On the day The Toast’s readers found out it was closing, many of us took to Twitter to process and pay tribute. One of our number, Hayley, started a thread with this tweet: “a fun thing I would like to hear from y’all is all the things you wouldn’t have done without The Toast.” And while Toastie-ness is, of course, a rich tapesty, I couldn’t help but notice things that came up again and again: “I left an abusive relationship.” “I tell men to shut up more often.” “I’m more comfortable being queer.” “I’d never have published my writing.” “I’ve made so many friends.” (For the record, the last three are all true for me.)
Below, I’ve gathered longer responses from a few readers on what The Toast meant to them. Think of it as signing The Toast’s senior yearbook. We love you! Have a neat summer!
Before The Toast, I knew that our misogynist society was lying to me when it said “women aren’t funny.” After The Toast, I knew that our misogynist society was lying to me when it said that I wasn’t funny. —CosetTheTable
Where I grew up (Hudsonville, Michigan), the population was close to 98% white, and I estimate the percentage of Christian vs. any other religion was about 90%. I had very little exposure to anyone whose background looked different from mine. The combination of moving to New York and reading The Toast offered a kind of immersive knowledge of what people of other races, religions, and cultures experienced, and how I could respond and relate to my new friends in a more informed way. Features like the Convert Series and individual essays on race and class have taken me from unfortunately ignorant to gratefully perceptive. —Christy Admiraal
The Toast was my first hometown after finishing college, a place on the Internet to go and be among my people, something I thought I would lose outside of school. I saw writing there from people like me, who were just starting out new stages, new identities, new burgeoning revelations, and I was inspired to “take to the sea” and put my goals first. Since becoming part of The Toast community, I’ve been making small strides with my mental health, become more secure in my queerness, and traveled thousands of miles looking for a story to call my own. Thanks for hosting my tribe, and thanks for all the jokes. —Flan
I love that, especially now in month 6433456 of this dang election, The Toast was a place to have complicated, undecided opinions on things. Everything from “I voted for Sanders, but with reservations…” to “I hated that movie, but it did X well…” Which feels rare on the internet. I love how little Toasties (in articles and comments) felt the need to label ourselves. —Emily
Through The Toast I’ve met the people who have helped me gain confidence to be simultaneously selfish and kind, to stand up for myself when I need to and to examine my own prejudices as well… The Toast has blessed me with the freedom to be a complete nerd, to embrace my passions, and to take risks. All of this sounds vague and magical, but it’s all completely true.
Specifically, The Toast has helped me explore my own Asian American, bi-racial identity. Through posts like Jaya’s “Some Unorganized Mixed Race Thoughts” and Nicole’s “ʻYou left your culture at the doorʼ: Relationships, Misogyny, and Asian American Inside Baseball,” I have come to own my identity as multitudinous, as Both, as And. I do not have to be two halves of anything, I can be a whole that is me and that doesn’t automatically fit into the normal checked boxes. I can both fight to see people like me on TV and know that I won’t see anyone exactly like me on TV, because honestly, that show would be pretty boring.
I will miss the Toast with all my heart, and I know that the relationships I’ve formed through it will be with me for the rest of my life. And I’m 85% committed to getting a commemorative tattoo. —Liz Niemer
As I hit middle age, I was feeling less and less visible, and less and less valuable, in our society. Every message telling me my experience and wisdom were worthless, and the only way to maintain any value was to hold onto youth as tightly as possible. The Toast reminded me of my intrinsic worth as a person and a woman, and helped me celebrate the things other people were telling me to avoid and fear. We were a group of (mostly) women, honoring each other, and that is a powerful thing. I’m going to miss it dearly. —Bittersweet
The Toast reminded me that there are other people out there who are curious and interested in odd things, and made me feel not so despairing over the state of the world. And it made me realize that there are people out there who won’t automatically discount my past relationships, or question my ability to determine whether a man is HOTT, simply because I am happily married to a lady. No necessity to label myself. I’d gotten so used to automatic rationalization/explanation/defensiveness that to find a space where that was unnecessary was a tiny golden treasure. —semperlegens
The Toast found me—I don’t think I found it after all—during a year of change and transition and introspection for me. It is so fiercely itself, with such a distinctive spirit. It celebrated power and strength, but also your delicate heart and soul. It celebrated all your rough, undefined edges, all the odd spots inside.
Mallory has been a model of writerly voice; watching her at work, it’s been extraordinary how much her style speaks to me, while I still speak my own. I will be influenced by her, bolstered that a voice like hers can speak so loudly and clearly. Nicole Cliffe demonstrates such extraordinary gentleness and honest joy and love, along with her keen mind and sense. Nicole Chung shares vulnerability with such trust; she’s also been a wonderful example to me as someone also of Asian descent, navigating the intricacies of race and identity. And: Dad Magazine (Jaya and Matt!). And all the wonderful writers who contributed, including the achingly lovely advice column that entwined poetry into its words. I have a lot of archives to go through, which is both painful and reassuring.
Most of all, the Toast brought together so many extraordinary, loving, kind, keenly intelligent, deeply funny people. Hearing the rhythms of their lives have brought me such comfort, to know that at all times, there is joy and contentment, though there is sadness and adversity and grief too… “Community” always seemed such a generic, sterile term to me, but this is genuine community. We’re all concerned and pulling for each other.
The Toast has made my life better in many ways, strengthening, emboldening, and nourishing my spirit and soul. I would have been able to live my life without having ever known it, but I am so glad I did. Thank you. —Gloria
It’s cool, I was totally planning on tearing up at my desk this morning.
LOVE AND TEARS
This is so so so great. I feel so lucky that The Toast was a part of my life for as long as it has been. And now I know there’s a whole network of people who also love and appreciate Greek mythology jokes!
Greek mythology DAD jokes esp. welcome.
The Toast is the first website I cried over. Mourned.
Nicole, Mallory and the rest of the writers created a safe space where we could all be weird together. It’s where you know you’ll find someone else that thinks Monk #1 has a lot of potential and celebrates his achievements, like that time he figured out how to paint bitches. Nikki made me cry with every single piece she wrote, but in a good way, it made me realize that someone else out there is struggling in the same exact way I am, which was a relief. The Toast made me comfortable calling out people’s bullshit and casual racism. I have yet to meet a Toastie at a meet-up that I didn’t like. Now I’m just rambling. The Toast means/meant too much to put into words, I’ll miss it but I know I’ve became a better person because of it.
It’s so strange how this episode was totally normal and then this scene happens and BAWLING. So crying. All crying.
What show is this? Rec for a great starter episode?
Agents of SHIELD! This is in season 3, though–it’s on Netflix. Get past the first half of season one and BOOOOM. Such a great show.
GODDAMN YOU BEAUTIFUL ASSHOLES FOR MAKING ME CRY
i wouldn’t have my phd if it wasn’t for this site keeping me sane over this past year plus so THINK ON THAT
I have struggled to mentally sort what The Toast means to me…it means learning about things I never would have known about, it means making new friends, it means having a space to talk about things with respect and kindness, it means having a space where it is safe to be a woman and queer and intelligent and funny and to have that voice be valued.
So The Toast has helped me to trust my own voice more, to figure out new ways to talk about things, and to seek out other voices that have new and exciting things to say. For all of this and more, I am so grateful.
Yes! That’s what I was struggling to put into words, The Toast helped me trust my voice more. Perfect.
To the Toast. I discovered you disgracefully late, but loved you as much as I could in the short time I had you. You are, every single one of you, writers and commenters, hilarious, welcoming, lovely, and an excellent distraction from my actual work. You broadened my horizons and my appreciation of medieval art, trash animals, Rami Malek, long articles about obscure things, and- almost- even dogs.
I shall miss you all terribly.
Ditto unto infinity.
Here’s to Nicole and Mallory, Nikki and Jaya, Roxane and Marco. Here’s to the careful guardianship of the comment-utopia. Here’s to all the posts where we offered our experiences – and our headcanons – as our truth.
And here’s to all of us for managing, somehow, to become simultaneously kinder and more fierce. Thanks Toast. Thanks Toasts.
The Toast has been a haven of sensible humor, honest storytelling and western art history. I am eternally grateful that it has been a place where people are like me and it is perfectly alright to be like that! It’s like sitting down with a glass of wine with your best friend and every opinion can be voiced and discussed and sometimes adjusted but never shot down. I will miss it endlessly, I am so sad to see it go. I hope it will spawn a myriad of little tadpole toast-y sites across the internet. I will read them all furiously.
Thanks to The Toast for being a pocket of decency on the Internet. It was a place where everyone was smart, curious, funny & kind to each other. Bon Voyage The Toast! Thank you for being wonderful.
Guys? I’m really really not ready for this.
me neither. please, hopefully, change course and decide to keep this all going?
please.
Nor me.
I think someone once described The Toast as the best big sister ever. And that’s what it is to me. It makes me laugh. It makes me cry. It makes me think of the experiences and perspectives of others instead of just about myself. It recommends movies and tv shows that are great and ones that are the worst but also the best. It is goofy with me and stern with me and kind to me. The Toast is filled with advice, recommendations, incredible jokes and even better writing. But most importantly it is filled with a sense of love and friendship and support and kindness and humor that both witnesses and nourishes each person here. So thanks for being the best big sister, The Toast and all you wonderful people who create for it, run it, and comment on it.
“Best big sister ever” That hit me right in the feels. *All the tears*
I can’t find whoever made the comment first. It’s lost in an open thread somewhere from months ago. But it stuck with me. Props to whoever initially said it.
That makes a lot of sense. FWIW, I lobbied my mom *hard* when I was a wee sprout to trade my younger brother in for an older sister.
Honorary big sisters are some of my favorite people.
Getting to hear the insights and encouragements among Toasts has really made me realize that I am not great at establishing and nourishing female friendships, and what a profound loss that can be, because the kind of support this community has fostered is … just, brave and unique and strong and sensitive and honest yet accepting. I have felt less alone and more receptive thanks to all of you. I’m not ready. But I hope I can take what I’ve learned here and be braver out there, too.
I realized that I got super into the Toast after my mom died. It’s a place where I could find smart strong women to look up to and a place where things just made sense. I guess the big sister analogy works best for me as well. You all got me through some tough times.
Hairpin and Toast (but especially Toast) have been really important to me over the past few years, and y’all have definitely helped me become more myself. It’s sad that it’s ending, but I feel like it’s just the beginning for the community, if the Toast Slack is anything to go by, and the possible plans for a community-run site in the future.
Hugs all!
How does one go about joining the Toast Slack if one does not already use Slack for work etc? #askingforafriend
email ppyajunebug at gmail dot com. Welcome!
Thank you! I’ve been telling myself to do this for weeks now. I just sent the email and it’s going to be the most important kind thing I do for myself today.
I just loved every moment of being able to hear so many different kinds of voices, but, somehow, sans a lot of the other awful rhetoric that can come along with that. (All made possible by the perfect moderation of comments that is the World’s Worst Job and notice how Mike Rowe never once offered to take it on?)
The articles were ::all:: valuable — and the comments equally so.
Thank you all for letting me say things, but, even more importantly, thank you all for saying INCREDIBLY interesting things that changed so much of how/who I am in the world.
Yes, precisely. So many comments offered perfectly articulated versions of the jumbled, messy ideas inside my own head, and they really helped me voice my own opinions more confidently out here in the real world over the past few years. And the opinions that run completely contrary to my own were just as valuable! It’s always been so incredibly helpful to read through long comment strings with reasonable, friendly debate between people who really strive to listen and learn rather than simply shut the opposition down.
thank you all for being huge nerds with me and sharing the things about which you are nerdy.
Also for being kind and brave and self-loving like the best of all the Hogwarts houses in one <3
I think the thing I value most here is how “huge nerd” is NOT a pejorative, but a fucking ::fierce:: brand of everyday life.
heck yeah! There are so many fun facts and esoteric research topics I never would have heard of had I not read articles and comments here or followed a lot of Toasties on twitter.
Yup. I think my favourite comment ever was when someone said “The Toast commentariat is entirely made up of Amy Santiagos”.
There is no higher compliment.
I cried when I heard The Toast was closing, because I thought, “I’m going to lose all these people!”
The writing is always great, but The Toast is the only place on the Internet where the comments can make an already funny-post even funnier, or where you can hear intelligent commentary and support and no (or very few) trolls. It’s the first place I felt comfortable talking about my pregnancy, and a place where I was able to give advice on having post-partum.
I’m going to miss this community that pops up on each post, even as I know it’s merely migrating.
I’m glad The Toast was here to expand my literary horizons and allow me to meet so many wonderful, awesome people. Thanks so much for taking a few laps around the sun with me.
A willing foe and sea room.
AND SO SAY WE ALL!
THIS IS SO RUDE*
*and by rude I mean everything here is wonderful and beautiful and I will now excuse myself to go cry in the bathroom
O my lovelies, The Toast has made me a better person, and i am 110% certain that this will not change when the site ends, it will just morph into new ways of teaching. ♥
SO MUCH THIS.
Before we knew the Toast was ending, after I’d shared the zillionth article from it to my fb, a friend of mine said ‘The Toast is exactly your personal brand isn’t it? It’s so specific but it’s just like, you.’ It is me, I am Toast, you are Toast, we are all Toast, and we will continue to be Toast for all time. Thanks for bringing us together.
Yes! So many articles here are SO perfect for me, my sense of humor or else my sensitivities, my particular way of phrasing things. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t also have that need unfulfilled anywhere else but the Toast.
WE ARE ALL TOAST.
Even more important: we all learned that other people are just as Toast as us, and that was a wonderful gift to receive. I, for one, will treasure that.
I feel EXACTLY the same way. Without the Toast I’d feel a lot more weird, and a lot more isolated. Now I know that there are all these other people out there who share my sense of humor! All these other people who grew up as bookish kids re-reading Anne of Green Gables! All these other people who will laugh until they cry over jokes about monks and witches and YA literature retold as Wikipedia articles!
In my pre-Toast life I always thought I was the only one.
Seconding all of these comments, and adding that I went out and got an undercut last weekend, which I would not have done if not for some reaffirming Toasties. Thank you, all you wonderful people!
Aaaaah, me too! I’m getting mine on Wednesday!!
As a Toastie Twitter early adopter, I particularly want to give shouts-out to a few people who have had a specific, large-scale impact on my experience there: rat_paws (avbeeeee on Twitter), whose kindness and authenticity and supportive nature set the tone for discourse; ilikemints, who encouraged our community and the AVC commenter community to join forces and in doing so allowed both to grow stronger; and finally, IceBergMama, who could be fairly credited with creating Toastie Twitter – her community-building skills are unmatched and she made me feel like a cool kid for the very first time in my life.
Really, though, I could write a whole book about all the wonderful people I’ve met through this community and in many cases become actual friends with. The roles filled by those I mentioned above are specific to me – I imagine that every one of us has our own handful of people who shaped their experience.
I have literally had moments where I have held my phone in my hand, taken a deep breath, and imagined the combined love and strength of ToastieTwitter flowing into and through me. It has made me a kinder, stronger, better person.
I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH
in a world of people making fun of young people / women for taking too many selfies, i love that TT is always there to request and love on each other’s gorgeous faces.
I don’t do a whole lot of selfies personally, but I feel that love! And I know I can flood y’all’s TLs with cat photos…
Haha, I’m always forgetting that some people look down on selfies! Those people are silly. Selfies are great and I’m great at taking them. Thanks to the supportiveness of Toastie Twitter, there are now hundreds of pictures of me the way I see myself in places where I can easily find them whenever I need to remember, and nobody can ever take that away from me.
Not enough thumbs ups in the internet. Toastie Twitter is the best.
Toastie Twitter gives me fuel for my day. If I need recharging, three minutes w/ Toastie Twitter allows me to run for another three hours.
YES! The one bit of solace with The Toast ending is that I’ve followed so many great Toasties on Twitter and can continue to enjoy their jokes and profound words. Hooray for Toastie Twitter! (Also- IceBergMama & logicbutton: you never fail to bring a smile to my face. Thank you.)
I find things on the Toast and think, wow, I didn’t know *anyone but me* thought that!
I find other things on the Toast and think, wow, I never knew *anyone* thought that and now I am reconsidering my whole world view!
How does the Toast contain both of these things?? It’s like the friend you always wish you had, who simultaneously gets you and challenges you on every level.
I am grateful to the Toast for so many things, but especially for pushing me to start writing again. Thank you Toast, I don’t even know what to say.
ps. I joined Toastie slack, and it’s…awesome, in a slightly overwhelming way.
I find things on the Toast and think, wow, I didn’t know *anyone but me* thought that!
I find other things on the Toast and think, wow, I never knew *anyone* thought that and now I am reconsidering my whole world view!
^^^^^thiiiis.
Just thank you. My time here has been brief, but I’ve appreciated everything so much.
There is no other website for which I would have gotten up super early on my day off to buy tote bags. That is the depth of my love writ large.
The UK is leaving the European Union, America might vote in a racist, misogynist nutcase before the end of the year, and my favourite website is shutting down. It just feels like all the good things are being taken away at once. I know it’s only a website, but it’s rare to find something so utterly on your own wavelength, and its closing feels like the shitty icing on a cake made of balls.
It’s been brilliant, it’s been beautiful, it’s been the internet at it’s best, and it will be mourned by me and by so many I care about. Floreat The Toast!
THIS. HURTS.
I found my way here thanks to Mallory’s Texts From posts at The Hairpin. Whenever I was reading something and laughing so hard I couldn’t speak, my husband would ask, “The Toast?” and I’d nod, helpless. The idea of an internet community has never been strange to me — I expect to find genuine, life-giving friendships and community online. I expect to find a lot of people who go, “You? Me too!” But I never expected to find quite so many open, generous people who shared and wrote of so many overlapping interests. I never expected anything like The Toast and I’ll always be so grateful for it.
That’s how I got here too, a little over a year ago. I have laughed so hard I cried at many things Mallory has written, especially the two monks.
I’ve never really commented, but as soon as I found the Toast, I remember thinking, “Yes, here are all of my people. Here’s my spot.” And I love this place, even though I’ve only lurked. I’m not very social, or good with people, but I will miss this place and all of the amazing Toasties.
I got here because of Mallory’s Texts From, though I didn’t know about the Hairpin.
The Toast is a beautiful, kind, hilarious, massively thought-provoking place.
I want to give a special thanks for the comment moderation. Because Nicole, Nikki, and Mallory spent time wading through a cesspool of nastiness to keep it away from this community, the Toast is one of the only places where I would read the comments and recommend to others that they do so.
And the comments have given me (and all of us, I assume) terrific book and product recommendations, kind and thoughtful advice and support, points of view we might not have considered, and fascinating information.
I will miss each and every If X Were Your Y, Great House Therapy, Tolkien and Gilmore Girls reference (and especially each L.M. Montgomery reference), each well-deserved side eye to the Patriarchy, each literary and old movie in-joke, and each beautiful eye-opening personal essay.
I will miss the site that made my beach-town-born husband and I collapse in hysterics while reading Nicole’s Positions I Am Willing to Fill in Your Charming Beach Town, and each and every comment.
I will be looking for Nikki and Nicole and Mallory’s writing everywhere (and Susan Harlan and Jaya Saxena and everyone else).
Goodbye, you wonderful old Toast.
Hello, Toastie Twitter.
P.S. HAGS
I am another shamefully late Toastie, but oh, the lessons I’ve been able to cram in thanks to this site on humor and honesty and intersectionality and just HUMANKIND has just opened my eyes in ways that my previous 15 years on the Internet was never able to do. It has just been a place where I have felt free to be ME — an imperfect, middle-aged woman striving to better myself. The Toast was my guidebook that showed me I could do it. I am forever, eternally grateful to have found it.
The-Toast is crying laughing gut can’t breath so hard trying to read Texts from, You know you’re in a novel, Two Monks, REDWALL, aloud to loved ones, passing the iPad back and forth because you just can’t talk and more and your eyes are full of tears and can’t see it’s so funny. After years in the workplace of being told my interests and humor weren’t “viable” or too obscure or too nerdy, it was all these people gather together who really, really laughed about Baby Derrida and Dirtbag Hamlet. My people.
Until life got hard. The-Toast, I realized, also contains hundreds or thousands of internet folk ghost-hugging each other in trying times. Depression, pregnancy, abusive relationships, race, gender, surgery, work, and life. It’s a place for healthy advice and ranting and disagreeing respectfully. For enlightenment. For smart spiritual content. For real love.
And I love you guys.
The Toast: The only place on the Internets where you *always* read the comments. I’ll miss you all.
The comments are the best part. So many brilliant, hilarious, thoughtful folks here. It’s absolutely astounding!
YAS. The comments give my life! I didn’t even know they were here until Nicole mentioned them in a LR one day. My world is better for it!
Yes, this. The people here are so jaw-droppingly generous with their willingness to speak and listen.
The words that keep popping into my head when I think about The Toast closing are “where else?” Where else can we find ALL the hilarious, throughtful, moving, and beautiful writing in one place? Nowhere else. I will miss this place dearly.
Thank you for being a safe space for voices that deserved to be heard. I’m so happy to have learned so much and had a place to laugh, recoil in horror, and become so much more comfortable with myself.
I’m crying.
The Toast and Toastie twitter completely changed my life. Every dream I’d ever quashed, everything I’d tried and failed and tried and failed again to change about myself, every lie I’d ever told myself… everything fell away when I met this group of people. I dream again, I accept myself more (still working on it, but getting better), I’ve stopped lying to myself, and thirst for more, and listen more, and understand more, and want only to spread that good feeling to everyone I talk to, even if it’s just giving someone the opportunity to be heard and understood. ESPECIALLY that.
Anyway the patriarchy is the Matrix and The Toast gave me bullet time.
I adore you all.
*HUGE INTERNET HUGS*
ohmygod stop!!! it’s too early in the week for me to try to explain to people why i am crying over a “website”
This^^^
as your local representative of Monster Union 666, i must thank the community for being so kind to me. monsters are not often made to feel welcome, let alone encouraged to be their most authentically monstrous self. being in your combined presence has helped me figure out SO MUCH about myself and i would not be the monster i am today if it weren’t for my time here.
so i am v v sad to be going *BUT* i have actually requested that my next posting be on the good ship Misandrist. i am fully confident that my time here leaves me uniquely qualified for the position and that i will soon be taking to the sea. i do believe our paths will cross again in the near future, dear toasties!
(i’m not crying. i have a bit of brimstone in my eyes.)
Because of the Toast I tried to publish (and did publish) the first thing I’d published in ten years, just because Mallory was nice to me in the comments section and I couldn’t be 100 percent certain she was kidding.
I am in Rome at the moment, so greetings from one great lost empire to another. though unlike Rome, the Toast will fall but never decline.
(today I took a giant Roman pinecone from under a giant Roman pine nearby Keats’ grave, so that Keats will haunt me. it’s not robbery if you’re only doing it for the haunts.)
DOING IT FOR THE HAUNTS is my new favorite thing. (I took a stone from the graveyard where the Salem Witch Trial people are buried for similar reasons).
GAH, crying too much right now at the office, and just, can’t even express the FEELS.
But, yes, the Toast was the first place where comments felt actually safe, it was the first place where every single geeky interest could be voiced and other people would understand, it was the first place where any obscure history or literary jokes would be appreciated (the first time I tried a joke about Prince George of Denmark and people freaking GOT IT? Amazing.).
But more importantly, just the community — the community that persists through #ToastieTwitter and ToastSlack and everywhere else. Where you can find supportive, loving, witty, genuine people who will help you through life’s crises and rejoice in the successes. Utterly life changing — I never would have started writing again without it, never would have met my girlfriend, wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing every single day without it. Love you all.
I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR.
I truly believe that being in the virtual presence of all these amazing, strong women has given me the confidence to… take up a bit more space in the world? Be slightly more assertive? I’m not sure how to put it because I’ve always seen myself as someone who would do almost anything to avoid confrontation and self-image changes so slowly.
To give you an example – I mentioned in the link roundup that I am starting a new job soon. My current boss told me that she would be really short-staffed due to a bunch of people being on vacation around the same time that I’m leaving. She said, “I can call [my future employer] and ask them if they can push back your start date by a couple of weeks.” (Which, ??!!!!???!!!) I smiled gently and patiently, like a baby sloth, and said, “I don’t want to stay here another couple of weeks.”
2014 me would probably have agreed, even at the cost of pissing off my future employer, just to avoid awkwardness and potential bridge-burning. 2016 me has learned that sometimes I can afford not to give a fuck. That I don’t always need to inconvenience myself for the sake of sparing other people inconvenience. And I think The Toast deserves a good part of the credit for that.
by the way, now feels like the time to say this, but you were always such an AWESOME commenter, and am going to miss your comments around the internet so much.
And good luck at the new job (and YES to standing up to the old one)
We’ll always have Toastie Twitter!
ALWAYS
The confrontation thing! Yes, this space has helped me brave putting myself first, even when doing so has led to predictably gross / aggravating confrontations. I feel capable of honoring instead of suppressing myself, knowing I could tell the story to my Toastie pals and they would cheer for me.
I credit the Toast entirely for my ability to publicly call out a (white, male) coworker for fat-shaming Chris Christie, and at least 50% for the fact that I almost never apologize anymore unless I actually did something I’m sorry for.
I called out a dude in a bar for taking up my space last night. It’s so small, but it felt so good – and I did it because I have the best spacewitches on the internet backing me up. The Toast helped me stick to my guns and refuse bullshit emotional labour so many times over the past year and I cannot be more grateful.
I TOLD OFF A TSA AGENT FOR TELLING ME TO SMILE.
In retrospect, no, don’t yell at the person who controls whether you get on your flight or not but that was my knee-jerk response and The Toast is 100% to blame.
YAY
Oh man, this ridiculous site has meant so much to me in the last 3 years and is largely responsible for keeping me sane in law school.
Like, I actually really like law, and I’ll be so excited to have a JD soon. But. There’s a sort of toxic culture to law school, where it feels like there’s a gross peer pressure to stamp out all joy and creativity and individuality with Tory Burch flats and low-key alcoholism. The Toast served as this lovely, weird outlet from that culture, where I had a group of people who liked gabbin’ about God, speculating about the Wishbone pitch meeting, and having borderline creepy obsessions with John Cho. And as a lefty feminist who grew up evangelical – and has a lot of positive associations with that! – it was so nice to have a community of folks who “get” it, or at least were willing to listen.
Anyway, with the upcoming closure of this website I started taking classes at UCB on the side and nurturing my deeply weird, creative self. Because that is inherently valuable! And you all made me realize that! I’m so thankful for the lovely community that you guys have built, and grateful for its impact on my life.
yes yes yes
I wish I’d had this place in law school (though I joined an undergrad chorus to leaven the toxic law school atmosphere – and that also gave me the only place with a women in charge my 1L year.)
Love that you joined UCB! That is awesome.
by ‘joined’ I meant took classes at.
(20 year attorney here who started taking adult theater classes 5 years ago and it’s such a delight though hard work)
I know that this community will stay together through Toastie Twitter and Toast Slack and the Spacewitch Retreat, but I cannot thank Nicole, Mallory, Nikki, Marco, & Roxane enough for getting us here. I love all of you so very much. <3 <3 GROUP HUG.
Sorry I made mine sound like a “Why I’m not leaving New York” essay for a second there, guys.
So incredibly grateful to have been part of this and I just started crying.
“Why I’m not leaving The Toast: Too Witches”
It Happened to Me: I Enjoyed a Website
Okay it’s decided. I’ll get a Toast tattoo.
Aw yisssss. I’m thinking about that, too. Full clipper ship or T-Toast?
Me three! Thinking ship.
I was going to get “too witches”
(I might do it this afternoon when I go pick up some new jewelry for my forward helix, depending on their availability)
Maybe a ship on each hip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d15JOd75uG8
Okay probably me too. I can put it on the same arm as my impulse Non-Compliant tattoo from last summer, and it will be my Feminism Arm.
I don’t even know what i should get. I’ll have to brainstorm this in Slack.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
Going to Slack now, because I’m useless for Real Work rn. Is there a tattoos channel?
I don’t think so, but maybe flesh prison could work?
I made my appointment weeks ago for September 9th. Toast logo and wreath and “too witches.” I just wish my artist wasn’t so fully booked or I’d have gotten it this week!
post pics in toast slack of the design! I’m looking for ideas.
You can be sure I will be posting it EVERYWHERE once it’s done. I am pretty damn excited!
Anyone have fave artists in london, DC, Baltimore, Montreal, or the bay area?
I’m as yet untattooed, and I’m sure other Toasties may have more experience, but I’ll chime in! I’m in the DC area and I’m going to Tattoo Paradise in Rockville. I really like Eric Wilcox, but I’m going with Deirdre Aiken for this design (simpler, smaller, first time, and she’s a lady!). I also looked into Sue at Globe Electric.
I’ve been having trouble articulating my feelings about the toast in the manner I feel they deserve, but thankfully other Toasties have been doing it for me. So I’m gonna get out of the way and just repeat the things they say.
I’m gonna do these until I have to go to work, hopefully I’ll leave more in the replies.
(I’m not doing these in any order, I’ll try to get as many as I can although I’ll probably abridge some of the longer ones)
Sorry, Fig, I got the capitalization on you screen name wrong. m(_ _)m
I messed up this one pretty bad but it looks like it’s on purpose, so.
I aspire to your version of messed up. These are all stunning!
Are you writing these?? With your human hands?? I love this place.
EXCUSE ME THIS IS BEAUTIFUL I WOULD LIKE TO OWN IT FOREVER HOLY SHIT
CHECK YOUR GMAIL I JUST SENT YOU A HIGHER RES SCAN!
(At least, I’m assuming the gmail with your exact username is you. If not, I just sent someone else a scan.)
I’d normally take this opportunity to make a Sondheim reference but I know you all already have and you already get it and WOW IM GONNA MISS THIS PLACE
<3
I forgot to make the first letter a rubricated initial, so I gave a bit of rubrication to everything. BECAUSE LIFE IS TOO SHORT NOT TO RUBRICATE EVERYTHING!
Aaaaaand I’m outta paper and have to go to work soon. More tonight, if the Great Space Witch wills it!
You do such beautiful work! Thank you for sharing it here. <3
this floors me – your talent, the quotes, the love and perfection of everyone.
This is so wonderful.
THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL
thank you <3 <3 <3
This whole thread is perfect. Thank you.
Oh god just having a desk cry.
I said this on the closing announcement piece, but the Toast made me not only a grown up but the type of grown up I had always wanted to be. It inspired me to be my most misandrist queer self, to generally be as weird as possible, to actively seek out and nuture a community of fabulous women and to view that community as primary rather than secondary to other relationships in my life.
This is the first place I found other former homeschoolers who were willing to not only engage in the problematic shit that happened, but also make fun of some of it.
Most people in the homeschool/former homeschool world are serious about it, which can be good, but at some point, you have to laugh at wearing t-shirts longer than your shorts in junior high while trying to figure out your sexuality. (YOU MUST LIKE BOYS. HOW DARE YOU SHOW INTEREST IN BOYS/GIRLS)
*HUGS* YES. I love that the Toast gave us a place to not be a problem, but just laugh with fondness over the things we went through.
love love love
I’ll just keep a box of tissues at my desk all week I guess?
I came to The Toast about two years ago, though the first year I think I was mostly just here for the Western Art History. And then I realized what an astounding haven had been built here, and I was sad at having missed it for so long. I’ve never been particularly active in the comments, more of the lurky type, but y’all’s wit, compassion, and strength kept me coming back for more.
Thanks to The Toast, my own milquetoast (a term I can thank you for) brand of watered down feminism has grown into something far beyond what I would have imagined possible, and I’m mighty proud of it. You have all collectively helped push me into being a better version of myself, for which I will always have the deepest gratitude.
I shall miss you dearly, Toasties.
Without the Toast, i would not have my current job. I would not have negotiated a higher salary, because I would have been afraid I was overstepping. I would not have written nearly as much.
I would know less about groups that I don’t encounter often in my day-to-day life. I would be less politically informed. I would still be missing half the microaggressions I experience every day, and I would be internalizing them rather than rebelling against them.
I would not have left my abusive mother without the Toast. I would not have stayed the course. I would not have changed my name to something I love. I would be broken still. The Toast turned me from a victim into a hero, and I will never, ever forget that.
I would be less kind with myself and with others. I would be less funny, I’m quite sure. This place has changed me forever and I very much like the person it has helped me become. Thank you so much, Nicole and Nicole and Mallory and every single Toastie. I will never forget these three years.
I’m really trying hard to avoid phrasing this like “well, if you’d like a cishet male perspective…”, for the obvious reason that the Toast does not want or need that, and it’s one of the things that makes the Toast great. But I just want to say that the Toast has been a magical place for me, too, because it’s a public forum where I don’t have to perform masculinity. As someone who works in construction, in a workplace that has never had more than two female employees at the same time, and who has… well, the father I have, this has been a refuge. Here, people just… are nice to each other. Celebrate each other. Listen to each other. Laugh together. Weep together. Yell “JESUS CHRIST MALLORY” together. Share in triumphs and in suffering. It changed my life. And I genuinely believe that the effects of these last few years of the Toast will echo down decades from now in my life and in my child’s life.
A willing foe, and sea room.
I would like to thumbs up this comment several dozen times. The Toast has definitely made me a better Male Person Who Is In The World. Thanks for writing my feelings so eloquently.
You guys are… dudes???
It was *such* a long time before I figured out that you were a cishet male.
(This, I’m sure you know, is a compliment. You will be spared!)
Right? I think I found out….2 weeks ago? Definitely in Slack. But really, not to be all “But I don’t think of you as *insert minority here*”….but you def got painted with the “awesome Toastie, presumed female” brush.
Ok, THIS is where I teared up. So apparently we did need the cis-male perspective!
What I’ve loved about the Toast is how it’s always embraced complexity. The Internet tries so hard to sort us into categories: Go here if you’re an atheist! Go here if you’re a particular kind of young, urban-dwelling feminist! Go here if you’re a mom, but not THAT kind of mom, you know?
This has always been a place where we could grapple with our various identities and not feel that one negates another. I just love the commitment to life as a rich tapestry, and that’s what I’ll miss most.
Oh, yes, this. I was more or less keeping it together until I got here. We have a comment section run by an iron fist, that certainly does keep out certain (bad) opinions. Yet somehow this has been a place for really nuanced discussions, and for people across various lines to behave civilly to each other–sometimes by extensive explanations of each person’s point of view, and sometimes by respecting separate threads for people having really different feelings. Which is so hard on the internet, and has been so enriching to me as a person.
Yes this! I’ve been trying to think of why this place means so much to me and this pinpoints it exactly. I’ve never been a group or community person, no high school labels fit me and I felt that meant somehow I was living my life as less than everyone else. Turns out, people are wonderfully complex and the more trouble you have sticking a label on them the better! I love that this place hit me so hard in so many of my places, the history-loving misandrist and the dog-lover (omg Sansaaaaaa).
Fare thee well, young silly website.
Thanks to the toast and the everyone in the comments for providing me a positive place to turn to on the Internet.
I’ve given birth to two babies during the run of the toast. Without the toast, I would not have been confident enough to seek therapy for my post partum depression. I’m not weak for seeking help; I’m strong for realizing I deserve help.
Toast readers are the strongest people I know. Take care of yourselves. <3
Has anyone mentioned this yet?
NPR: “A Toast To The Toast, The Site That Was Just For You. Yes, Even You”
“omphalos of cheerful misandry” should maybe be an official alternate motto
About 35 years ago I was in Greece, rescued three kittens we found in a plastic bag and one we named Omphalo. I dont remember why.
Wow, thanks for linking this!
The Toast appealed to our most interesting selves — bookish, queer, into medieval art or Shakespeare, anti-pretentious, shamelessly emotional. The Toast bet that its readership was smart, and that weird passions, beautifully presented, were just as relatable as the trilling, manic prose of women’s magazines.
<3
But don’t get lulled into reading the comments on it.
haha, right? Oh, humorless pedants of NPR, never change (just kidding, change right now)
yeah. it’s a stark reminder (as if we needed one) of how amazing the commenters & moderators are here.
NPR comments are usually at least 50% garbage, but this time I actually enjoyed reading them. The unsupportive ones all sounded SO much like Deleted Comments Of The Day that, I don’t know, it was almost comforting.
I only skimmed a few (if I had kept going it would stop being funny), but this comment made the ones I did see funny. 🙂
I really am about to cry now.
The Toast has helped me through some rough patches over the last three years. I always loved the writing and always will, but having a strong, vibrant community in the comments has meant the world to me. I don’t have much in the way of irl friends nearby any more, but I’ve been able to turn to Toasties to express my enthusiasm, my thoughts, my ideas, so much, and that’s been a real comfort (even if I don’t really post that often).
I appreciate this website so, so much, I can’t even say.
Lemme just cry in this wegmans while I wait got my cat to get shaved it’s fine.
If this isn’t a quintessential Toast comment, WTF is?!
WEGMANS!!! Best grocery store ever.
Tissues are in aisle 17.
(wegmans)
Thank you, all of you, for helping me realize that I am not alone.
So many things, but one peak Toast thing? I have an 8 year old son and we didn’t have him circumcised because unnecessary surgery is unnecessary. Anyway, I’d been totally fine with this decision until he started getting yeastiness (I know and I’m sorry) and then I talked to the pediatric urologist he sees about it (to an unrelated kidney issue). He’s all, “Well, ummm, you could circumcise him?” Not a satisfactory answer, dude.
Anyway, something came up about uncircumcised men in the comment section one day, I asked the commentariat if anyone knew what to do and then, I got the comforting reassurance that it was going to be okay if he just washed himself thoroughly every day.
Listen, I know this site is mostly about women, but occasionally it is about being a parent, navigating medical care, not being ashamed about bodies of all kinds, etc etc. Basically, just being an overall good and helpful human. That’s what I think of when I think of the Toast. I love you all.
I keep trying to explain this to people and I can’t, but, you know how I feel
I’M GONNA MISS YOU GUYS SO MUCH
I was more of a reader/listener than a talker/commenter, but unlike other places I have lurked, here I still felt like one of the locals.
In the comments above, Flan says the Toast was her first hometown. That is a disarmingly lovely way to describe the Toast – a hometown on the internet. I have never had a hometown in real life, but from what I’ve read in Southern novels, there is usually a nasty faction lurking in hometowns, ready to shame and judge when the moment arrives. The Toast really didn’t have that at all, and it is the only place on the internet I have ever known to be free of that kind of shit.
Put another way, the smart, clever, and genuine managed to intimidate and bully the trolls away. I don’t think I have ever seen that done anywhere, and i don’t think I am ever going to see it again.
This site was magic, and I cannot believe I was fortunate enough to be a part of it, even as a (mostly) lurker. Thank you to all of the writers and the toasties for your collective contributions to a community that I don’t think I will ever witness again.
When I first came to the-toast I asked for a lot of advice in open threads. Now I don’t ask as much, not because I need less advice but because asking myself “What would the-toast say?” is almost as good. Which is to say y’all are in my head- in the best way possible- and that certain won’t end when this website ends.
The Toast open threads (we’ll miss you, The Bartender!) and sometimes just the most tangential other posts often made me realize that there was something about my life I could & should ask for advice about.
I didn’t know I needed to address so much shit in my head. Now I do, and I am, and it’s the worst/best, and excuse me while I cry some more about how this place dug into my heart and made me focus on shoring up the rotten bits.
Oh, precisely this.
Totally have the Voice of The Toast in my head now.
In the three years of The Toast, I’ve left the job I held for over 20 years, published my first 5 books, sent my oldest off to college, and moved for the first time in 18 years.
It’s the most change that’s happened to me in decades, and is the fulfillment of several years of hopes and dreams, and the Toast community was a bulwark throughout it all.
This site and this group has infected my mind, heart, soul, and voice, in the very best way possible. I am more deeply rooted and my branches spread more widely. The Toast made me verdant*, and I am damn grateful.
*hey, look, a pun on my pen name! The Toast did not make me any less of a dork.
Without the Toast….
Ok I can’t….
The Toast was a place where I could come to find affirmation of goodness, intelligence, kindness, steadiness, growth, imagination. It was a moral, ethical voice in my world. It helped me through the end of my 20’s, through being a private practice lawyer, through a world that sometimes seems to be constantly rejecting goodness. It made me better. Without the Toast I would be worse.
I am Old and have belonged to many an online community.
I have never found a place that combined sharp humor and justified outrage with so much kindness.
The world will never be the same.
First it was a blog on anti-racism (my memory says Anti-Racist Girl? Or Anti-Racist Mama? but google isn’t helping me out) and it was Shapely Prose. They were internet communities that felt like home but also pushed me to think outside my own experiences and to question the assumptions (especially the fatphobia) that I’d be raised with.
Then there was a whole bunch of fabulous queer transmasculine and femme bloggers, some of whom became friends. LesbianDad, Just Jess, Tongue-Tied Blue, and more I can’t remember by name.
And then I was reading the Awl, which led me to the Hairpin. I loved them both, even though they felt a little like hanging out with those awesome straight friends you love but never totally get.
Except for the Comments by Melis, which were always the best part: the way Mallory would bait and then dismantle the haters and the fools, how she’d lure the patronizing, aggressive dude in and then neatly, hilariously make his life a burden to him with her words. And around the same time I started stopping by that “Graveyard of Personal Literary Ambition,” Nicole Cliffe’s old site, and enjoying everything she had to say about books.
And so it was that in July 2013 I became a Toastie for Life. Publishing my work here has been an honor and a sheer delight, but it’s nothing compared to the joy and wisdom and humility I’ve gained from this community. Ah, damn, I’m going to miss this site.
Without the Toast, I don’t know if I would be (mostly) out of the closet, if I could have waded through figuring out my ADD, if I could have become the person I am. Three years is a long time, I was so lucky to find this site when I did, so lucky to get to know Mallory and Nicole and Nikki and this wonderful queer librarian community. I found a home on the internet again, a thing I thought was impossible post the LiveJournals of my youth.
I love y’all so much, thank you.
The Toast is the first website that I started reading habitually, and the first that encouraged me to be unapologetically enthusiastic about things, which I think is rare for the internet. I love it a lot, and I’m going to miss it, and this made me tear up.
I’ve been trying for several days now to figure out how to explain what the Toast has meant to me and how much I’ll miss it. Like so many of you, I wandered over from the Hairpin, and gleefully left just about every other “women’s website” I had halfheartedly followed in the dust. The Toast’s amazing array of writers opened my eyes to so, so many things, letting me explore and understand race, sexuality, politics, humor, and devastatingly great writing in the middle of a community I actually felt a part of. I felt understood here (still do, but ya know), and as a result, I think over the past 3 years I’ve actually been better able to understand myself. So….thanks. Not just to the Toast as an entity/website, but to all of you, the commenters, because you’re equally valuable to me. <3
I was hoping that this was an extremely late April Fool’s joke.
I’ve been too busy (and let’s be honest: too much in denial) to craft an appropriate ode to The Toast since the announcement.
But The Toast — and specifically Nicole Cliffe — helped me get that busy in the first place, and if I didn’t take time to say thanks one more time in the site’s last days, I’d regret it. So here we go.
The Toast published my first paid writing. As much as it thrilled me to have my first piece accepted, its editorial reception was even better. Nicole’s unstinting enthusiasm was a gift to a fledgling writer. I’m grateful for so much about this site, but her generosity of spirit, her willingness to be excited about my writing, gave me confidence… and encouraged me to earn that confidence, and that praise.
I’ve backed away from commenting over the past year or so, in part because I suddenly found myself working (sometimes too hard, and that’s a gift, too) as a freelance writer. But I’m going to miss this community, where voices that too often get shouted down and drowned out are lifted up, listened to, and celebrated.
I love it here, and I mourn the passing of The Toast — but even more, I revel in its existence at all, and at being a small part of it.
The Toast will be sorely missed. Apart from the obvious (that the content has been excellent) it’s always been one of very few places where reading the comments has been a joy rather than an exercise in self-flagellation, I’ve never been uncomfortable or afraid here. I’ve loved finding that there are others who appreciate the same kind of comedy and content as I do. It felt like ME, like home.
One particular thing I want to mention is how The Toast was the first thing to get me to laugh again while I was recovering from a major depressive episode. That’s yet another thing (out of many that I haven’t mentioned) that makes me feel so grateful to have known The Toast.
I’ve just read over 160 comments full of love and wonder and I know there will be many more. I’m so proud of everyone! In the words of SemperLegens, we are all Toast.
The Toast is a safe space for me on the internet. And just that is the rarest of things these days. I love y’all. You kept me sane in some insane times.
i’m gonna miss you all very much. without the toast i would not have listened to hamilton. i would (probably) not have gone to see jupiter ascending. i would not have had anyone to care about my Correct Jurassic Park Opinions (or indeed my dragon age opinions). i have not looked at old paintings in a gallery the same way in a long time now.
It’s just…raining on my face. That’s all.
I’ve been singing the Toast’s praises to anyone who would listen for a long time, but it’s only reading all this that I’m truly realizing all of the less tangible but more important things the Toast and all of you have given me.
I think renegadeoboe just said it best, so I’m copying it here: And here’s to all of us for managing, somehow, to become simultaneously kinder and more fierce.
I didn’t realize this is what the Toast has done for me until now. It’s coincided with my late twenties, a time of personal and professional growth and formation. And thanks to this beautiful website and community I’ve been working on these life projects with a clearer sense of self and purpose and the knowledge that there are people out there who want to make change but understand that it requires careful thought, reflection, and listening to a complex and sometimes contradictory range of voices in order to make that change in a meaningful and positive way.
Also it’s a glorious place of refuge and laughter and silliness that has never failed to give me a lift when I needed it.
Oh The Toast. The Toast helped me feel funny, helped me have confidence in my ideas, helped me publish at a key point in my career, helped me have something to look forward to when everything else on the internet (and, um, everywhere) was terrible. But most importantly it reminded me how many wonderful and wickedly smart people there are out there (even on the internet!), and that there is a strength in the jollyness of one’s spirit – especially when it’s coupled with the will to demolish one’s enemies as needed.
I have never commented in any Toast post but I figured I would regret it if I never did.
The Toast is my happy place online. It gave me the courage to stop taking up less space than I deserve in my own life. I have never mourned a website before, and I’n beyond words for the joy I found here <3 Love to all you wonderful people.
<3
I’ll drink to that.
The first Toast I ever read was this: http://the-toast.net/2014/04/02/hairstyles-dont-e… and I don’t think I’d ever read anything so hilarious and perfect. I proceeded to go back to page one and read nearly all of The Toast from the beginning — yes, it took months and was time well spent! At some point in there I read Texts from a Jack o Lantern and I couldn’t believe I was full-on CRYING over this ridiculous post. (I still cry every time I read it. Don’t even talk to me about Texts from a Ghost.) I came for the funny and stayed for the Toast community. Ugh. I will miss it so much.
“like a bunch of ghost dicks” remains one of my favorite similes of all time.
I know, right? Before kittens were cotched, before everything that’s wrong of raccoons, before owls that are straight up rearranged chickens, before the Ortberg’s refrigerator… there was hair that slipped through your hands like a bunch of ghost dicks. It was my first experience with Mallory’s voice and how can I live without it now?
Exactly. I guess we’ll just have to follow her siren song to wherever it goes next.
Oh, I’m late for this, though I think I’ve said most of what I have to say on previous Open Threads.
The Toast has been somewhere I felt like I could not only be myself, but figure out who that self was after recovering from a mental breakdown that left me numb and isolated. Once I started commenting here I wasn’t so alone anymore, and I have received so much support and encouragement from people here. I’m not sure I would or could be where I am now were it not for this place that Nicole, Mallory, Nikki, and Roxane have worked so hard to create and maintain. I have learnt a huge amount from reading here, and (I hope) become a better person for it.
I’ve never laughed as much or as often at the articles and the comments on another website. This place is a delight!
P.S. Were it not for The Toast I would never have watched Magic Mike XXL and my life would have been a dry, barren wasteland.
Magic Mike XXL. Yes.
The Toast taught me many things – the main one being that it is entirely possible to have an online community with smart, humane, meaningful conversations and relationships, where people feel safe to be themselves, where the humour is never hurtful and the arguments usually eloquent and nuanced. And this is possible precisely because of our benevolent overlords’ dedication to keeping it that way. This gloriously free speech that we’ve enjoyed here is possible precisely because of the restrictions in place – on hate, on misogyny, on patriarchy, on the countless blows we have to suffer through in our day-to-day interactions.
It’s ridiculous that this is one of the only sites on the internet that’s like this. It’s an absolute tragedy that we are so deprived of spaces like this (beyond tiny friend groups, which are important but not the same). Where else will I find a site that makes me laugh, think, and cry with such consistency? Where else will I find a community that’s so beautiful and safe and kind and caring, where I can feel completely at home even without joining in any discussions or getting 100% of the jokes?
I will remember the lessons I learnt from the Toast. I’ve tucked them carefully in this warm bundle, here, and I have slung it close to my chest, and I will be bringing them with me into that long night. The memories and the echoes of laughter will keep me warm, when I have forgotten what warmth is like.
So thank you. Thank you for the love. Thank you for being home.
/buries head in arms in front of the dying fireplace
/raises tear-streaked face as the door swings open to a flurry of snow
/wanders, bleary-eyed, into the dark, desolate landscape that is the rest of the internet
This was the comment that made me cry. Thank you.
The Toast teaches you that your sense of humour, which is best described (and has been, at least once, by pretty much everyone you know) as Fucking Weird, is shared and understood by a whole load of strangers on the internet.
The Toast teaches you it’s ok to be silly, it’s ok to have BIG FEELINGS, it’s ok not to self-censor.
The Toast teaches you there are kind, funny, smart people in the world, and you will get to interact with them, even, which I could have done with knowing aged fifteen.
The Toast teaches you that when the world is going, seemingly, all to shit, there are still dogs to long for in Western art history.
The Toast teaches you what good writing sounds and feels like and how satisfying it is – like food exactly crunchy enough.
The Toast teaches you that the world is a more interesting, a more terrifying, and overall a more incredible place than you could have imagined.
Our friend IceBergMama has forgotten her WordPress password (these things happen when you move back to Australia and aren’t really around to comment as much as you used to be) but has asked me to post the following on her behalf:
“Now that I’ve seen this post, I really regret not contributing to this piece when I had the chance. My response was something to the effect that everyone knew exactly what the Toast had done for me, and I expected they were tired of hearing it. But I realised today that the one thing I immediately think of isn’t the only thing the Toast (& Toasties) have done for me. Like all of us, I’ve made friends all over the world, and learned more about perspectives that aren’t my own.
“I’ve also learned that the piece I wrote about what happened to me (& what the Toast community rescued me from) has helped more than one person gain the strength to leave their own situation, and that fills me with more happiness than I can express. I am sure that this has happened with countless other pieces as well. What a legacy for the Toast.”
goddamnit Bergie! I WAS DONE CRYING. Now I have to go hydrate again.
I’ve been a fan of the Toast from the very beginning, but it was the most poignant to me this past spring after my biological mother contacted me and things we NOT all rainbows and hugs. I didn’t find very many first-person stories on the complicated mixed and sometimes completely negative emotions of adoption until–you guessed it–The Toast. It was wildly helpful to read this stuff during my period of emotional upheaval and sleepless nights.
On a lighter note, the Hey Ladies! series has also eased the friendship/life transitions of my relationships with former best friend/sorority sisters from college. Eased in the sense that crying with tears of laughter made a great respite from being bitter and frustrated towards my own Ladies.
Finally, this is maybe the only community (outside of the Sullivan Productions website) that loves Anne of Green Gables as much as I do. I even got corrected on an obscure bit of trivia from Anne of the Island by another reader and DID NOT MIND IT. (Respect to that reader. Your knowledge exceeds mine.)
Thanks, Toast. For so many things.
I will miss the Toast very much. It has made me feel like I had a community, even if I was only on the fringes on it; so many posts have made me laugh helplessly (Two Monks, I will never forget you), and others have given me the opportunity to think deeply about things I hadn’t previously considered. I feel like I know so many of you, even if we’ve never met in person.
Maybe the end of the Toast will be good for my productivity levels (and possibly my self-esteem; I have cried more than once when I have felt that I have incited our beloved editors’ displeasure), but I am still desperately sad that it’s happening.
I read every day, and though I rarely commented myself, the comments and community were outstanding. Someone’s stray comment got me to watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend which is my new favorite show, so that’s neat.
thank you toast. I will miss you.
You are my favorite thing The Toast, my very favorite thing.
i can’t believe i took the toast for granted for like a year, i just assumed it would be here for me ALWAYS and i would have forever to make a whole bunch of incredible like-minded misandrist librarian action hero bffs but now it’s going and i have participated in ONE weightlifting competition and had a modicum of interest in art history for five seconds and i’m so sad and so grateful and i love everyone in this bar
A lot of the positive changes I’ve made in the past two and a half years were bolstered by reading The Toast. My mind expanded, my perceptions grew, my political awareness acquired more depth, my long, long term mental illness receded, I learnt how to handle social situations and interpersonal messes that I never could before, I built an amazing network of wonderful, supportive women, who all cheer each other on and write each other beautiful birthday messages even though they never met before I introduced them, I flung myself into the void of starting a business and I stepped into my power and re-created myself in my own image, professionally and personally, not one that was made for me by others.
Thank you to Nicole, Mallory, Nicole, Roxane, Marco, Jaya, Matt and all Toast contributors and commenters. Its been grand.
Thank you for this place I have loved it so much. I have learned so many things here and laughed so much here and said “oh my god this is brilliant” so many times.
I think I started with mallory’s stuff and it was so funny and after a while I looked at the comments and sometimes they were funnier and that wasn’t a problem. I wanted to be a part of this club and people like let me in and were so nice!
I cried a lot about things I read here and I cried about things I wrote here. I am a better person because of this place and I know it took so much work thank you.
I’m so grateful The Toast exists. I found it when I found Mallory’s performance of “How to respond to criticism” and “Male novelist jokes” and died laughing, then died of joy when I found out there was more and so much more than I could have every expected.
I’m glad The Toast makes me think, makes me question race and privilege and where my voice does not apply. I’m glad the number one rule of the internet ‘don’t read the comments’ doesn’t apply here and I’m grateful for how much hard work goes into that.
I’m grateful The Toast has made me speak up more, trust myself more to know I can tell people not to talk over me, that I don’t have to be a ‘good -insert group here-‘, that it’s ok to be angry and to feel hurt and scared, that there’s a light at the end of those tunnels.
I’m grateful that The Toast creates safe spaces to talk about things, that in those spaces are people who are listening, who care and are supportive in little ways that can mean so much.
I’m so glad I lucked into this website and I’m so grateful for every writer and all the hard work everyones put into it to make it so wonderful. I’m going to miss this place so much.
Sigh. You are all so so wonderful. I don’t have the words right now, but I”ll try again later.
I LEFT AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP. What could be more life affirming?
Congratulations! Me, too. The best, best thing.
As much as I have loveeed the Toast over these three years, I am so terribly sad I did not take the opportunity to participate in its community. It’s something I’m always going to regret, especially knowing that this site, and the people that treasure it, are something rare and special and worth knowing.
I’ll miss you, the Toast, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me–making me smile when things were tough, showing me there was a community of people who gave a shit on the internet, who liked the same things I did and wanted to talk weirdly and widely and about things that I didn’t dare yet say or even make known to myself.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I “knew” that the Toast was closing down – as in, I understood in my head that starting from July 1 there would be no new content* – but deep down in my heart I refused to accept it. Now reading through these comments has made me realize that no, there really will be a giant Toast-shaped hole in my life, and the place where I used to go for great commentary and sensible, insightful analysis and jokes about two monks and the best comments on the internet – it won’t be there anymore.
Anyway, the Toast. The first place on the internet where I never felt like I had to try to fit in, or say the right things, or explain what I meant, because everyone there was already a kindred spirit. Sometimes I would try to explain to my non-Toast friends why jokes about being ‘too witches’ or ‘take to the sea’ or How To Tell If You’re In a ___ Novel were so funny, and they just didn’t get it. What I’m saying is that finding the Toast was like finding out that all along – while I was feeling so weird, convinced that I had to put on a false persona to interact with the world because no one would get my jokes about the Hapsburgs or whatever – there were people out there who understood.
So even though the Toast is closing, just having that knowledge is a gift that can never be taken away. Also, I will really miss the Open Threads! I never commented on them much because Antipodean time zones meant that they were wrapped up by the time I was reading them with my Saturday morning coffee in hand, but I loved reading about everyone’s lives, feeling like we were all just struggling on together. You all inspire me every day to be braver, sassier, more self-possessed, and generally more witches.
* also, I have deliberately not read much Toast content in the last month, so that I can save it all up and steadily drip-feed myself/stay in denial in the days and weeks following July 1.
Oh I’m so late to this, but I can’t not say my piece too! I am going to miss you all SO MUCH IT HURTS.
I got my writing published because of the Toast. I… I… I did and learned so many things because of the Toast and all you amazing Toasties that I can’t even list them past that first sentence because I am so overwhelmed by gratitude and emotion. I have so cherished this space where we can have thoughtful disagreements, where we can share our funny little fascinations–the things that we thought weren’t interesting to anyone else–and find that there’s a whole room full of amazing women who also think it’s cool. Who have their own fantastic knowledge and advice and love. Where the comments make a post even better!
This was the first website that ever had me reaching for my phone first thing in the morning, and I’m going to miss it every day. But I will never forget, and I’ll raise a glass and look forward to the future and always keep the spirit of the Toast in my heart. For the rest of my life, I will aspire to be too witches.
Too witches, my friends.
Real talk: I’ve procrastinated writing this for almost a month. I started tagging along with this community back in the early days of the ‘Pin, when I was a very shy high school sophomore and you guys were the wacky older kids that I totally crushed on but couldn’t dream of keeping up with. I don’t think there’s words for everything that’s happened in the last five years.
You’ve given me so much faith that there’s a place in the future for a slightly off-kilter and hopelessly rough-edged kid. I’ve talked to enough people my age to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way. You’ve all put so much good into the world, and I just wish there was a way to express how much I love this place & everyone in it. Thank you guys for everything. <3
Get ready for some stream of consciousness. Edited: can’t match won’t match the eloquence above.
The Toast taught me about Hamilton; that it is possible to fiercely protect a commenting community; that Wishbone was truly a visionary show; that sex after pregnancy is ok to talk about; that dirtbag Marx is ridiculous (crapitalism!); that misandrist nursery rhymes are great; that strangers can help strangers deal with hard shit; that there are some hilarious paintings out there of Aphrodite and men playing instruments; dick ribbons are a thing; ALL CAPS ARTICLES about feelings can cut very close to the bone; that every conversation about Buffy on the Internet can be summarized in 500 words; same for every convo about pubes; that sex described by an alien is hilarious; that horrific tales made anodyne are beautiful; that John Cho really is quite fabulous; that Hermione really should have quit doing everyone’s homework; that Ayn Rand re-writes are perfect; that other people read Diana Wynne Jones and Tamora Pierce too; who Roxane Gay is; that without the toast I would know much less about the rich tapestry of gender, sexuality, race, ability, age, x1000; that Mallory really knows her Bible (or seems to – you’re not just doing key word searches?); that Nicole Cliffe really knows her Sherlock; that Nicole Chung is brave and honest; that Jaya, Matt, and Marco are beautiful people; that Rich White Ladies are a thing; that I NEVER want to see Crimson Peaks.
Sometimes I show my love through lists. I love this site with unmatched fierceness. (Apologies for the complete disregard for parallel structure)
Edited: also RONBLEDORE
I’m so late, too, but I’m going to write this anyway – and maybe I will get the opportunity to write it again later this week. The Toast has made me both tougher, and kinder. More abrasive when necessary, but also gentler when necessary . A better friend, and a happier person. A more confident person. Incredibly, this online community has allowed me to handle many awkward social situations with more tact and grace.
I was a casual Hairpin reader, but when my sister forwarded me A Day in the Life of an Empowered Female Heroine I dove straight in and never looked back.
The Toast was the kind of place where my actual IRL friends and I would find ourselves posting about each other’s stories.
I have never posted before, but want to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to Mallory, Nicole, Nikki, Marco, and the writing team at the Toast.
I’ve never before encountered a site with such smart, wide-ranging, nourishing, stimulating content. The care with which comments were moderated was stupendous – thank you.
I have transformed and informed my thinking, and cried many times at my computer from joy and sorrow alike.
May I extend my deep gratitude and admiration to the commentariat: you have helped me to become a better person and to aspire to awesomeness in my everyday life.
I cloak myself with the mantle of Toastiness forthwith.
Thank you everybody <3
Thank you so much to all the writers for producing the densest concentration of genius work this world has seen over the past couple of years. And thanks for somehow maintaining the only readable comment section of the last decade. I haven’t commented before; it wasn’t worth the risk of spoiling it. I wish you weren’t going. Please, all of you, keep being this awesome without the Toast, somehow.
I’ve been lurking here a long time, and while I do regret not engaging more with this lovely community, I feel that the Toast often served as a simple reminder that I am not alone. I’m not alone in my queerness, I’m not alone in my need to create, and I’m not alone in my sense of humor. Thank you all for this space.
I am a relative newcomer, but the Toast has been a sort of lifeline for me through the last five months of persistent anxiety and blah– I’ve been trying to wean myself off social media as much as possible, since Facebook and Twitter definitely contribute to my anxiety spirals, and the Toast became my safe auto-redirect whenever I thought there was nothing else on the Internet but social media, bad news, and cynicism. Here, I could sink in a little bit and put down some roots to try not to fly away on the wings of panic. Plus, I got to cry on the bus ride home from work while reading Madame Clairevoyant on some of my panicky days, but a good kind of crying.
Finding The Toast was like discovering someone had crafted the most perfect present just for me. It felt like Christmas morning. It was sharp, fiercely intelligent, high-brow and low-brow at the same time, loved myth and art and stories – and it was so, so funny. And then I discovered it was Christmas morning for a lot more people than just me, and the comments were even better. I haven’t felt so much loss since Shapely Prose closed.
I mean, NBD that it’s closing. I’m sure there are lots of other misandrist, women-in-Western-art-history-captioning, two-monks-inventing-art, making-children’s-stories-horrible websites with an archive of texts from great figures of literature and a complicated love/hate relationship with Ayn Rand out there. *sobs forever*
🙁 for the past 3 years, approximately 117% of my conversations started with “I heard this piece on NPR” or “I read this piece on The Toast,” and what am I expected to DO with the better half of that gone.
/lies on floor for the rest of time
This is late late late, which feels sort of appropriate, because I’ve always lurked here much more than commented, anyway.
The Toast has been an absolute fucking pillar for me over the past two-and-a-half-ish years since I found it, and I am so, so grateful to have had this space to learn and grow and feel – always – perfectly at home. After my first year of reading the Toast, I: started therapy; started to come out to myself; confessed a decade-long crush to my (lady) high school best friend; broke off an engagement with a boy and left the attached emotionally abusive relationship; went through several haircuts (some involving teal dye!) before settling on what feels like The One; did an about-face in my gender expression; moved across the country by myself; came out to (almost) everyone else; finally got diagnosed with ADHD (and maybe disthymia? who knows!); started and then took a leave from a PhD program; found a warm and affirming queer community complete with an exciting queer romance; and, perhaps most importantly, began to let myself Take Up Space, to feel like I deserved it, to treat myself with real kindness and to treat others with goodness that was more based in genuine compassion and less based in fear and obligation. I was getting ready to try to submit some writing, which is a dream I’d thought I’d buried ages ago. Even though I missed the boat here, I think I might be brave enough now to try somewhere else. I am more myself than I have ever been, and I credit the warm, safe, fierce, brave space of the Toast for so much of that transition. Thank you all for everything. (And especially thanks to the handful of you who once talked me down when I panicked in an open thread about having missed a deadline for a grad school application. I didn’t realize how cruel I was being to myself until you all expressed concern. I needed that.)
I’m going to stop now because I don’t want to cry in this coffee shop, but I’m so excited to lurk on Toastie Slack and Twitter, and maybe even start to open my mouth a bit. It’s become easier to love myself because of how much I love this community and how often I’ve seen pieces of myself reflected in it. Smooth sailing, everyone, as we take to the sea.
The Toast taught me that every thing about myself, from the weird bleachy stains on my underwear to my love for fanfiction to my Shakespeare obsession was something I had in common with someone.
This has been a hard year for me. I was a Toast reader from early days but only a commenter this year. Without my eating disorder (I’ve been in recovery for a whole year) and as I reentered real life after treatment, things fell apart. Academic failure for the first time in my life, not getting into the grad schools I wanted, what I thought was a lifetime relationship falling apart. Throughout it all, the wisdom of people I felt were deeply like me on the open threads got me through. I could see that these strange people, mostly women that had always been too witches for any given situation, were grown up and thriving and that made me believe that I could do it too.
Besides, the Toast is filled with articles that have made me laugh out loud over and over again.
The Toast taught me that every thing about myself, from the weird bleachy stains on my underwear to my love for fanfiction to my Shakespeare obsession was something I had in common with someone.
This has been a hard year for me. I was a Toast reader from early days but only a commenter this year. Without my eating disorder (I've been in recovery for a whole year) and as I reentered real life after treatment, things fell apart. Academic failure for the first time in my life, not getting into the grad schools I wanted, what I thought was a lifetime relationship falling apart. Throughout it all, the wisdom of people I felt were deeply like me on the open threads got me through. I could see that these strange people, mostly women that had always been too witches for any given situation, were grown up and thriving and that made me believe that I could do it too.
Besides, the Toast is filled with articles that have made me laugh out loud over and over again.
The Toast will be missed.
I'm going to miss you, Toast
Hear me, elders, hear me, young ones,
my beloved friend is dead, she is dead,
my beloved sister is dead, I will mourn
as long as I breathe, I will sob for her
like a woman who has lost her only child.
O the-toast.net, you were the axe at my side
in which my arm trusted, the knife in my sheath,
the shield I carried, my glorious robe,
the wide belt around my loins, and now
a harsh fate has torn you from me, forever.
Beloved friend, wild deer, mighty mare,
leopard ranging in the wilderness –
the-toast.net, my friend, wild deer, mighty mare,
leopard ranging in the wilderness –
together we crossed the mountains, together
we slaughtered the Bull of Heaven, we killed
Humbaba, who guarded the Cedar Forest –
O the-toast.net, what is this sleep that has seized you,
that has darkened your face and stopped your breath?
O for a willing foe, and sea room!