50 Comments
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Marjorie Power's avatar

Don't scare me like this! You've done TOO good a job this time, Becky!

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Leslie Doyle's avatar

LOL! had me for a minute till I got to litcoin!

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Jen Manske Fenske's avatar

STOP IT Becky. I can’t get back those terrifying 30 seconds. 😆😆

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Fredric Koeppel's avatar

All the terms I don't want to see in regard to literary work -- "creative disruptors," "synergistic platform," "ecosystem," "cryptocurrency," so I suspect this is an elaborate April Fool's joke. At least I hope so...

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Amie McGraham's avatar

Nailed it with the Karina comment!!

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Richard LeBlond's avatar

Well done! But I came close to tearing up all my unpublished.

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René Ostberg's avatar

Ha ha, April Fools! That second paragraph is an absolute byoot of corporate jargon meaninglessness.

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Barb Natividad 🇵🇭🇺🇸's avatar

Litcoin--priceless

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Josiah Leet's avatar

ha ! nicely done, folks ;- )

*insert they-had-us-in-the-first-half GIF*

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Karen Rile's avatar

I love this so much!

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Amanda Le Rougetel's avatar

ha ha ha and LOL. Nicely done. I particularly like the new cryptocurrency -- definitely an area of expertise of all writers literary. Thanks for the chuckle.

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Stanley Stocker's avatar

I love it! Is there a way I can launder my ill-gotten literary gains through LitFeed? I'm willing to take 50 cents on the dollar. But please act now! Those thugs over at The Paris Review are hounding me for their money and threatening to break my twitter fingers.

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Kenny Meyer's avatar

The best pranks are those that are just credible enough to cause doubt or panic. (BT succeeded) A colleague once send a april fool's email that percolated up the ranks and created such a stir that the CEO of a large corporation needed to email a reassurance to the head of a government lab. What fun. In the end it was a loss. To this day, that colleague has never again baited us with another 4/1 prank.

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Frank Dent's avatar

When I was a kid, my hometown paper always put an April’s Fool article on the front page, something my sibs and I always looked forward to. And even though we knew to look for a fake story, sometimes they’d include a couple of weird-but-true wire service stories, so you really had to read the articles to the end to know for sure. Often the fake story would be a local one, with real places and street names and the like, just enough to throw you off balance.

Ah, the good old days, learning to doubt adults.

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Kenny Meyer's avatar

Wasn't that back when it was OK to have a sense of humor? There are limits of course. Reminds me of a prosecutor friend who trot a quip when she heard a friend make a silly argument. "Never indict on April Fools Day." A bit cryptic, but we got the point.

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Gregg Williard's avatar

BECKY!!! CUT IT OUT!!!! I'VE ALREADY HAD ONE HEART ATTACK!!!!!

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Frank Dent's avatar

Pretty good, although I had my doubts in the second paragraph, where “merger” and “decentralize” are used in the same sentence. When has a M&A ever resulted in the decentralization of anything?

You nailed the language of these kinds of press releases: saying a lot without saying much of anything.

Still, the LitCoin introduction wouldn’t surprise me a "bit." After all, what’s the expression, about the power of an idea whose time has passed?

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Frank Dent's avatar

Becky’s pull quote is gold: “It’s exciting, different and extremely forward-thinking. And where else should writers be thinking, if not forward?” I’m trying to recall what that rhetorical device is called. Where you invert or reposition key words in a kind of quasi-explanation. Maybe conduplicatio or something? Any rhetoricians out there?

Another example, maybe, in Eighth Grade, when Kayla is making her self-help video, and she says: “Being yourself can be hard, and it’s like, aren’t I always being myself? And yeah, for sure.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8lFgF_IjPw

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Frank Dent's avatar

Ah, it's the little touches I'm relishing now. Like the rebranding as LitMag News. I imagine someone got promoted for excising that superfluous space.

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Mark Wallace's avatar

This announcement could not be better timed 👍🏼

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Colette Parris's avatar

Hilarious!

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Beth Anne's avatar

Well done! Happy April!

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Sarah Ann Winn's avatar

<3 heheheh! This is so wonderful! Happy April!

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VWaddle's avatar

I forgot what day it was. And anymore anything seems possible. Well played.

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D.P.Snyder's avatar

You kill me. That said, block chain technology is a really good idea and I would accept payment in LitCoin. Like, whatevs.

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Zach Edson's avatar

Can't wait to buy some LitCoin!! The speculative investment I've been waiting for!!!

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Frank Dent's avatar

It's not too late to invest in Substack:

https://wefunder.com/substack

Maybe they'll introduce a StackCoin.

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Corey Smith's avatar

Yikes. You probably should have removed the manage-subscription button. I was so close, my thumb hovering.

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Clare Cross's avatar

Waiting for my heart rate to go back down. Thank God this is a joke.

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Trish McDonald's avatar

Should have known, it’s Chill Subs people. Add in Becky and 🪅🦠🧨

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Lisa K. Buchanan's avatar

Hilarious!

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A CRONE WITH A BOTTLE. Or two.'s avatar

Good one!

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Glenn Ingersoll's avatar

Some things I doubt are real turn out to be real, enough that I don't dismiss outlandish shit right off. It's easiest to ponder when I don't have to invest -- whether time, money, or effort. When I have to make a decision, though, when I have to put money on it or do something beyond skimming, my doubt is a pretty good obstacle. I am sure I have missed some quality opportunities from hesitating. I mean, I could be a bitcoin billionaire now, if only ...

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Jennifer Bullis's avatar

I was reading... and reading... and reading with increasing horror--and only about when I got to "creative disruptors" and "crypto-influencers" did I finally realize. SNORTED! Good one!!!

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Nancy R. Lambert's avatar

Hahahahah! Too soon! (At least you weren't announcing LitGPT!)

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Scott Hurd's avatar

Okay. You had me for a minute

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larisa harriger's avatar

Bastards. You had me until blockchain.

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E. C. Fuller's avatar

Man, you got me. 😂

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Edward Lebowitz's avatar

Happy April Fools’ Day to you too.

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David's avatar

What a relief that it’s April 1!!!

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Alexander Ipfelkofer's avatar

That one was Lit! 😂

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D.P.Snyder's avatar

I like the idea of Litcoin. I want Litcoin and I want it now.

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M Tamara Cutler's avatar

Gurl!

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Ellen Austin-Li's avatar

OK. Gullible here. I believed this article all the way through. Probably because I don’t understand the rapidly shifting (Lol I typed “shifty”) literary world.

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Judy Kessler's avatar

Ooh. Can I buy LitCoins in exchange for my blockchain of lit mags I have subscribed to and don't manage to read??? (And to think I used to work in tech and attempt to edit away prose like this. :-)

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Patricia Q. Bidar's avatar

Those hideous buzzwords...

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Ernie Brill's avatar

What''s the cost going to be? Most poets I know including myself do not subscribe to any service or Poets and Writers or attend AWP because the cost is beyond our means.

Will this be one more advantage , privilege ?

To all the literary mags and editors who are suddenly asking for "BIOPIC" writers and "all those little peoplne we never gave a good flying................. about the "common man ", disinheritend yadda Van Winklesm and now you want our margiinalized writings. But you are late and I have switched to butter

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Erik Harper Klass's avatar

Shit. I just bought stock in LitCoin. Already a loser. Dang.

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Karen E Sandberg's avatar

April Fools?? OMG I sure hope so. I've so enjoyed LitMag as it is - without blockchain technology.

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Dick's avatar

Ahem! All April Fools jokes are based in cruelty. Just ask those who are perennial victims of my beloved wife's "creativity." Or Becky's.

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