Pub Crawl: McSweeney's Internet Tendency

The March weather has been bleak in Seattle of late. So I think it is a perfect time to feature an interview with a web journal that has to be one of the most consistently humorous destinations on the web: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Just take a meander through the archives and you’ll see.

Many thanks for editor Christopher Monks for taking the time to answer some questions.

RM: Tell us how McSweeney’s Internet Tendency came about and about your role in developing it.

CM: The web site is an offshoot of McSweeney’s Print Quarterly, which was started by Dave Eggers in 1998. After being a contributor for a few years, I came on as the site’s editor in 2007. I review submissions and upload material, and do pretty much everything else that has to do with the web site.

RM: We have had the chance to interview editors who have worked for university literary journals as well as smaller independent publishing companies, but never a larger organization like McSweeney’s. What are some of the unique dynamics of that?

CM: I really can’t speak to that, as my role is sort of unique in that I don’t work in McSweeney’s San Francisco office. I live in Boston and work from home. So nearly all of my communication with the rest of McSweeney’s staff is through email. To them I’m like this mysterious coworker from a far away land.

RM: Please tell us a bit about your book, “The Ultimate Game Guide to Your Life.”

CM: It’s a humor book/novel written as a guide to a fictional role-playing video game called “Your Life.” The books walks the reader through the main character’s (named “You”) life, from his birth to his death. Each level of the “game” is a developmental stage of his life. So far it has sold nine copies. There was a report of a guy in Williamsburg, Virginia buying one last week at a book fair, but it turned out he went with something by Larry the Cable Guy instead.

RM: What books are on your nightstand at this very moment. Thumbs up or thumbs down? 

CM: I’m reading “Skippy Dies” by Paul Murray. I like it quite a bit. “The Instructions” by Adam Levin is on deck, all 1000+ pages of it. Wish me luck.

RM: Your intern Randy says you’ve killed your blog site! What gives?!

CM: First of all, my intern Randy is by far the best 59-year-old intern a fair-to-middling blogger could ever have. With that said, he’s wrong to say “I killed” my blog. I didn’t kill my blog; I put it out if its misery. After updating Utter Wonder daily for nearly seven years, I had neglected it in the past year or so and it had become nothing more than a place for a few of the site’s commenters to leave vaguely provocative messages to one another. It became really weird. Also I’ve been busy with work and other projects and don’t really have the time or the energy to keep posting stuff. Plus I’ve found that Twitter does what a blog does, only a lot quicker.

RM: How would you describe the Internet Tendency's brand of humor writing? 

CM: We cater to short, conceptual, pop-culture influenced literary humor, or as my predecessor, John Warner, puts it: “Not lowbrow, not highbrow, but upper-middle brow humor.” Our audience is by and large young and educated, so the typical reader watches “Jersey Shore” but also knows the basic plots of more than a few Shakespearean plays. Because of this we occasionally get called “pretentious.” However, if you saw me every morning in my pajamas as I upload content to the site via antiquated HTML while my two sons quietly look on, munching their Golden Grahams, you would probably think twice about how pretentious the site actually is.

If you would like to submit to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, visit mcsweeneys.net/tendency to review the guidelines.

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