is going to stay up, is it possible to hand over the admin info to a few very invested toasties, and they can post an open-thread once a week?
My partner woke me at 3 am this morning to beg a ride home from the birthday event he attended, when I had to be at work at 8 am. But this is the worst thing I’ve heard today.
Thank you for the Toast and thank you for making the best decision for yourself, before getting burned out or spending money on something that didn’t make you happy anymore. Regardless of our loss, it’s better than other options.
I hope there will be a recommended sites listed at some point, because i’ve always found the best things from Toasties and the LR.
And now I have to learn how to use Twitter so I can follow all sorts of awesome people.
Long time lurker, first time commenter – this is SAD NEWS. A round of applause and a raise of a glass to you all for providing such a damn fine collection of distraction material. And as soon as those tote bags are real (or as soon as I find the link) then I’ll be buying several.
Oh my god this is the worst news ever but I understand and I’m glad that, if it has to end, it’s ending this way.
Threads are a bit long and confusing but I would gladly flee to any sort of Toast Refugee option.
Well, shit. I’m glad you’re doing the best things for yourselves, but I’ll miss the site.
I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJaZO2nfGg
If anyone is looking for some good comfort viewing, this 5-hour continuous Nigella Bites compilation has been playing in the background all morning and is a balm for my soul https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP6KxJYqLSY
I feel worse about this than i did about Google Reader. I am so glad you’re both doing what is 100% good and right for you – but know that your presence on my internet will be SORELY MISSED.
There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name…
Thanks for everything.
. . . Oh man, does that mean we have to move uptown now?
I am sitting on a ferry in Seattle crying a little bit, inside and outside. So many happy feels for good movements in all your lives; do what you need to do. But oh the missing, there will be so much missing.
Thank you for everything! I will miss this website, but I look forward to supporting whatever you go on to do next.
I never believed Friday the 13th was bad until today.
This makes my hear hurt. And also my head.
Stay Alive(Reprise) started playing on shuffle as I finished this.
Thank you for the three years you’ve given us.
Oh man. Nothing gold can stay! Wish you all the best and thank you so much for fostering this wonderful community.
My grandpa died yesterday and now The Toast is also leaving and this is a lot of grief to deal with today. I know that things will be okay but right now I’m just crying. SmrtCookie mentioned matching tattoos, and yes, that is the feel I’m feeling right now. This community has marked me forever, and I’ll always cherish it. (p.s. – find me on twitter at @liz_the_lemur. Locked, but always accepting more toast friends. <3)
Matching toast tattoos can only help.
I’m so sorry about your grandpa. *all the hugs*
This is really very sad, but thank you all so much for everything!!
Please share how we can best follow each and every one of you onto your next adventures before officially signing off.
The Toast has been my favorite place on the internet for a long time now. I never imagined I could feel this sad about a dang website.
Thank you for making it such an incredible place of absurdism, tenderness, irony, feminism, misandry, and kindness. Thank you for the slogging and thankless work of moderation to make the comment section such a refuge. Thank you for the brilliant writers and illustrators you’ve featured. Thank you.
I completely understand your reasons for closing the website. Thank you, sincerely, for the space you’ve created here. I only “met” The Toast a few months ago when I moved to a new city and a new job, and the community has been so great and so much fun in a time when I haven’t made too many new IRL friends. I only regret that I didn’t find you all sooner!
Boy, this is sad. I suppose this is the kick I needed to finally sign up for Twitter? I’m prepared to follow the other Toast refugees wherever y’all go. The writing, the subject matter, the people are just unlike anything else on the whole internet and I just can’t lose that.
Come to the ToastCrumbs reddit! reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO
I mean, I totally get it, and I appreciate everything you guys have done, but
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Now if you’ll excuse me, these garments aren’t going to rend themselves.
Thank you for keeping this running as long as you have. I’ve always been more of a lurker but this was such a great community and the couple of times I piped up everyone was so welcoming. I’m glad you guys are being kind to yourselves and also thankful for this grace-period.
Will absolutely second the thanks for not just stopping without notice.
I am so sad, and so glad to have had The Toast for so long.
I can be found at Twitter as @scbecker doing my bit to keep ToastieTwitter alive. (Private account but I’ll gladly friend Toast peeps anytime.)
Absolutely gutted over here. I only really properly caught on about a year ago, and I think I’ve only been brave enough to comment a couple of times (massively regretting not getting more involved now). Hugely thankful for the love, the warmth, the humour. Never before have I spontaneously burst out laughing at commenters’ comments 🙂 I’m conscious that it must feel weird for an online community to learn that there may be further legions out there who read and feel the impact of your words in a big way but don’t contribute… but I feel compelled to say that even though I didn’t comment, I read the Toast every day and it’s straight-up changed many corners of my life! I’m sure it’s the same for loads of others. I can almost recite the ranked owls post, most of the two monks, and the things our white relatives have said… truth hurtz.
Thank you for creating this amazing, safe space on the internet. Though I don’t really comment, your content and this community has meant the world to me as I’ve struggled with some life changes and health issues (my handle is pretty literal).
As others have said more eloquently, it takes a great deal of wisdom and maturity to stop a project while it’s still something you love, before it turns into something you don’t. I have hopes that one day I will achieve those levels of wisdom and maturity, and kudos to you for figuring it out.
Aw, and I finally have a good idea for “If ____ were your ____.”
I was literally in the middle of writing ‘If Oscar Isaac Were Your Boyfriend’.
Oooooh. Mine’s “If Toby Stephens Were Your Boyfriend.”
So sad. I wish you guys the best. This site has truly improved my quality of life!
And where will I find puppy pictures? they are literally available nowhere else on the internet!
Some mutual wailing and distress has just taken place between myself and my housemate, although we are both glad that The Toast is closing for reasons of “we feel like closing it” and not “terrible things have befallen” but, but still.
But still.
The Toast has done many things for me and been helpful in several regards, and probably over the next few months I’ll post some of the more emotionally fraught ones, but you know what, it’s been a hell of a week already, so I think I will just offer up that with The Toast’s Adventures Of Madeline, I finally managed to return the internet-based trauma my housemate/friend has managed to inflict on me over the years, rendering her speechless and gibbering, so for that alone I owe The Toast a great debt of gratitude (and so does she, because having achieved this I have stopped trying to best her, so she’s getting much nicer content in the links I send her now).
Thanks Toasts.
Can their please, please be a farewell tote? For the love of the librarians?
This announcement has cast a pall over my entire graduation weekend. How am I supposed to revel tomorrow when my heart is full of such sorrow?
Like everyone else has said a few hundred times before me: I get it, I really do. It has been clear that you all have put so much love and time and your astonishing brainpower into this site. When it’s time, it’s time.
I’m fairly bereft, but those feelings will pass. But THANK YOU to everyone involved for making this space exist.
PS: Nicole specifically, I have been encouraged to watch you navigate your faith but also still support feminism and sex workers and a pluralistic society and making space for people to tell their stories, etc. Lots of people tell you faith and these things aren’t compatible, and I struggle with that tension in my own Christian community. I have prayed for you on occasion, and will continue to do so. Thanks.
I have already been crying because I am never going to get a job, never ever (cue Don Music) and now this.
This is my favorite place on the internet. I’ve never had such a wonderful online community before, and my heart aches that it is going away. I’m so, so glad that Mallory and Nicole and Nikki are taking care of themselves and will stop this site before it withers away, but I am going to miss everyone here so very, very much.
I desperately want to do a Dirtbag Hamlet and be all like “well i thought it stank anyway so there” but to be honest I’m just too sad.
The Toast comment section was the first place I was okay with my sexuality.
The Toast made me proud to be a humourless feminist.
The Toast was the first place I was paid for my writing.
The Toast has been the foundation of a number of my real-life friendships.
Good luck guys, it’s been a ride. Be proud of this.
*stands in rain holding boom box overhead playing books-on-tape version of “Sense and Sensibility”*
Perfect comment. Thanks for the one chucklesnort on this sad sad day.
Also props for holding this until Friday the thirteenth. Stay witchy, everyone.
I didn’t even think of that! And as I was settling into work this morning I wrote down the date and was like, “Friday the 13th huh, wonder if something bad will happen…”
BUT THEN THE WORST THING HAPPENED.
This has made me so, so very sad. But I’m glad you’re all doing the right thing for you.
Well, damn. Thank you for everything you’ve done at & with the Toast — it’s been a haven for the weird kids, who need one. I’ll miss it, but I can understand the wisdom of letting it go before it becomes just another obligation.
And deep thanks, too, to the Toast commentariat. I’ve haven’t said much here, but I’ve been reading almost since the beginning, and I’ve grown to value your collective warmth, wisdom, humour and willingness to express honest outrage when honest outrage is what’s called for. As a crippled, feminist, lightly queer socialist trapped in redneck territory, I have a hard time feeling at home in the world most days, and it’s made things better knowing y’all are out there. Take me with you when you go?
*hugs* If you want, you can put down your internet information on this google spreadsheet as a way to stay connected:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_26MiL9WN…
Please no. No. No. No. No. No.
I went into my boss’s office this week, and told him that I was ready for change in my life, didn’t know what that change would look like, but it wasn’t going to be in this organization… And he was lovely, and we’re working on a great, gentle transition plan. I don’t think I would have done such a thing without Mallory introducing me to the word “fiercerocious.”
I am so grateful for the Toast and for everyone who has made it a place that honors so much about each one of us — our lovingness, our craziness, our weird obsession with animal genitals and Breton folklore, our hopes and our outrage. Thank you. Thank you.
Would you say that, by closing the site on your own terms…you’re gonna teach us how to say goodbye?
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for making this space. Thank you for exposing me to new writers and new ideas. Thank you for creating a community where I don’t flinch before opening the comments. Thank you for posts that even thinking about them years later makes me giggle or cry. I don’t comment a lot, but I read everything and I love it here.
YOOOUUUUU AND IIIIIIIIIII….
Oh no, the only website I have felt comfortable enough to comment on!
But really, congratulations to you guys. You made this site what you wanted and you are quitting when you want! Heroes.
Let’s all quit our jobs!
There’s a Toasties subreddit that’s sprung up (out of the Toaster?) at reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs. Please join us there!
In clear-eyed moments I knew this day would come but I had hoped somehow it never would. Thank you for all the incredible writing, humor, and teaching.
I created an IntenseDebate account just to say how grateful I am for The Toast and everyone that runs it. You created a place the likes of which the Internet had never seen before and will probably never see again. I felt like this was a place I could enjoy and learn from, and I’m so sad to see it go. I’m glad it touched so many of us readers, and I will always remember the Two Monks and “Signs You May Be in a” posts forever. Thank you all so much.
On a personal note, this website got me through some tough recent times and also woke me up into bettering myself. It also helped me realize how good people can be. Last summer, I emailed Nicole a link to a Gofundme a family friend had created to pay for the funeral of her grandson. Nicole posted it in the Link Roundup the next day and just… she really made me believe in the goodness of people. So, in addition to all the gratitude I have for this website, I have extra gratitude to Nicole. I hope everything for her, her family, and the Toast family goes well forever.
Wow, I’ll miss this place, and I plan to enjoy the ever-loving HELL out of it until July.
This has me so distracted I just scanned an empty scanner twice and could not figure out why I wasn’t getting an image. ooof.
Thank you for all of the giggles and for creating such a fantastic community. I’m 90% a lurker, but the comments section is seriously the best. I’ll have to watch to see where the refuge winds up and continue mostly lurking there.
Just put my dogs in the dog sitter’s car. I am not going to see them for three weeks. Then I come back and find this. Woo boy…
YES
I’M CRYING
WHERE ARE THE TOTE BAGS
I MUST BUY THEM TO CONTAIN MY TEARS
Same. I will need several. There are a LOT of tears.
Thank you so much for The Toast, Nicole and Mallory. I’m tremendously sad that it has to end, as The Toast has been there for me during some (continuing) rough times, but we’re all lucky to have had this amazing site at all. There really isn’t anything else like it; I can’t express what it means to me and how much of a role it’s played in shaping my humor, ideas, and world-view over the last few years. The Toast has felt like home, better than home: a place full of funny, smart, compassionate, and interesting misandrist witches who show me every day that the world is full of more amazing people than I would have ever dreamed possible. I probably reference a Toast article or Link Roundup piece in just about every meaningful conversation I have these days. Even just listening in on the conversations in the comments has made me feel connected when I’m isolated, hopeful when I’m depressed, and engaged when I’m adrift. My only regret is that I didn’t join more conversations, under the assumption that I would have years to gather the nerve to do more than listen. But lurking on The Toast is infinitely superior to just about every other internet-based activity! My hope now is to lurk (and maybe even comment!) in whatever new home to which Toasties/Toast refugees migrate after July 1st. To all Toasties, contributors, commenters, and fellow lurkers: wherever you end up, send up a flare; I (and I am sure many others) would love to join you.
Please come to the ToastCrumbs sub reddit at reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs.
This is so sad 🙁 I just started commenting this week, but I’ve been lurking for a while (a year? I do not remember a time before The Toast). I’ve never found a more hilarious and respectful collection of people on the internet.
Guess it’s time figure out Twitter.
I love y’al and what you create here and respect your decision BUT WHY DID YOU HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THIS TV CANCELLATION WEEK MY HEART ONLY HAS SO MUCH ROOM FOR TRAGEDY!? 🙁
I love y'al and what you create here and respect your decision BUT WHY DID YOU HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THIS TV CANCELLATION WEEK MY HEART ONLY HAS SO MUCH ROOM FOR TRAGEDY!? 🙁
It actually took awhile for me to read this post because I saw the headline on Twitter and now a bunch of us are following each other (I’m @apey1013) and mourning with an early #ToastWake.
Man, I’ve been going through some serious stuff the last few years and it’s been really difficult and having The Toast to read every morning has made such a huge difference. It’s such a wonderful community and the articles are so good and I’m legit crying right now. I love you all so much.
I’ve been reading the Toast every day for just shy of a year now and have never commented before because I have some weird social anxiety issues, but I just really wanted to say how much I have loved this site and appreciated everything you all do for it. Reading the Toast has been a long series of bright spots during my workday at a job that I hate and I am so, so glad for all the wonderful work you and all your contributors have put into it.
So I guess: thank you, I love you, I look forward to reading all of everything y’all do in the future
The Toast is trending nationwide on twitter. AS IT SHOULD.
I understand, but… this is the first place I’ve started to feel like I’m home. I’m really sad. I’ll miss you, Toast.
Thank you for creating such a wonderful internet place.
I feel like I’ve finally (finally!) found my people here, so if there are any Toastie refugee communities starting up I would love to join. Even if I’m not a huge fan of Twitter (@booksisbest).
[deep breath]
I am determined to focus on gratitude first.
Thank you for everything you’ve done, for showing us what a joyous, smart, silly, thoughtfully moderated feminist haven of a site can look like.
Thank you for publishing me — my first paid writing! Without The Toast, I might still be a full-time freelancer, but I wouldn’t have had the encouragement of those generous editorial compliments to cheer me on. I wouldn’t trade those early emails for anything.
Thank you for making it clear that this is a considered, ultimately welcome choice for you both, and that we shouldn’t scramble around trying to think up a solution. I suspect we know that, but it’s still kindest to rip the BandAid of hope off fast.
Thank you for this community, which will live on after you stop publishing. I’m sure in this long list of comments, someone’s put up the Twitter spreadsheet, and I’ll go looking for it later today, but for now: I’m @emilyorelse, and I’d love to see all-a-y’all on Twitter.
For now — for now — I’m not going to be sad to see the site go; I’m going to be grateful for what you gave us.
Toasties: I have made us a new world, from the wreckage of the old. r/ToastCrumbs.
Thank you. I have applied to join. I’m kind of terrified of Reddit, but I will be strong.
You’re in! I also just made it public, so everyone can join.
I’ve never had a desire to join Reddit before right now!
I think I’ve joined! I just created a reddit account for the first time.
It says a lot about this community that I’m willing to follow it to reddit.
seeeeeriously
Thank you for doing this!
I have joined, and am grateful. Let us, sadder and smaller though we may be, carry on the legacy and Tell The Story.
i’m so sad
I just created an account so I could comment. Better late than never, I guess. I just wanted to say thank you for all the wonderful things you publish from incredibly silly to deeply touching. Thank you for letting voices be heard that may not have been otherwise. Thank you for talking about Shirley Jackson a lot. For protecting your readers and writers alike with comment moderation.
Anyway, this is getting away from me so just thank you. You guys are the best, and I look forward to seeing what the future has in store for everyone.
Hi hi hi,
I’ve never commented before but I read The Toast every freakin day. This is sadsies but I’m very glad everything will still be here “preserved in amber” for me to read when I’m blue, or curious, or needing some intellectual stimulation.
Love you guys,
Abby
The internet is ruined.
Definitely tearing up here, because you have made the Internet better, and the comment section here has made me better and slightly more brave in Internet-commenting in general. Everyone’s so kind and thoughtful. Where can I find that elsewhere??
I’m happy to know there is a Hamilton song appropriate for the occasion.
I’M INCREDIBLY SAD BUT ALSO THANKFUL, FEEL MY GRATEFUL TEARS FOT YOU ALL
“If you start one I promise I will waste every single penny sent my way on expensive single-serving cakes and various perfumed unguents designed to enhance my beauty.”
You say that like it’s a deterrent.
Thank you both for EVERYTHING, everything, going back to the OG Hairpin, but most especially for the owl faces post. The lil bird owl with the sassy bee hat hangs in my cube to remind me to be open and ready for new experiences every day.
<3<3<3<3
As a person who submitted one thing that actually got published to The Toast, which I call my Greatest Accomplishment of 2015, and as a person who has read The Toast with regularity over the past couple of years and marveled at its greatness, this makes me very sad. But. I am so appreciative that this site has existed and will continue to exist in some form. It is truly one of the best sites on these here interwebs. Y’all are amazing and smart and I admire you and I wish you the very best.
This is devastating news! The Toast has given me so much – without it I’d never have listened to Hamilton or bought Aveda shampoo (the ads where so persistent!). Both have changed my life. Every time I wash my hair while singing My Shot I’ll think of you all.
Reading the toast has been lovely and life-changing. I was so glad to find a place that was fun, funny, thoughtful, irreverent and spiritual all at once. I was always grateful for the hard work everyone put into making this an environment for laughter, yeah, but also for thoughtful exploration of the world. THANK YOU.
(I was pleased again to discover the beautiful people who lived in the comments every day. I didn’t post a lot myself, but when I did post something personal, everyone was so supportive, gracious, and encouraging about it. )
Thank you, Toast people, for all you’ve done to make the internet a warm and funny and smart place.
I love you, and I’ll miss you, and thank you. You have warmed my cold little grad student heart many a time. You will be missed.
Oh lawd. I am so sad, but also so happy that you guys are doing something good for yourselves. I’m leaving a job I’ve been at for a long time right now to head back to grad school, and it is HARD to disappoint people who rely on you (obvi different situation, but let me pretend I understand your position a little bit).
The last year of my life has been really difficult because of severe depression/having no idea how to deal with severe depression. Often, when I felt totally horrible and lost in the middle of my workday, a brilliant and funny article on The Toast helped me feel just a little bit better. And that little bit goes a long way when you’re at the bottom. So thank you, sincerely, for that.
I can’t wait to watch you guys do even more awesome things from here.
My heart is breaking. 🙁
I’ve never found a site that felt so much like it spoke to every part of my brain and my heart and my soul. Thank you, Mallory, thank you, Nicole, and thank you, wonderful commentariat. I haven’t had time to read all the comments yet, but I hope to follow you to as many refugees as possible. I might even actually start using my Twitter handle.
I love the site and all you people.
Can’t wait to see what’s next.
but i guess we can still donate so mallory can buy expensive single-serving cakes and various perfumed unguents designed to enhance her beauty?
Oh damn. I recognize this flavor of sadness from when Glitch announced its shutdown. But this is even worse. I can’t imagine an internet without The Toast in it. I just can’t.
(And now I’ll never get to pitch that Femslash Friday post about “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion.” Woe.)
I WAS HOPING SOMEONE ELSE WOULD MENTION GLITCH, I AM STILL NOT OVER GLITCH *points wordlessly to username + icon through heaving sobs*
Although the sites are very different (The Toast is not a game… OR IS IT?!??) I felt the same comfort in both places. In their way, the Toast and Glitch were always spaces of peace and kindness and absurdist humour and loving snark. The announcement of Glitch’s closing felt like this one too, just “we love this so much but it’s time to stop now.” I have heartache all over.
Would read that post, if ever you write it.
Oh! I love you so much! I will miss you madly!
I will gladly contribute to a Kickstarter to keep Mallory permanently supplied with single-serving cakes and scented unguents who’s with me
I mentioned this in another thread, but how do the Texas Toasties feel about an all-state, Texas-sized round up of Toasties to mark the glorious end! Remember The Toast!!
I’m transitioning from DFW to Houston, so I obviously favor either of those cities, but Austin would probably be the central location. Any of them are workable. What do y’all think? Raccoons and mountain goats can go to hell, the Toast commentariat will go to Texas
I’m in! I live in Austin so I am biased in favor of having it here but I would also travel to the Ends of the Texas for this.
Also in Austin. How have we not crossed paths before??? Let’s get on that. Are you on Twitter or reddit or any of the Toast refugee spots?
GruntledDave has already announced plans for the Ann Richards Memorial Squat Rack.
I’ll drive almost anywhere in Texas. Some of y’all know me. Please keep me in the loop.
Thank you for The Toast, thank you to all you beautiful humans who make/made this place such and amazing and safe place to hang out on the internet.
I have never encountered a website where the posts (both fiction and non) are such magnificent works of art, AND the commenters form such a delightful community. Mallory and both Nicoles and everyone who works on the site, thank you so much! On July 1, I will take to the sea in a ship flying the toast flag. :’)
I only comment here sporadically, but I have very much enjoyed all that you have contributed to the Great Internet Conversation, and I am dismayed to see you go. My heart also goes out to all of you regular Toastie commenters, because I’m sure that how you’re feeling right now is how I would feel if Autostraddle ever shut down*, and that would be a terrible terrible feeling. 🙁
*Now I must go and ritually self-flagellate for even typing that out loud.
It always made me happy to see you in both places. I’ll be hitting up AS more frequently now, I guess.
O hai! Are you Hadley? I don’t think I ever see you commenting at AS so I hope to see you around there more. 🙂 (Where I can live vicariously through your A-Camp 7.0 adventures since I missed the chance to go this year, sniff.)
This is so, so sad. I don’t know what else to even say, except thanks to Nicole, Mallory, Nikki, Jaya, Marco, all the guest authors, and my fellow commenters. You’ve made my life better.
I lurked from the beginning, always meant to comment but never did, loved this place and am so sad.
Wow, you guys. I completely understand your reasons; it is SO HARD to run a business and make it work, and even harder to do so on the internet. You guys have all done something amazing here for the past few years and I’m so glad I found you and all the Toasties.
I am so sad right now. This site has taught me about myself, shown me the kind of writing I want to do, made me cry and laugh, and provided support when I needed it.
I’m also really mad at myself, for not taking the opportunity to pitch a piece when I had the chance. The Toast is probably the only site (other than the Hairpin), where I really felt there might be a place for my sense of humor/general sensibilities, and I lost out. I never pitched a “Songs From…” or wrote about PJ Harvey and religion, or the communitas of finding your female nerd people. It’s a tough lesson for me to learn, but I hope that it spurs me to actually write and pitch in the future.
I love everybody.
Ok, I am going to spam the shit out of this, and so I apologize in advance, but: we have a subreddit! Come join us.
:((( i started reading the toast just as i started university, and now i’ve just handed in my last ever essays and i’m done and now it’s closing! i’ve read the toast almost every day all through my time at uni, i’m going to miss it so much!
thank you so much to nicole and mallory and everyone else here, it’s been such a lovely constant the past three years, when everything else was scary and rocky and horrible (that sounds cheesy but its also very true lol, i always come on here to cheer myself up)
i’d always hoped i’d be brave enough to pitch something here, which is a shame but i’m so so glad it was a thing for the past three years, and i’m wishing everyone the best! thank you so much <3
Friday the goddamn 13, amiright?
Well this put a serious damper on my day off.
I guess I sorta thought this would happen eventually, what with both of you having other professional interests and a bajillion cool projects to work on, except I think I was deluding myself into thinking you two would just leave to work on other stuff and The Toast would continue on in some form or another… Heartbreaking.
Thanks for running my hands down all time favorite website! I’ve always been in awe of the two of you and the incredible community you built from the ground up. Toasties, y’all the charmingest bunch of weirdos out there and I was always truly delighted that there were always ten jokes in the comments as good as any in the article.
Just wish I’d ever had the nerve to submit one of the half written things I’ve scribbled down over the years with The Toast in mind! Cuz I don’t think there is a niche like the The Toast anywhere else out there.
Three years is an amazing run. I am extremely excited to follow the future exploits of all the people I have found through the Toast. So many writers and illustrators who I will hopefully get to read books and articles by for many years to come.
I was lucky to find The Toast only a few months after it started and having watched it grow, I am SO IMPRESSED with Nicole & Mallory and what they’ve accomplished in only 3 years. YOU GUYS. The writing & community! <3 A+. Thank you for this digital oasis. I’m going to miss knowing it’s alive. Long Live The Toast and The Butter.
I’m actually tearing up in real life right now and completely unable to adequately explain it to my very concerned office mates.
That being said, thanks for everything and thanks for keeping this up until this corner of the universe is gone. I know I’ll be back all the time.
Good for you! Hope you all enjoy where life takes you next. 🙂
I am so sad that The Toast is closing but so very happy that it existed at all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this beautiful place that drew together so many awesome people!
I’ve been reading the Toast every day for just shy of a year now and have never commented before because I have some weird social anxiety issues, but I just really wanted to say how much I have loved this site and appreciated everything you all do for it. Reading the Toast has been a long series of bright spots during my workday at a job that I hate and I am so, so glad for all the wonderful work you and all your contributors have put into it.
Thank you, I love you, I look forward to reading everything that y’all do in the future!
Also I tried to submit this earlier, but my internet freaked out and I’m not sure it went through, so I’m submitting it again. Sorry if this is a repeat!
I’m incredibly sad to see this place go, but thank you SO MUCH for even having done it in the first place. This has been my favorite site pretty much since it launched and I’m so grateful for it. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve hated on raccoons. Looking forward to see what wonderful things you all do next.
Woah. Did not see this coming.
I hope everything you do next is fulfilling and amazing and not exhausting in the least.
Oh, the jolt I felt when I opened my RSS feed today 🙁 I’m mostly a lurker since IntenseDebate has some kind of hate on for my work computer (or vice-versa?), but it was a daily lurk and I’m going to miss you all! If a Toastie subreddit does happen, that would probably be the one thing to get me to create an account there.
Nicole, don’t feel guilty – if anything, you should be proud of helping create a site we love this much.
Just found it a few months ago too … there’s nothing like it! But I do understand that making it is a chore, so thank you for all your work.
A part of me just died. I came here somewhat late to the game, lurking for a while, commenting sporadically (and anonymously), then finally creating an IntenseDebate account two weeks ago just for this site 🙁 I can’t believe this is happening and it’s very sad news.
First ever comment just to say how very much I’ve appreciated this site for the past three years as a constant during loneliness and stress and major life transitions. I’m so glad to have been exposed to all of your writing, I look forward to continuing to follow you all, I wish you all the best, and I will greatly miss The Toast.
Ave atque vale, The Toast. I miss you already. My abiding comfort is there are such people in this world to make a thing/place/repository of excellence like The Toast exist, even for a finite time, and even as The Toast goes away, those people are still around, being excellent out there in the world. Thank you to every editor, writer, coder, commenter who helped make this place what it is/was/will be.
And now I’m gonna go home and cry into my cat’s belly, instead of steadily dripping onto my work keyboard. I’m meebling over here like Boromir just died, y’all. Be at peace, children of Gondor.
Thank you, Nicole and Mallory (and Nikki and Jaya and Marco)! Thank you so much. Thank you for all of the invisible work (accounting! emails!) and the very visible work (the sweat that must appear on Mallory’s brow as she types a rabid rant about raccoons).
Thank you all for hanging out here. It’s been lovely getting to know you all.
This makes me so sad, but at the same time I’m glad it’s going to a) still be here for me to go back and enjoy b) go out on top of the game. Much better to end on a high note than to fade away as everyone gets overwhelmed. Thanks for giving us this wacky/inspiring home for a few years!
Lots of love. So glad the content will still be available to read and cry over!
I’m so sad to this website close, but I understand why you’re doing this. I’d rather have you close it down than for it to become a burden upon you.
Checking The Toast became a daily to weekly routine for me over the last year or so. I’m going to miss it a lot. 🙁
Does anybody know any websites similar to this one in topic and tone? I mean, there are lots of essay/article websites out there but especially the coverage of things like adoption and trauma in a non-clinical, personal-experience way was really dear to me and I haven’t found any other websites that run essays like that. Maybe some of my fellow Toasties have some recommendations?
I am so sad about this. I’ve loved the Toast and its comment sections and I’ve always appreciated the friendliness and supportiveness of everyone here, even before I relaxed enough to start posting more regularly.
Don’t worry. Charlie Potato Hashbrowns will always be with you in your dreams.
Oh no! I hadn’t even considered the loss of the Tater until now. This whole thing just got _even sadder_.
I have instagram now! at chloekevil and I will do my best to provide y’all with as many tater pics as I can
Please come with us to Reddit (Toast Crumbs), because otherwise there will be no Tater in my life and it will be smaller and sadder for it.
I have never reddited before but I will give it a try!
I know it’s been repeated 700 times already, but I am just….sad. And filled with real, genuine regret about not engaging with this community over the past three years, even though I’ve read the site almost every day. You are all lovely people and I wish we could just hang out.
I am also sad that this stupid digital world can’t sustain such a splendid place as The Toast. And I respect your reasons for stopping as well, but I just….man, ugh.
Nicoles and Mallory: Thank you for everything you did in making this site such an incredible place to read and comment. Thank you for the wonderful community you built, a community that will continue even after July 1st. Thank you for letting me be your Man in Middle-earth. Writing for The Toast has been a dream come true. It has meant the world to me. I love The Toast and I love you all.
Your Middle-Earth posts were amazing.
Thank you for everything.
I didn´t comment very often because I was anxious about my English. But the Toast has been my favourite webside and I have visited it everyday.
Thank you for creating this safe place and thanks to everyone who was part of this community. Whenever I had a bad day, it was really encouraging to read the comments and know that there were all these kind, witty and brave toasties out there.
I will miss all of you a lot.
I’m so sorry to hear this! I have so enjoyed reading The Toast since it started out, especially the art history, adoption, and children’s stories made horrific/comforting series (velveteen rabbit gave me a thousand years of nightmares, seven swans made me viciously pleased). But you both need a break and to move on, and I wish you both the best! I look forward to following your new projects.
Oh also can all Toasties agree that if any of us ever meet Bryan Goldberg we all promise to, without any context or explanation, venomously hiss “It should have been you. The wrong child died.” and then stalk mysteriously away.
Fuckin’ Bustle…
Wrong kid died.
Oh wow. I am so sad, but I totally get why this is happening. But I am so sad.
(Any chance we get one last Hey Ladies piece?)
I’ve never commented, I think, but this was one of my favorite places on the internet for a long while. Thank you guys. Best wishes from Tel Aviv
/disconsolate
I just want to say thank you. This has been a haven and a delight and I don’t comment ever on anything on the web, but I am now because the Toast was and is important to me and I will miss it. And I know you already know what an impact you have had on so many people, but I want to add my voice to the chorus.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
But also thank you SO SO MUCH for all of your amazing work and words and community building. What delicious Toast it has been!
Add me to the list of people who are genuinely near tears and feeling real grief.
I’m currently on a train to Seattle, where I will meet some Toasties, and my primary occupation for the four-hour train ride was going to be making and writing cards for the Toast Post. I’d been anticipating this trip for months, and I never thought I’d feel so sad right now.
Anyway. “I don’t want to do this anymore” is the best reason to stop anything. I couldn’t and wouldn’t have wanted to enjoy your party if I knew you, the loveliest of hosts that created the best fucking party on the internet, were made miserable by it.
Thank you for all you’ve done. There will never be another site that generates comment sections like yours, which is really a tremendous success on top of all the wonderful writing. I truly loved this cozy little corner of the internet and the way it brought people together. In conversations I would say ‘my favorite site, The Toast’ so frequently that after two years I now just have to say ‘my favorite site’ and everyone knows what I’m talking about.
Please share links to all future writing endeavours and best of luck with what comes next.
The-Toast is dead. Long live The-Toast.
(crying. it’s fine.)
God, this is heartbreaking. Your site was one of the only ones left on the internet worth reading. Thank you for all of your hard work. I’m absolutely gutted.
Oh god. I am filled with such regret I didn’t start commenting and joining the community earlier. I am so worried about losing this internet safe space and all of you folks.
I am also profoundly grateful.
Oh my gosh. I get it, but my heart is still so full of sorrow.
Every day The Toast was both the funniest thing I’d see and the most insightful. I will miss this place tremendously.
I really hope the Two Monks have an easy time finding work once it’s gone.
Well, damn. Damn hell ass kings.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this Intense Debate account now?
NOOOO! I AM LEGITIMATELY HEARTBROKEN ABOUT THIS!
I’m glad The Toast gets to die with dignity instead of slowly becoming horrible in an effort to increase revenue. But I was not ready for this.
Thanks for being the only site where I enjoyed reading and participating in comments 100% of the time.
I love you guys–ALL of you–and I totally get why this has to happen, but wow. It’s a lot to take in. I’ll be asking for a lot of help as I try to learn how to do the reddits ’cause I’d like to see how you all are sometimes.
The Toast is burnt:(
i get it, but this is such sad news. thank you for everything and here’s to bright things ahead for you allllll.
Christing hell.
I started reading The Toast shortly after it launched, when I was just starting grad school and I was nervous and excited and lonely and hopeful. Its content was such a bright spot for me, always. Link Roundups engaged me in daily critical thought and made me a more engaged and thoughtful person. I lurked for years — plowing through my degree, graduating, making amazing friends, weathering health struggles, moving, bearing family death, going through a horrible low in my marriage and coming out stronger on the other side — but I always, always, always shared Toast articles with my friends, my family, my husband: anyone I thought would appreciate them, because they meant so much to me, and I wanted them to share them with the people I cared about. I am so grateful when I think about the laughter, the insight, the sheer joy the writing on this site has brought me and my loved ones, together. I just started commenting a few months ago and was so excited to finally be a more active part of the breathing community — so I hope whatever kind of migration there is works, because I would love to keep this alive.
Thank you all.
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment.
I’M GONNA THANKS FOR READING ALL THE WAY TO PAGE 8
The internet is dead.
I hope whatever you do next I get to read it and it makes you a lot of money. I love this site so much.
My heart is broken.
HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED AND WHERE DO I SEND IT????
#takeitall #icannotacceptthis
I am so sad, you guys, but I also understand. Thanks for making The Toast such a great place to be a writer and a reader.
I love you guys, and I’m glad for you.
And now I’m crying.
And I’m feeling REALLY sad about when I chickened out on a meet-up in my city with Mallory and other Toasties, and I will learn the lesson that sometimes there is not actually a next time.
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment. There could still be a next time!
We still can, robotneedslove, we still can. On a one-to-one basis at first, if you wish. Try me on twitter, @kiranmartin, or else at the usual gmails, tindomiel.
I’d only discovered The Toast about six months ago and had been sloooowwwllly trying to come out of my shell and comment/interact, so am kicking myself now for being late to the party! But I want to thank you – and everyone else on the Toast dot net – for being wonderful. It sounds pretentious to say that you restored my faith in humanity, but you kinda did – and you definitely restored my desire to participate in discussions with other humans, which is more life-changing than I can say.
I wish you so much joy and success in your future projects – I’ll be looking out for them!!
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment.
This is really tragic. Thank you so much for putting this site together. I first came here for the Western Art History series, but I ended up reading almost everything, and this became one of the first sites I visit every day. I will miss it.
BUT I know you both will go on to bigger and better things and I look forward to following you to your next endeavors.
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment.
This is terribly sad news for me, but you guys have handled it beautifully and gracefully and I’m happy for you both. I feel I’ve been deprived of a jolly good tantrum opportunity, though, why y’all gotta be so nice?
I guess my plan to join this lovely commenting community is foiled. That will teach me to procrastinate! Thank you Mallory and Nicole (and everyone else involved) for creating such a beautiful place. There were so many things to love, but I will genuinely never forget the joy I felt reading “It’s 2050 And Feminism Has Finally Won.” xoxo
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment.
Super bummer!! This is the first place I’ve followed daily since TNC & the Horde sort of faded away….back to staring a bland, lifeless feed (aside from the occasional webcomic).
BUT, I totally get it. Best of all wishes possible for the Toast crew in whatever life comes after, and thanks for all the fish!
Come join us at r/ToastCrumbs! It’s brand-new and shiny and full of feels, at the moment.
But…but….then you’ll see my incredibly focused reddit post history >.> But: Reddit! Hah. I’m there, stealing your gifs. OK, that was a iie, I’m too old to gif properly.
Ah, another Hordean. Good people, those.
You never know where you’ll find us… aside from longing for that sense of community, I guess? Is that a place, can I have been born and dying there?
I completely respect and understand this decision, but I don’t want to live in a world where the toast isn’t making you guys rich 🙁
WAIT! DON’T SHUT IT DOWN. WE ARE HERE TO PASTICHE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU GUYS. I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN A PIECE CALLED “Two Monks Invent Wealth Inequality.”
There will never be a more appropriate time for me to use the word saudade. Thank you, Toast Overlords, for making such a glorious spot on the internet and bringing together such wonderful people.
Nothing gold can stay, and you guys were the goldenest. Thanks for making all our lives brighter for three glorious years.
Also today is garbage.
You are amazing. Thank you. I am so sad right now.
Crying at my desk, which sucks, because of the open office plan.
You have given me so much and I will miss you so much.
But now I will have no place to pitch my roundup of 19th-century hymns that make it sound like Jesus is menstruating. 🙁 🙁
I WOULD READ THE SHIT OUT OF THIS ROUNDUP
You are all so wonderful and I love you all so very much. I am so sad, but I also understand. Thank you for giving the site a clean close.
I’m going to stalk the archives because there are probably (hopefully) many Toast articles I missed out on because I only discovered this site like a year ago. Much love <3
When I finally find a comment section that doesn’t make me hate everyone AND myself. Sigh.
So long, and thanks for all the memes.
It doesn’t have to end: Toast Crumbs! I know it’s Reddit, but trust me, we’re going to do everything we can to carve out a chunk of it and remake it in the Toast’s image.
I have felt so many of these same sentiments as an independent writer and blogger. So hard. You love it. It’s joyous. And then you just realize you can’t spend every day doing administrative stuff and writing and trying to censor yourself for the brand. Sigh. You move onto something else. And it ends up being okay.
I am very sad, but thank you for everything.
this is obviously part of the ronbledore coverup conspiracy
#staywoke
I’ve been reading the Toast for about a year and a half and I’ve never commented before, but I know I can’t let this happen without saying: to the Toast, the Toasties and the Toasters(?), I love you very much, and I’m beyond grateful for your presence in my life. The last couple of years have been stressful and you have helped more than you know. Thank you Toast Team for working so hard to create such a wonderful place. I totally understand, but I will miss you.
So sad. So grateful. So not getting any work done today (other than frantically connecting with Toasties on all possible media).
In a life of terrible news, this is the worst possible news 🙁
I know it’s been repeated 700+ times already, but I am just….sad. And filled with real, genuine regret about not engaging with this community over the past three years, even though I’ve read the site almost every day. You are all lovely people and I wish we could just hang out.
It’s not over yet! We’ve created a subreddit, come join the Toast Crumbs!
Oh! Oh.
Thank you, so much, for everything.
For wonderful writing, for a perfect community. I’ve loved every minute.
Pretty sure I’m still deeply in the denial stage of grief for this news, but I do want to say THANK YOU to Mallory and Nicole for creating such a wonderful, creative, hilarious feminist community.
This place is so much bigger than the sum of its parts and I have a feeling that its impact is so much bigger on our lives than we can even imagine. I know that finding this website was a big turning point for me, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling that. So viva la Toast! And may this community find a way to live on long after all the posts are locked and memories are faded.
Y’ALL.
Thank you guys for being consistently amazing and brightening my days <3
All the feels.
Happy for Mallory, Nicole, Nikki, Jaya and Marco but sad, sad, SAD for the rest of us. I wish I’d been around for the full 3-year run.
Thank you for being a welcoming space. Thank you for writing about and publishing alternately hilarious and important, thought-provoking pieces.
Now where are the damn tote bags? I’m going to buy the sh*t out of them.
YES I need one of those bags
This is really sad, maybe you can set up a Patreon so people who want can support you?
I don’t have anything new to add from what’s been expressed already, but thanks for providing such an awesome space and community.
Mallory a moth flew at my face this morning what is happening it’s like they know
We love you! Thank you for everything you’ve done.
I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face.
LOVE YOU GUYS. I LOVE EVERYONE.
Nicole and Mallory thank you for this. I can’t understate the place it’s had in my life and heart.
To Nikki, Jaya, Matt and everybody who has contributed, thank you for everything.
And to all the Toasties, I’m glad to know you in this little piece of the Internet and WE ALL HAVE TO PROMISE TO KEEP HANGING OUT OK!?!?
I feel the desire to add my comment to the other 900+ to say I will miss you, Toast, because this website and the commentariat have encouraged me (among so many other things) to feel good about saying what I need to say and not apologizing for it. I am a better person for this website and the community created. The Toast has been a great success for so many, thank you to everyone who contributed the time and resources.
What’s wrong of internet: no more the Toast.
If you’d just become a Ronbledore conspiracy oriented website this would never have happened.
I weep for the future. Please add me to the long list of readers here that respect this decision, and see the wisdom in is, but are still super sad about it anyway. This blow is softened by the thought that the excellent content will live on in perpetuity (I hope) and that I can keep on enjoying it. Thank you for that!
Oh, I am so very sad as I only discovered The Toast a little while ago and I have been loving it. It has felt like a such completely unique site and so, I don’t know, joyous? However, I feel you, Nicole and Mallory. My friend and I just closed a company (well, it was her company but I was the other half of the management) after I’d been there three years because money was perpetually thin and we were just tired and burnt out and I was like ‘Even if this suddenly became a big money-maker and I actually got paid for stuff, I would probably still go’ and then she couldn’t/didn’t want to run it on her own and… yeah. It was horribly sad in a way but also a huge relief in another. So I know that sometimes things just have to be over because it’s time and you are just too witches to continue.
Now to stop talking about myself a lot and say that I am so grateful and thankful to the Toast team and the wonderfully sharp and funny commenters. So much love to you all. May your hair ever be big, may you always be an all-hands no-feet trashcat, may no one ever play the lute at you while you’re reading your book.
Just remembered that it is Friday the 13th. That is Too Witches and Metal as hell.
This website got me through a stillbirth when I didn’t think I’d ever laugh again. Thank you.
The Toast made everyone’s life better, even if they didn’t know about it. Dang. Well I hope you have a good time not doing it, and I look forward to seeing whatever you do do.
Thanks so much for what you have done, good for you for stopping before you burned out, and good luck and have fun with whatever you do next! You’ve brought more laughs and meaningful conversation into my life than any other website ever, by a long shot. Keep up the good work! And I still laugh whenever I think “Sex Knight”, and possibly will forever.
Thanks for all the stuff <3
Now I am sitting in my office crying and trying to pretend that I am not crying and I can’t handle this today
So glad I found this community before it ended though. And when there’s no new content (*sob*) I’ll finally be able to go back and read all the earlier stuff I’ve been wanting to read. *tries desperately to find some sort of bright side*
Thank you so much for all your hard work, humour, wickedness and happiness. I wish you all the very best!
I am crying at work.
Toast refugees, where shall we meet up? I feel like Imzy.com would be a good fit for us (it is the actual best and I have several hundred invitations) but I’ll go where you go.
Thank you.
You made a beautiful thing with this website and you are probably also doing a beautiful thing by ending it on a high. I hope that all who need to quickly finds new jobs, gigs, clients or similar. And that everyone who is taking a break from all that enjoys the peace and quiet.
I also hope that the commentariat spreads out like a brave, kind, and hilarious feminist virus and infects the rest of the Internet with Toast cells that offer safety, respectful dialogue, and lots and lots of misandry.
Fancy bread, wine, cheese, olives, and tiramisu have been gathered, and I will recreate this scene tonight in your honour, subbing a small fluffy dog for the cat:
I won’t lie, this is very sad news to hear but I’m also happy and excited for you all. I knew this day would come; The Toast could not exist forever the way it is now (nothing ever could) but it’s still sad now that the time is now. But The Toast was a great gift you’ve given us and even though it’s coming to an end, the gift was still given. That cannot be undone.
You’re both amazing writers and I promise to follow your writing where ever it goes. Although, that promise is limited to ‘as long as you promise to promote your writing on twitter’ because I know my limits and without those tweets in my face I will miss so much (I’m really bad at following up on things/people).
I was going to buy a tote anyway but now I will DEFINITELY be buying one.
You are amazing people who created an amazing thing. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure be here the past few years.
I AM SAD.
BUT WHERE AM I GOING TO FIGHT WITH MALLORY ABOUT THE SEXINESS OF ARAGORN NOOOOOOW?
(Middlemarch, couldn’t you just get a Twitter? IT’S NOT THE SAAAAAAAAAME.)
Man, I am so sad about this, but also totally respect your choice to go. I will return over and over to the archives until the end of time, thought.
Nothing gold can stay.
NO. NO. But of course, This is right, and Fair. IT IS NOT FAIR. It is fair to you, and to your personal lives and professional lives and mental and spiritual and best lives. YOU HAVE RUINED ME. You have saved me. I will love you forever. I want to punch you. And the punch turns into a hug. But the hug turns back into a punch. WHY. You have answered why, and adequately. IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH. IT IS ALREADY ENOUGH.
I am so sad. I have really only ever been a lurker around here, but I have loved reading these posts and all the comments as a staple of my day. I’m looking forward to seeing whatever you guys do next and hopefully a new haven like this one can spring up somewhere else. <3 love you guys and everyone else!
this is disappointing! Oh, well.
…because, of course, I am Canadian.
“No Kickstarters, please. If you start one I promise I will waste every single penny sent my way on expensive single-serving cakes and various perfumed unguents designed to enhance my beauty.”
Oh, Mallory, I think I will miss you the most.
I’m so sad to hear this. Wish the best for each of you. Please don’t hesitate to use The Toast to let us know about other things you’re doing moving forward – I want to support your brains for always.
Thanks for all the smiles and laughs and truly original content!
Like most people who have commented, I am sad and I will miss the Toast because it is one of the rare gems of the Internet that is perfect and never makes me sad. But I also want you to do things you are excited about and I will eagerly follow whatever you choose to take on next! So long as it is public, of course. Naturally.
The Toast has been a daily joy and solace to me over two years, and I’m gonna miss the hell out of it. Thank you for everything!
As I was reading this, I thought, “This will be just like Freaks and Geeks”, and then you guys made that reference, because, of course, you’re perfect and this site is perfect.
Hi, I don’t know how I’m going to read other websites now, but also I just want to say how beautiful the Toasties are given how all of the comments have been a variety of “we are so sad, this has been so important, but we understand and we are so excited for your future endeavors and lives” – that’s true love y’all <3 i’ll miss you dearly, Toast
My favorite website, and a wonderful community! 🙁
I have to thank you, though, for doing such a great job of making yourselves real to us, your readers, so that whenever I feel sad about this, I can focus on how it’s a good thing for you, people I care about, and not make it All About Me.
I wonder if there’s a way to let the community live on without all the work…
I’m so sad. I guess I’ll get back into Twitter so I won’t be completely without you.
WE’LL EAT YOU UP, WE LOVE YOU SO
I have been sipping from the comments here all day, working my way through, perpetually choked up and teary-eyed, but this is where I started ugly crying, right here.
Oh my god. I understand and all. But wow. I am so sad.
You guys 🙁
The internet is going to be a much sadder, darker, lonelier place without the Toast.
So the first ever Internet community I was part of was the Hissyfit bulletin boards,maintained by Glark and Wing Chun before they went and made TelevisionWithoutPity. And that got shut down really abruptly, with no notice, and the forums taken off-line. I think that had started as a bunch of Wing Chun’s good friends, and then it took off, and became like a big party, and then more people came and it was an even bigger, more amazing party. And then it went over the edge and Wing Chun felt like she had a houseful of people having a really amazing time, whilst she was just running backwards and forwards getting people drinks and definitely not having fun, and kind of resenting the hell out of the whole thing.
So! I am gutted that the Toast is closing, but I am very very glad if it means that you are closing while you’re still having fun and loving the community you’ve created. You definitely must leave us forwarding addresses so we know where to find you next! <3 <3 <3
TWO MONKS INVENT SADNESS FOR EVERYONE. (the monks are named mallory and nicole.)
I literally just found out about this place two weeks ago and I thought things were going SO WELL between us. It was love at first sight, at least for me (sigh). Do you really have to leave? Was it something I did? Or didn’t do? Was I checking in too often? Not often enough? Can we try counseling?
Seriously, thank you. You are wonderful.
Of course I am beyond sad, but I am going to live in the hope that Nicole will bring back Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews to cheer me up every once in a while. Go with God ladies. Go. With. God.
(*sniff*) Will miss this site SOOOOOOoooooo much. More later, feeling too blue to write much. (*sniff*)
I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH OH MY GOD.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR ALL THE THINGS.
PS this was the worst Friday the 13th ever. WAY worse than Jason!
Thank you so much for the last three years. You guys are the best and the existence of the internet will be a little less justified from now on.
well.
i’ve been reading the toast for nearing three years now. i stopped checking it as regularly for the past few months. clearly, that was dumb of me.
every time i read an article here, i’d swear to myself that i’d make an account SOON!! and be a cheery, gregarious regular, chatting with other toasties on open threads. i never did. i regret that to the moon and back. this is technically my second-ever comment even though i’m a long-time reader. yikes.
i’ll miss this website immensely. mallory, keep writing sardonic and painfully true things elsewhere (count me as a pre-order for your future book). nicole, i wish bigger and better things for you. the same goes for the other wonderful contributors who make this place a proudly witchy, snarky, feminist haven.
wow, when i typed the-toast.net into the address bar, i absently thought to myself, “i’ll check in on the toast TODAY! it’s been a while!”
and then i see this post.
🙁
Come join us at reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs. Let’s be the change.
I am so sad about this. I literally gasped.
All I can say thank you. Thank you Mallory, for making me laugh so hard I forgot how to breathe. Thank you Nicole for being amazing and helping create such a wonderful thing. Thank you to all the rest of the team (I am sorry I am dumb with names).
Thank you to everybody who has written for The Toast, and if I haven’t read your work, I sure will now.
Thank you to every commenter here for making the only comments I actually looked forward to reading on the internet. You’ve all made me smile and laugh so much.
I’m off to have a little cry now.
Looks like this site is toast
despairing rofl
GO TO JAIL
Like Eldon Tyrell said: “The flame that burns thrice as bright burns out in three years, and you have burned so very very brightly.”
oh… oh :(. I understand it and support it 100%–but I am sad for myself because The Toast is my absolute fave site for content! Thank you Mallory and Nicole and all contributors for seriously making my work weeks better.
I would totes buy a tote.
I’ve spent the day trying to keep the toddler from picking at the fresh stitches on her face, while pondering what we will do about Mr. LF’s car that he totalled very early this morning (in a mistake no doubt caused by leaving five hours late due to hanging out in the ER all night) (he’s totally fine), all on 3.5 hours of sleep. I’ll go look at the toast, I thought. That will cheer me up, I thought.
It didn’t.
Bless.
*tight hug*
I’m almost crying… I love The Toast so much… my days will not be the same without your captions for Western Art History!! not to mention the Dirtbags and Femslash Friday and Movie Yelling… you are amazing writers and observers, and I love you and I’ll miss you, and I wish you GOOD LUCK in your new endeavors and can’t wait for your next book(s).
You and The Toast will be missed, oh so sorely missed. Best wishes to all of you in your lives and projects, and thank you for the wonderful, hilarious, provocative, tear-jerking writing.
<3 <3 <3
I was just telling someone yesterday about how when the world seems a horrific and unfriendly place that is too toxic to go on, I turn to The Toast. How devastating.
I applaud all of you for making good decisions for yourselves, and am so grateful for what you provided while you could and while it fed something for you as well.
I cannot begin to express how much you will be missed, so I shall just sit here and cry in my coffee. Literally. There are now tears in my coffee and I am drinking sadness.
My two year old has started a new thing, in which she announces very solemnly with just slightly too much pathos to take seriously, “Sad baby,” whenever she is troubled by something. (Usually, whatever it is I am refusing to do or am doing that is unacceptable. I am a highly intractable parent, it seems.) I am finding it to be remarkably fitting at the moment.
I’m so sad right now, and I wish you all the best. I’ve never commented on this site before, but I’ve been reading it with a magnifying glass for a really long time. It wasn’t so much the obviously touching moments as it was laughing so hard you fall in love. You know what I mean?
What.
I am so grateful for this lovely site. Thanks for making this such a great space, I found so many beautiful things here and a suddenly surprisingly necessary support in a tough time earlier this year. Thanks for sharing so much of your lives with us strangers! Thanks for the beautiful funny mindful irreverent takes on things!
I love this site, and I’m sorry to see it go. Thank you so much for its existence in the first place!
I need Bargain Bin to go up so I can retail therapy my way out of this heartbreak.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for having made the site.
I only relatively recently discovered this site and I am so so sad. I have loved you so much. The personal, raw, and real perspective has taken my breath away many times. Thank you thank you thank you!
Thanks to both of you for your hard work. Lots of very interesting reading here! Kudos….
I’m saddened to hear this but just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed The Toast every single day. You are all so wonderful and The Toast will be missed, but I am excited to see what you all do next. Thanks for all you’ve done and much love to you all!
And now I’m crying at work. Like a weirdo.
This is very sad news. For me. For you, it seems like a sensible decision. I don’t think you need me wishing you luck, but I want to thank you for all the times you made me laugh and brightened my day. That of course includes the other commenters. I’m very, very grateful for that.
(Also, this really is an unlucky day.)
This is so sad. This is my favourite place on the Internet.
SO MUCH talent and SO MUCH brilliant wit churned out and displayed week after week after week–and for SO LITTLE remuneration.
Who could have thought this could have continued? No one in touch with reality.
So, THANK YOU, thank you, thank you, thank you, for doing this as long as you have. God and the Fates and the Universe bless you!
This is the sort of situation where I am acutely aware of my inability to say anything meaningful.
Anyway, thanks muchly for three years of excellent content. Thanks also to the community of commenters, for all your kindness, your insight, and the opportunity to feel sort of like a living person for a while.
Thank you for all the insight and wit and kindness and humor and misandry and monks and everything.
Thank you for pouring so much of yourselves into this.
Thank you for fostering such an amazing community of writers, and for drawing and moderating this spectacular group of commenters.
Thank you for taking care of yourselves and knowing your limits and closing the book when you needed to.
I’ve been more a lurker than a participant here, but it’s no exaggeration to say that finding this place and this community has been literally life saving in a very hard set of years. I am so grateful and so sad and so grateful.
Thanks.
Okay, now I feel I’ve collected myself a bit more.
Thank you very, very much for this amazing website you’ve created and for the unique community you collected. I totally understand your decision, and despite the sadness and pain, I realize that I do prefer this place ending in a good way, and not going down a long, slow decline like so many others. You’ve brought more joy to me than you probably realize, and a strange sense of belonging, and thanks to you I’ve actually made Friends at a time when I really needed them and didn’t realize that.
So, thank you, thank you for everything.
<3
This is right up there with the time my grandma died on my 15th birthday
People say the internet is forever, so I thought my favorite websites were forever too. I guess the archive will live forever (or at least until the heat-death of the universe), but I am going to miss the active Toast so much.
Love to Mallory and Nicole, love to Nikki and Jaya and Marco and all the awesome writers. Much love to the best commenters on the internet. Toasties forever!
Thank you for three great years of amazing things to read from such a wide variety of voices. What you have created here is a giant book of short stories, essays, poetry, and all manner of other things, plus brilliant commentary from its readers. No one expects editors to continue collecting material for print collections forever, nor should we expect it on a website. The Toast will stay on my virtual bookshelf and I can come back to read and re-read it whenever I want to. So very cool, and I wish you all the best in whatever comes next.
MALLORICOLE.
I haven’t given enough people thumbs up or maybe really even said anything at all (seriously, I’m not sure I’ve ever made a comment), but I want to say both that the Toast has made my life better, that I will be sad to see it ending (though glad that it will be preserved in Internet Amber!), and that I nonetheless understand and respect the decision.
I would be much sadder to see The Toast turn into, like, the final season of some show that ran way, way longer than it should have than to see it finish strong.
And, really, it’s good to know that all the Art History lessons and monks trying to draw and women trying to read will still be here when we need them.
Which we will.
Oof, grumblyqueer’s part (from like 10 hours ago, on the first page) about having been in houses for less time than I was here really hit me. I’ve just started to comment more, but I followed Nicole and Mallory from The Hairpin and it’s been an almost daily stop since then. It’s sometimes the only thing I have time to read during a busy day/week and even when I have more time it’s always been my first stop.
I’ve learned so much from the essays and stories you’ve published. There have been days when only one or two things catch my eye, but then there are those days when it feels like the site has a direct line into my brain and it’s amazing to read a site where I feel so understood. And it’s easily the best — and best moderated — comment section on the web. I often learn as much from the comments as I do from the essay itself.
Like everyone, I’m sad The Toast is ending, but it’s super clear that continuing the site would not be right for our fearless editors. I’ll be paying attention to where the amazing editors, staff, and writers go next. And I’ll follow the Toast commentariat wherever you end up, and will try to be brave enough to participate more.
Ice Bear demands justice.
Best of Luck to all Toast posters and editors. You guys are the best and I will follow this community to the ends of the interwebs.
I’m really going to miss The Toast, but if it’s going to end I suppose I’d rather it end like this, on the best possible terms. Thank you for everything.
Yes, yes, and yes (I'm in slack and reddit now and also am responsible for the bananas)!
I wish I had something clever to say but mostly I just really want to say I will miss this place so. much. <3
Well, shit.
I came here from the Hairpin, and this place is my internet haven. Even though I never comment much because Australian timezone here, I’m always around reading everything!
I guess I’ll take the Reddit plunge now, if you guys are on there!
I’m also on Twitter as @cbdavidson if anyone wants to follow
Buh… bwuh. I just started commenting. With a real username and an avatar like I was gonna BE somebody to these brilliant beautiful people, after years of lurking here and on The Hairpin, people I couldn’t help but think were MY people, even though I wasted so many chances to join them.
Mallory, Nicole, Nikki, Jaya, Matt – everybody. You created something magnificent. I wish I’d done a better job of appreciating what a treasure this site always was. Thank you for giving the Internet such a gift, and may happiness and success and snuffling elderly dogs grace all your lives. Thank you.
Long time lurker and finally getting around to creating an account and I’m a little sad I didn’t do it earlier.
During the early mornings and late nights of having a newborn this year, I read the Toast in order to keep my sanity, to make me laugh and to remind me of the outside world. I will miss it like hell.
Thank you so much for making, running, and writing for this marvelously phenomenal (literally, it’s a phenomenon) site! It’s brought me so much joy. I’ll miss you and it, and wish you the very best in your next endeavors! I, for one, cannot wait to see what you’ll do next! I say to try to make myself feel better as I cry inside…
But seriously, all the best!
The Hairpin and The Toast got me through some very tough times, and introduced me to some great people. I will miss this place so much.
I’ll be a life-long fan of Nicole, Mallory and everyone who’s ever written for The Toast, so I’ll be reading wherever you go next. Good luck! And thank you so much for building this amazing community.
I was just planning an elaborate Kate Beaton/Mallory Ortberg road film involving historical references and feminism. Like Hope and Crosby meet Thelma and Louise. So, I’m going to assume that you’ve set aside time for that part.
Aww, I only recently discovered this place. But I respect your decision.
Well,fuck. I feel fucking bereft but proud of you and also immensely grateful but also,FUCK. I love everyone on here. Thank you for contributing to such a magical space. I’ve barely commented on here,but this place has been like home. If there are any Toasties from Manila,please oh please hit me up! Used real name.
A) Called it.
B) Meanwhile fucking xojane is alive and well. *puts head on desk and cries*
i am seventy now, and hoped this wonderful site would continue at least until i was eighty!…
thank you so much for all the humour, so droll and intelligent, you have brought into my life –
it has all truly been a cherished gift and so often tastily worth sharing with friends….go forth
and keep seeing clearly – you both have exceptional gifts of vision, perception and expression!….
i will miss you….
I only discovered you this past fall and have loved you so much ever since. Thank you for introducing me to Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and so much more. I will soothe myself by reading all the past I’ve missed and rereading all the things I’ve loved.
Also this community is amazing; I’m a diehard lurker but have never been somewhere where I’ve enjoyed the comment section so much.
Thank you so much for everything you’ve done. I haven’t been all that involved in commenting or here for all that long but The Toast is one of my favourite places and your hard work made it so great. Thank you for everything.
Thank you to the Nicoles and Mallory and everyone who ever wrote or commented for creating such an amazing, unique space in the world. This site has been my internet home (there is always a tab on my browser opened to The Toast) for years now. I lurked on The Hairpin and then silently glided over with the mass exodus to The Toast. It’s been with me as I finished undergrad and started navigating the work world; it’s been a place of likeminded people I could retreat to when racist, sexist, heteronormative microaggressions became overwhelming and everyone around me in meatspace thought I was overreacting. I had almost built up the nerves to finally begin commenting, and now the impetus is just my strong desire to express my appreciation for everything you’ve done and my sadness that this site is ending, from the perspective of someone who merely reaps the benefit of your hard work, too soon.
I’ve never commented on the toast before so I guess I’m not quite a contributing member of this community but I am a longtime lurker and I love this place so much. I guess now is the time to overcome my shyness enough to say how very sad I feel and how very grateful I am that the toast has existed. It’s like a warm room full of cushions with punchy embroidered slogans on them and friendly people who want to have respectful discussions about important things like religion and gender expression and owls with bees as hats. Thanks everybody <3
Thank you guys for making such a wonderful haven on the Internet. I’ve lived in four different apartments since I started reading the Toast. I found you guys right as I was finally accepting that the Internet forum I’d been a part of for ten years was dying off. I know nothing lasts forever, and I’m glad you guys are doing what’s best for you.
Thank you so much for all you’ve done. This website has been my favorite because it was (and is) a safe place for intelligent, bookish, creative people. I’ve learned so much from you, the contributors, and the community here.
This site has helped me rediscover my enthusiasm for a variety of subjects because it was filled with other people who like those subjects or similar ones. Even though I didn’t comment much, this website and community helped me feel that I wasn’t alone in my interests.
I will treasure the archives. Thank you, again.
Tearing up a bit. Thank you for the past year, but thank you for being kind to yourselves as well. Damn. I will miss this place.
If there are any other places for us to follow your word/stalk you across the internet besides Twitter, please do let us know. Thank you. <3
Can we please have one final Childhood Stories Made Horrific? And a final Femslash Friday, preferably one penned by Mallory? Any pairing, I don’t even care!
This is Depths of Despair levels.
The REAL Reasons Why The Toast is Closing:
1. Those damn coloring books. What the hell is their deal? Anyway, the editors devote all their time to coloring now, sorry.
2. Beta testing and rollout for “Toast 2: The Entoastening,” a fully immersive Toast upgrade– same quality content, but in 3D and Oculus-compatible, featuring infinitely customizable photorealistic avatars. No one ever leaves the house again. Families crumble. You forget to eat.
3. Personal fallout from recent column, “Everything What’s Wrong Of Nicole’s Clamberous Spratling.”
4, Patriarchy, man.
5. You. It was you. Just you. Remember that thing you did, that you hoped nobody noticed? EVERYBODY NOTICED. They just didn’t say anything, because they couldn’t believe you had gone there. And so it festered, in darkness, and this, THIS is the result. You destroy everything you love. Why do you do that? Why do you project your failures onto others? Why are you even writing this right now?
6. That recent “Hanson > Beatles” column, and now Mallory has to go away for a long, long rest.
7. Massive lawsuit from Hulk Hogan after the site posted video of him visiting a tiny, wee Scandinavian adult novelty store.
8. The stars are right.
9. You have a strange feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Fortunately, you have plenty of time to think about it, since you are spending summer vacation with your wealthy uncle, who genially supports your love of mysteries. “By the way, this package arrived for you this morning,” he says over breakfast one day. It has no return address, only a crude sketch of what looks like a pair of medieval monks. As you examine it, suddenly you hear a sound at the front door– not knocking, exactly, more like heavy scratching– as if from the claws of numerous owls, raccoons, or possums.
If you open the package, turn to page 87.
If you answer the door, turn to page 3.
This is brilliant!
I am sat here weeping, and I really can’t do much about it, except post here and hope that someone will read it. I always wanted to be a regular toastie, someone who posts all the time and has running jokes, but my terrible sense of timing, along with my total ignorance of computers sort of got in the way.
When I stopped dancing and ended up in the wheelchair, I felt like I had lost my place, lost my part in that community. Now it feels like I am losing my community all over again.
*hug*
*also hugs*
*internet hugs*
But also, come with us! We are setting up on Reddit: r/ToastCrumbs and we would love to bring as much of the community with us as possible.
Thank you, I will try to understand reddit enough to come with y’all! If anyone would like to message me directly, you can do it through this username, or email me at [email protected] I really like hugs, and now I’m weeping again because you are all so lovely!!! Thank you toasties!!!
Thank you for everything. The Toast has been a delight.
As a writer I feel you and harbor no sadness. Projects must end and new things begin for the soul to stay fresh. I’m happy for your transition and will forever be grateful for the many times I’ve cracked up reading about Ayn Rand or art history or whatever. Looking forward to your next projects!
Thank you for all the hard work everyone involved has put into the website. It’ll be sad to see it stop, but I understand and wish you all the best in the future.
The Toast is one of the only websites I read the comments too, even if until now I’ve remained silent – After a quick browse through this thread I saw mentions of a possible reddit; I don’t want to step on any toes, If there were concerns about migrating to that particular area of the internet; another alternative could be a Discord server? https://discordapp.com/
Finally, sung to the tune of All I do is win from Magic Mike XXL.
“All I do is read, read, read no matter what;
Every time I load up to the toast’s site,
all of these tabs go up!
and they stay there,
and they say yeah, with hearts bare!
Coz, All I do is read, read, read and even with it gone, I’ll lock it in my heart and make it stay there”
I am another regular reader who never commented until now. Thank you for everything! All you smart people in a world of so much dumbness. Sigh….
Thank you Mallory and Nicole and Nicole and Marco and Roxane and everyone who contributed to this beautiful space (and I'm sorry if there are more specific names I should have named). I know I don't comment here a lot but I have read The Toast since its beginning days, I am constantly sharing articles with the people in my life, and I know these are the best commenters out there. I have been introduced to so many great, smart, funny writers, important concepts, talented artists.
I read the post at a work thing and I was doing a show that night so I literally went into denial and am only now emotionally processing and crying and it should feel like over-reacting but this really is a magic place. I am so grateful for all the work that you all have put in and I look forward to seeing whatever you do next. Thank you.
Dudebros have even been banned from posting on /r/askhistorians on the sheer basis of their being dudebros, and /r/unresolvedmysteries is barely moderated but has hardly any misogyny. It can be done.
I read this right before therapy, so I know what I’m talking about today!
I’m glad you’re able to end this is a way that makes sense and feels good to you.
Boy, did I choose a time to be without Internet access.
Thank you for these lovely years and I wish you all the best and I will miss the Toast so much.
Boy, did I choose a time to be without Internet access.
Thank you for these lovely years and I wish you all the best and I will miss the Toast so much.
*also hugs*
I’m so so sad 🙁 I just found The Toast a few months ago and I’d never experienced site that suited my interests and thoughts/feelings about things so well 🙁 Thank you so much for creating this amazing space and please PLEASE let us know where you and all your writers will be working in the future so we can continue to enjoy your incredible work
Truly upsetting to hear, and I am sorry that it is not easier and more financially rewarding to run such a wonderful website. I understand why it wouldn’t be, and appreciate all that you have done to create such a unique and lovely place. Would that it could last longer, but thank you for all of it all the same
I am trying to find the Toast totes. Where are the totes?
Thank you for everything.
Wha…? Today was my first day visiting the Toast. I got very excited when I thought I’d stumbled across a new super cool, intelligent and humourous website… and then I read the sad news. Je pleure.
I’m going to miss this website 🙁 as a medieval literature student, I appreciated having somewhere to laugh at monks and chretien de troyes that wasn’t my tutor’s office! But thank you so much for keeping it up. Websites I loved and lost have been actually kind of upsetting, so the fact it will continue to exist is in itself a real blessing. Thank you 🙂
You did a good and lasting thing here! Editors, writers, commentariat, everyone. I hope you can feel that the toast dot net was a success.
I am just going to go out and garden for a while now.
This site has made the world a better place; I’ve loved it as a reader and even more as a writer. Thanks for everything, and best of luck with all y’all’s future endeavors.
And since I’m moving to NYC for grad school at the end of July: I would be 1000% down for a going-away party, and I hope it comes together.
goddammit.
Thank you for the last three years, and all the nights spent laughing when I should have been working on my master’s thesis (your art history posts always made the rounds in many an art seminar). Onward!
-Noah-
I just wanted to wish everyone at The Toast good luck with the future. You have a very special place in my heart, not least because you were instrumental in me realising I was bisexual and had adhd but also because you showed me the true greatness of Kristen Stewart.
So if you before you go Mallory and Nicole have any more handy observations or pointers for me that’d be great. I for one am very much looking forward to Women in Western Art History Who Haven’t Realised They Have Soup in Their Hair.
K thanks
Thank you for a lifetime’s value of…. value. Dammit. So glad to know it’s just the website going away, and the people and archives will live on!
Last time I did this, a radio host hung up on me, but if you’re taking requests…. My man and I won’t slep very well — ever — without finding out the gripping conclusion of Hey Ladies. It’s what got me here, and damn if it won’t see me out.
I’d have clicked more ads. I’m sorry! But happy renewal of life and its purpose to all.
I’ve been lurking here for … about two years, I think? I started reading as Femslash Friday was winding down. This site has been such a joy to visit, and it’s so sad to see it go.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
This is such incredibly sad news. Not only is this one of my favorite sites to read, but it was one of the first places I’ve ever had the delight of being published. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be apart of this community. I wish you the best, and you will all be missed dearly!
Oh man, this lovely corner of the internet has given me so much joy over the past 3 years. Thank you for making such a fun, weird, warm place exist for as long as you did
Literally this was my best news source and kidney source. I don’t know where I’m going to get either anymore.
This is my very favourite place on the internet. To keep me going I’ll have to go back through the archives and systematically read everything, because there might be something I missed over the years. I don’t comment on websites in general – this is perhaps one of three. And then my computer crapped out so I didn’t know my password and I stopped commenting over the last few months. Yesterday my screen magickally fixed itself, and I can only assume it was because of the sheer too witchesness of the Toast giving a final bow.
(Sansa pictures were the only thing keeping me going after Cute Overload shut down, now I’ll have to join instagram or something, because I have a feeling that’s where you go to find cute puppies.)
I love the commenters here, love the writers, farewell and I hope I continue seeing your work elsewhere.
Where am I going to get my feminist art history humor NOW???? (Sob)
The saddest news 🙁 🙁 🙁
I have loved learning from and laughing with all of the amazing contributions, even if I was mostly a lurker. Thank you, Toast team, for everything, and can’t wait to see what the next couple of months have in store!
v v late to Toast appreciation but – this website has been a bright spot in my life since I first learned about it and I’m so thankful for all the hard work that you all put into it. This place was a home to me when I didn’t have one and made me feel like I had somebody to talk to through some hard stuff. Thank you.
Man, this crushes me. But also it sounds like the right thing for you guys, so thanks for taking the time to talk it out with us here ❤️
Also PLEASE DO A CLOSING HEY LADIES AND DAD MAGAZINE.
Thank you.
Thank you for the good time, toast. You have made a considerable number of days better for me and added many embarrassing laugh-snorts to life.
Hi Nicole
I just wanted to come and say that I have been following you around the internet since Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews. I imagine I will keep following you around the internet (in lieu of being able, after a long hike, to sit quietly and platonically hold your hand).
Sorry for being creepy! Hopefully only mildly!
Dear Mallory and Nicole and Nicole and Marco and Jaya, so much love and so much thanks!
And to the rest of you too, lovely commentariat. I feel too sad for Reddit or Twitter right now. I will probably pull myself together and get there eventually, but I just don’t feel witches enough right now.
Thank you so much, not just for your articles, but for drawing a readership whose comments I actually wanted to read because they made me laugh as hard as the article. Going to miss it so much!
I have only just lately found your site and think that it is very timely, clever, insightful and inspiring. Though I understand your predicament, closing seems like the waste of a truly hard won asset, in the form of a dedicated participatory readership. Mountains of interest such as this, are hard to replicate. Wishing you well. Thank you for the light that you have shone, all of the days that you have brightened, and the felicity that you have shared.
I am so late to this announcement. In a way I’m glad I didn’t see it on Friday, because it would’ve colored my enjoyment of the convention I went to over the weekend. On the other hand, since I got back from the convention it’s been basically one long string of awful things, so now I feel a little kicked while I’m down.
That said, I do completely understand why you’re hanging up your hats. Thank you for the delightful and insightful (and occasionally disturbing, Mallory) content, and thank you for the advance warning that this was coming. The last time I went through a website closure like this, it was with two days notice, the site didn’t stay up after it closed, and the community diaspora was really awful. Having time to come to grips with the announcement and coordinate ways for everyone to remain in touch afterward is greatly appreciated. It’s also good to know that I don’t have to find some way to power through the backlog of articles in my RSS feed before July 1st ;).
Wow. This was a corner of the Internet that was so … me. So utterly, hopelessly nerdy, so feministy, so sarcastic, and so alarmingly queer. I will miss having my inner self literally reflected onto blog posts, but funnier, and done by someone else, and with less navel-gazing.
Thank you Nicole and Mallory and all the folks here – it’s been like finding a wonderful home and safe place in the vast wasteland of the Internet. You’ll be missed. Please let us know where we can find your next projects so we can buy them and read them and watch them and reminisce about the blindingly awesome days of the Toast.
You brought a unique voice and community that brightened so many lives! What a great run!!
No, no, no!!
I have often lurked; tipped once or twice; never commented because the community is just so already tight-knit and has all the perfect things to say
But the past year has been hard in many, many ways for me and laying quietly awake next to my partner as she sleeps soundly, I’ve found solace in the mix of silly humor relevant to my interests–yes please take the piss out of Byron some more–and deep, emotive writing–who knew I would relate so strongly to henna’d hands?
Thank you, from the bottom of the heart you’ve often helped to heal a little faster.
Godspeed
This makes me sad. So sad. But I want to thank you for leaving the site up for archive trawling and much linking. That makes the loss a little more endurable.
I am so sad — really, have laughed more here than any other site and admired the excellent and clever writing and wit. I so wish all of you the very best expanded careers you deserve and look forward to reading you in many other venues. Maybe you use the “Toast-in Amber” site to announce your other articles, books, endeavors, or just stuff you feel like sharing cause you want to. Thank you so much for this fabulous site! Bon Chance!
WOW. Late to the game, but I am SO disappointed, really, really sad. This is a serious bummer.
No! Can’t you at least wait until January when I submit my thesis??? Thank you though, SO MUCH. The Toast has given me more joy than ANY other displacement activity over the last three years. Loads of love
Oh. God. No. I don’t suppose you’d consider emailing me captioned works of western art on a daily basis…? No? What about monks inventing stuff? Not that, either. Seriously, I laugh every single day because of this site, absolutely love it, and will miss new content so very, very much. Thank you for adding years to my life with all the laughter you have brought out in me.
I came here, almost a month after the fact, to say 1) I’m still super fucking bummed 2) will be for the foreseeable future and 3) that I wanted my objections to be recorded in the annals of internet history.
I *just* found this website. Dammit! I can tell I missed out on magic.
My mother and I both loved this site! She especially loved when I would show her the Two Monks Invent Things posts. It always gave her a good laugh and we are very sad to see it close. Thanks for providing us with some bonding time all these years.
Where can go be too witches with other ladyfolk now? I am so bummed. Y’all have good reasons and everything and I love you forevers, but dang. I will miss everyone’s hilariously poignant and soul-crushing words.
Mallory and Nicole, your articles are some of the funniest and most insightful things I've ever read and I'm seriously going to miss it here. I never really got involved in the community and that's a huge regret for me, I don't mean to sound like a stalker bu-I WILL FOLLOW YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH-no but seriously I look forward to whatever both of you have in store for the world next keep on keeping on xoxo
Thank you for all your thought-provoking and hilarious writing over the years!
Aw, dang. The Internet is about to become stupider and less fun. Still, congratulation on a great run.
Please reconsider!
So I know this post is like six weeks old already, but it all ends tomorrow and I just found out my alma mater tore down the house my best BEST friends and I lived in our junior year (aka literally the best year of my life, even now, 13 years later), and I am very emotional.
I have never commented here before, but I’ve been a reader since inception. Thank you for everything. I will miss the fuck out of this site.
Hillary Clinton, you are a true servant. I loved the tip.
So where did you go?