Hey Collin,

We appreciate the chance to read this piece, but we’re not going to be able to use it on PIC.

First off, the jokes don’t really seem to be resonating with me on this one. It seems to be literally just an essay advocating for communism, and if there are any jokes, they are too well-hidden in the intense language and arguments to be noticed as a punchline. The bit where you talk about the working class having nothing to lose but their chains and then you go on with the chains metaphor could maybe be a joke about taking the chains literally, but really it's just more of a motif than anything. Frankly, this really does read like someone who is really, scarily into communism who is trying to express that in the most graphically violent way they can.

Which brings me to my second point. At PIC we’re not afraid of a little explicitness, but this essay is quite honestly just too offensive to be put anywhere where people can read it. In all my life I have not seen a more horribly descriptive, 6-page-long rant about “where capitalist taint-fucks can put their taint-fuck capitalist dicks.” I gagged a little when I read the part about your desires surrounding Mark Zuckerberg, and I don’t think I could sleep at night if I published this and other people could see it. I am not religious, but every bone in my body is screaming at me telling me I would go to hell if I put this up.

I also did not agree with your idea to “Stop hunger by eating the hungry.”

It says on our submit page that we prefer pieces with 600-800 words. We also have a 2,000 word limit on our Submittable page. And yet, over the course of 62 submissions, you managed to put forward a piece with over 120,000 words. This must have taken years of work; it’s longer than three Harry Potter books. It really scares me, Collin, that you spent so long on this. I don’t know if this is something about us, or me, or all of us, but I don’t think I’m gonna allow you to submit anything else, for our safety.

Now this is the part where I suggest how this piece could be fixed, but honestly, there is just so much wrong here that I don’t think it can be fixed. I would either try coming at it with a little more irony, or, if you really do believe in communism, make fun of capitalists rather than composing articulated, emotional critiques of them. You could maybe turn it into a roast of capitalism, something like, “Capitalists can’t see the forest for the trees, and they also can’t see their own dicks,” rather than, “Capitalists advocate for a mindset where the only way we can ever experience the benefits of an advanced economic system is if the average person has a clear role within that economic system that they fall into at birth.”

In conclusion, communism doesn’t work in practice, please don’t hurt my family, keep it under 1,000 words.

Thanks,
——James

Related

Resources