William Duryea @whduryea Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@Enciphered

@wasteintokyo

@NoMissVAL

@QRabia12615

@annelaurechouin

@rta_se

@slimx08

@ThuFPS

@IVanmarter36514

@Sam_PUSB

@CherrelleSkeete

@Seeker_S_Deeker

@jandakembangstw

@ChloeInAg

@davidsoho1

@Nutri_Glow

@cnmbwjx

@stillneedajob

@initiald_commu

@DobosShaun92521

@cimaahii

@Atentemente

@mistiquid

@NickNickNickWhy

@Abass193

@LewittRose34943

@HammaadBYunus

@Sked_GG

@snapstarcurt

@redligion

@VulgoFK

@natalie_1clark

@ExpectedChels

@muud1439

@Kaleb_Literal

@caro_goujon

William Duryea

@whduryea

2 months

Imagining Henry Higgins forcing Eliza Doolittle to say "Mark Wahlberg dropped the hard R in Harvard Yard" over and over again.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

I love the Elon/X situation, because it's the closest we'll ever come to living in an ancient civilization, having our king die suddenly, and standing by in helpless bewilderment while his half-mad heir is like, "Melt down the gods of our ancestors. We worship only the sun now."

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Is there any career more completely dependent on exploiting the hopeless dreams of the delusional than that of headshot photographer?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

5 years

The last image from the Opportunity rover looks like a late period Rothko.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

7 months

It's legitimately heartwarming to see that search engines replacing phone books has not destroyed the great A1 Chinese tradition.

Joe Weisenthal

@TheStalwart

7 months

Seems like this is becoming more common

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

We need a reverse NaNoWriMo where authors who are constantly compulsively churning out work pledge not to write anything for a month.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I'm in absolute awe of the outpouring of kindness and support that we've seen in just a few short hours. I didn't know Misery Tourism meant so much to so many. You're all wonderful. Thank you so much.

Misery Tourism

@miserytourism

2 years

Statement.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

At my grandparents' house, went to get something from the fridge and oh no.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Made a friend.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

4 months

I don't buy this. Nearly everyone I've talked about literature with, writers and non-writers alike, have been sincere and passionate. If you're only encountering people like this you need to move out of [redacted] and/or stop going to parties full of insecure social strivers.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Today we published Misery Tourism's final piece. I'm not sure how I feel, but I wanted to say *something* about it all, so I hopped into a zoom meeting with @lynchpoet and we had a frank, completely unscripted conversation. It's 3 hours long.

A Candid Conversation on the End of Misery Tourism

Rudy and I have an unplanned, unscripted, unedited discussion about the closure of Misery Tourism, our personal frustrations, and our plans for the future.

beyondheatdeath.substack.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

9 months

Can't decide if literary scenes are Alcoholics Anonymous for those unwilling to admit that they have a problem or multi-level marketing schemes for people with no interpersonal skills.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

5 years

@jessesingal It's remarkable to me how quickly so many of these moral calls for complete public ostracization reveal themselves to be professional jealousy masquerading as principle.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Oh no, a maniacal billionaire might accidentally smash the mirrored torture box where we constantly scream in vain at our own reflections and where our only hope of being dispensed dopamine pellets is to concoct more and more absurd mischaracterizations of our imagined enemies.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

Told my dad that Misery Loves Company was even more unhinged than usual last night and he said, "Something's about to happen; crazy people always feel it first, like how animals know when a storm is coming."

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I can't say anything. There's nothing to say. This is devastating.

Expat Press

@ExpatLitJ

2 years

Devastated to learn of the passing of one of our angels @eris_rlt . Her father called me to break the news and I’m still in shock. As I learn more, including possible memorial services, I’ll post here. I don’t have any words right now. My heart goes out to anyone who loved her.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

I'd say, "I'm unemployed. I live with my parents. My only accomplishment is running an edgelord lit mag best known for its obscene MS Paint art." Then after I had scared her off, I would tuck a napkin into my collar like a cartoon character and eat her entire bowl of spaghetti.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

4 months

Oh.

Misery Tourism

@miserytourism

4 months

Update.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

8 months

Mentally reframing people who dislike me as "small pockets of opposition."

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Everyone is a hypocrite. The trick is to avoid being an obnoxious, self-righteous pedant, so that when your hypocrisy is inevitably exposed no one gives a shit.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

On Monday morning, I launched a publication I've been toiling on for months to a stronger response than I could possibly have imagined. On Friday evening, I was accidentally left behind in a Walmart parking lot by my own parents. Turn, turn, turn.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

I've been toiling in the social media salt mines for over a decade, debasing myself for tiny scraps of engagement. Meanwhile, my dad's second YouTube video got almost 150k views.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Anyone who rationalizes answering creative expression with violence is an enemy of all art. No exceptions. No qualifications.

Mary Newsom

@marynewsom

2 years

Salmon Rushdie stabbed at Chautauqua. He’s on the stage being treated. Before his scheduled speech.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

@asdkfjasdlfjd Therapists can't understand the desire to live like the dissolute heir of a landed aristocratic family, pissing away your name and inheritance before your parents are even dead.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I've often accused the young adult/safe lit crowd of judging art like middle school students, but this thread made me reach an even more depressing conclusion: they judge art like middle school teachers.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Just sent what could very well be the last Misery Tourism acceptance ever. F.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I've said this before, but I think the "transgressive" label is valuable not as a badge of honor, but as a permission slip. It lets artists create the work they want to create without having to rationalize, justify, or ask forgiveness for it.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 months

I cannot comprehend how a lucid, living human being could look at this painting, even as a tiny jpg on their phone, and not feel something.

Richard Mortimer

@RichardMortime2

3 months

The Daily Rothko

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

New video is up. It's about how the arts can offer us relief from life's relentless, disorienting noise. This one was hell to record and edit. Hope my suffering brings you a little joy.

Only Art Can Save Us From Noise

It often feels like it's impossible to appreciate culture and the arts today because of the sheer volume of meaningless, obnoxious noise that surrounds us, w...

www.youtube.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Scrolling through my feed after largely ignoring twitter for a couple of weeks, and, damn, this shit is hallucinogenic. Just demonic spirits materializing out of nowhere, speaking in tongues about their insecurities, and soothsaying doom about problems that don't even exist.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Thoughts and prayers this weekend as I attempt to wrestle my profound self-loathing and social anxiety into submission long enough to find work before my savings run out.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

I made an a rough little extemporaneous video essay about the ways that artistic works generate wonder, because I'm an old man now and wonder is getting harder and harder to come by. (Also, I'm pivoting to video a decade too late.)

Wonder Is a Horizon

An exploration of what aspects of artistic works (film, television, literature) cause us to experience wonder. Is it novelty or nostalgia or something else? ...

www.youtube.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Yes, the rare crab who escapes the bucket is free, but its real reward is that it can no longer see what the crabs still inside the bucket are doing to each other.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

After two years, I think it's finally time for me to stop fucking around and get a job. God help me. Christ forgive me.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

7 years

@koumeposter @TheSafestSpace Wow, there are straw men inside straw men here. This tweet is a matryoshka scarecrow.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

I have no idea what I'm doing.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

Made another video. This one is about Tarkosvky's Mirror, one of the most beautiful films of all time, and one of the most complex and confusing, full of memories, dreams, and visions that bleed together, detached from time and plot. I love it so much.

Decoding the Bewildering Beauty of Tarkovsky's Mirror

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1975 film Mirror (Зеркало / Zerkalo) is a work of tremendous beauty and powerful nostalgia, but also a deeply confusing movie, full of dre...

www.youtube.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

6 months

Merry Christmas, Stuart Buck, wherever you are.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Going to make up a bullshit title like "cancellation consultant" and start selling my services to scandal-plagued lit mags.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

15 days

Alt lit is so played out that they were dunking on its affectations in 1924.

1924 Live

@100YearsAgoLive

15 days

“I Love Her,” from the Baltimore Sun.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Going to be stuck in the car for at least the next eight hours, so now's as good a time as any to out myself as a normie.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

"Boiling an egg is easy" discourse is bullshit. Boiling an egg is like finding God: simple in the abstract, but fundamentally an act of pure faith and confidence, and there's no way to know with certainty how badly you've fucked up until it's too late.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

What a sadistic push notification to wake up to on your birthday.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Depression just broke. I get why some cultures would attribute despair to demonic spirits, given the suddenness and senselessness with which these fits come and go. Completely irrational and unmoored from any thought or event. Must be the fucking weather.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

7 months

Unfortunately, there's no contest. RIP @LitReactor .

kat

@giordkat

7 months

most iconic picture of me?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I had a long, frank conversation with @notstuartbuck about the (brutal, demoralizing) realities of small press publishing for my substack. This might be the beginning of a series, who knows.

A Candid Conversation with Stuart Buck

Bear Creek Gazette founder/EiC Stu Buck talks with me about the harsh realities of small press publishing.

beyondheatdeath.substack.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Honest question: If you were me, and you were about to close the website that you dedicated the last few years of your life to, but didn't want to completely leave the lit world behind, what would you do next?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Blocked by Joyce Carol Oates. F.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

The kings in yellow.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

4 months

Ominous.

Misery Tourism

@miserytourism

4 months

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

Cut my finger open on a broken root beer bottle and bled a lot and now I feel like tweeting again. The Founding Fathers were right about the benefits of bloodletting.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

If we're going to let the insular madness of social media drive us deeper and deeper into groupthink and folie à deux, we should go all in on art instead of politics. Fringe political lunatics end up crushed, disillusioned and humiliated. Fringe artistic lunatics start movements.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

If you want to understand just how completely my every waking moment is ruled by irrational anxiety: I don't think I have ever succeeded at popping open one of those Pillsbury biscuit tubes without screaming.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Wait, you're telling me that all this time I've been apologizing to authors for not reading the books they send me and making excuses for myself (busy editing multiple publications, depressed, haven't read for pleasure in two years), when I could have just fucking lied?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I'm feverish and sleep deprived, so sure. (Stole this from @dawtismspeaks .)

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Here's a long, dark substack post for the longest, darkest night of the year.

On Complicity

Kyle Rittenhouse got off. The trial transfixed me. I tuned in, impulsively, during Rittenhouse's testimony, and kept watching it live, daily, religiously, until the verdict came in. I even had it on...

beyondheatdeath.substack.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

I want @asdkfjasdlfjd to write my epitaph.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Well, fuck.

The Bear Creek Gazette

@bcgazette

3 years

HELLO BEAR CREEK RESIDENTS I have Nominated 3 pieces for pushcart prizes. They are the following After the Spider Storm by @kylerseibel Review of Bonding by @whduryea The Re-Earthing of Mother by @onebillionmikes

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

People who think like this should just give up on the arts. Their brains are made for playing resource management sims and putting together elaborate Lego sets and 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzles.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

6 months

Fs in the chat for one of the greats. No publication did more to spread the gospel of truly independent literature than LitReactor. To say they will be missed is a crass understatement.

LitReactor.com

@LitReactor

6 months

Per our announcement this past fall, LitReactor has officially shuttered its doors as of January 1, 2024.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 months

Life goals.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Too much self-promotion on my feed lately. I apologize. My mind is feverish, fixated, intoxicated. I'm reexperiencing an old high I thought had lost its potency. I'm thinking only in engagement data: likes, retweets, clicks. Drowning in dopamine, losing perspective.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

There's plenty of talk about literature as exorcism, but not enough about criticism where the the critic wrestles with their demons, anxieties and uncertainties. Far too many critics look outward into culture for an evil to banish and too few look to the hell inside themselves.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

@kylerseibel Couldn't help myself.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

If there's any value at all in the study of literature, it's that it helps dissuade people of the delusion that the universe began with their birth and ends with their death. So much of the silliest lit discourse is really just a defense of solipsism.

Laurence K.

@lancekthompson

2 years

I wish I could find the Guardian article that claimed A Game of Thrones was a major work of fiction because it was the first time in literary history that beautiful people had been portrayed doing bad things.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 month

Truly unhinged subtitle on this cookbook that my mom owns.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

An article I wrote just went live on a site some friends and I have been engaged in a five month slapstick battle with depression and technological incompetence to bring into being. I'm proud.

The Last Estate

@estate_last

2 years

"Culture is the collective interpretation of noise as signal." - @whduryea

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

As I've aged, my musical tastes have matured from "downbeat songs about suicide" to "upbeat songs about suicide."

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William Duryea

@whduryea

11 months

One of the most loathsome things about social media "networking" is the way that it reduces everything, no matter how good or beautiful, to a dropshipping scam.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Socializing is cool, but I'm not fond of the part where, as soon as I'm alone, Boschian demons emerge from my subconscious and tear at my flesh with hooks.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

9 months

One of the great gifts that literature has given humanity is the ability to imagine the impossible. For example, this poem by @lynchpoet , published today in @PatioBack , makes a McDonald's hamburger seem edible.

mouthfeel by Rudy Johnson

mouthfeel i literally kiss the outside of the burger wrapper before i eatreverent burger prayer“thanks Obama and daddy for this burger”biteflash of drone strikesbitesexual arousalbitevietnam war th…

backpatio.press

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

My take is that beauty, truth, character, and plot are all seductive forms of self-delusion, and that literature is about unpacking the ways we use narrative to lie to ourselves.

J. Michael Straczynski

@straczynski

3 years

I used to think storytelling was all about plot, then I realized plot is a subset of characterization. Then I realized characterization is a subset of truth. Then I finally reached the understanding that truth is a subset of beauty. Beauty > truth > character > plot.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 year

Don't expect to hear from me for a while.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

I haven't written (no, wait, finished) much over the last couple of months. Depression and writer's block have been hitting harder than a motherfucker, as they say. (As someone says, I'm sure.) But here's a new thing. No paywall.

Notes Taken on the Road Between Dickinson Center, New York and Herndon, Virginia (Saturday, October...

The following impressionistic, fragmentary paragraphs were written while traveling from my parents house in upstate New York to visit a friend in Northern Virginia. My original plan was to fall back...

beyondheatdeath.substack.com

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

This is like saying Alzheimer's might make you leave your house without your keys, but it would never cause you to be discovered in a Target parking lot, naked and disoriented, four miles from your nursing home.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Lying in bed sick for a week, playing video games, allowing all my projects and ambitions to undulate into oblivion, operating with complete disregard for my imagined responsibilities, letting my self-important lies erode, becoming no one, loving it.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I haphazardly grabbed a few books that I wanted to finish when I left for Virginia a couple weeks ago, before the invasion. Pulled them out of my backpack now to read one and... Oh.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

The view count is the perfect, quintessential twitter feature, because it's pure, contextless noise, completely immune to meaningful interpretation, and yet it makes everyone measurably more neurotic.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Submission fees are a ponzi scheme.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

1 month

Americans who don't like rap or country are fundamentally treasonous. They have seen the soul of their nation and rejected it.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

7 months

This thread is a comprehensive list of every piece of writing I published in 2023: 1/1

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William Duryea

@whduryea

5 months

This is the single worst exchange about the arts I've ever seen on twitter. All four of these dudes should have to spend eternity trapped in a No Exit scenario where they just have this stupid debate over and over again and none of us have to watch.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

This is cyberwriting's 9/11.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

No cynical comments tonight. Just a blurry closeup of my sister's Christmas tree. Thanks for all the kindness and support this year.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Made a truly spectacular discovery at my grandparents' house.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 months

Got a thing in the mail.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

There's a sort of Allegory of the Cave situation on social media where some people have been chained in the darkness of narcissism for so long that any behavior stemming from selflessness or love is incomprehensible to them.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

27 days

If you wait patiently, you will receive a marshmallow, though you know not the day nor the hour. If you cannot wait for your marshmallow, you will be cast outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

We're still doing this shit, huh?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Twitter should become a plain text platform. Remove the ability to post images and video and especially to link to outside sites. Just destroy all incentive to do anything but scream schizophrenically at each other with purest intent.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Thought I would look at twitter to give my mind a "break" from reading submissions, experienced almost immediate nausea, disgust, went back to the submissions.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

7 years

@koumeposter @TheSafestSpace If you think a movement is ideologically, morally, or tactically bankrupt, it doesn't mean you agree with their most extreme opponents.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

4 months

Thinking about this tweet has brought me to the disturbing realization that Nabokov would have loved Magic: The Gathering and that he would have been incredibly toxic about it.

Eric Williams

@Geo_Liminal

4 months

people on here will tweet anything. "Nabokov would've loved Warhammer 40K." No he wouldn't have. That isn't true.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

I'm convinced that like half of all small lit mags in the "writing community"/pseudo-professional space are run by one dude under a dozen different aliases as an elaborate submission fee harvesting scheme. Dude probably brings in like $5k/month in passive income.

Back Patio Press for Prez

@PatioBack

2 years

seems fine that no one reads small/online magazines except for people who think they deserve to be published in them or edit for them. no problems here. not getting any house of card or pyramid scheme vibes. im sure it will all work out fine

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

What do you call fiction that advances no ideology and has no interest in obeying the laws of material reality? Literature, Dick. You call it literature.

Richard Dawkins

@RichardDawkins

3 years

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is called a major work of literature. Why? If it’s SF it’s bad SF. If, like Animal Farm, it’s an allegory, an allegory of what? Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. I don’t get it. Where are the Emperor’s clothes?

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

If twitter had existed in 1968, that woman would never have shot Andy Warhol.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

2 years

Blocking more blue checks and feeling a thrill akin to being thirteen and running over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto.

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William Duryea

@whduryea

3 years

Wrote a (long) substack post outlining the various slapstick schemes that Rudy and I have used to try to build an audience for Misery Tourism. No paywall on this one.

On Audience Building

Here's a (tiresome but not entirely worthless) piece of advice that often gets lobbed at those who, like me, feel their lives have arrived at a dead end and that they don't have the mental or...

beyondheatdeath.substack.com

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