Thank You for Dicking Around at Work

A letter to our loyal readers.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

We couldn’t do it without you. Every day, our dedicated team of writers and editors produces engaging articles, eye-catching image galleries, and 45-second videos of stock images and bullet points from said articles, all so that you’ll have something to distract you while you’re supposed to be working. The fact is, we in the publishing industry prepared poorly for the digital age, underselling advertisements and shirking paywalls to our own detriment, both financially and reputationally. Without you dicking around on the internet all day, we couldn’t spend our nine-to-fives making that content for you to spend your nine-to-fives reading, watching, and (most importantly) clicking on. And for that, we thank you.

You make it all possible: Those rabbit-hole “related story” links deep into the annals of our content farm, every listicle of screenshotted tweets, every slideshow of aged and forgotten celebrities and their current whereabouts, every hastily constructed quiz that tells you which Golden Girl you are based on which Pokémon you’d bang. And who can forget the relatable roundups of .gifs? O, the .gifs! They’re the .gifs that keep on giving. See? It’s those kinds of first-thought jokes you can’t get anywhere else that keeps you coming back to our casually-conceived, SEO-optimized, blog-style content during business hours, and we can’t thank you enough for it.

Rather than create and foster a modern-day morning newspaper model, where subscribers pay us to bring them news and information they can peruse in their free time, we’ve gone all-in on ad-supported eyeball-grabbing sensationalism meant to engorge your social media feeds, test the open tab limits of your office PC’s browser, and flash across your phone screen while you take your eyes off the assembly line. And it’s due, in no small part, to each and every one of you and your reliable habit of checking out shortly after clocking in.

It’s you, shirking your responsibilities during the workday in order to cave to your guiltiest pleasures that allows us to bring you more Kardashian content to consume the following day while you’re procrastinating on those expense reports.

Our analytics show that not lunch, but right after lunch is our peak traffic hour. That’s why we’ll keep queueing up our Tweets and Facebook posts to publish at 1 p.m., as long as you keep coming back from Chipotle with a full stomach and empty work ethic.

So thank you, loyal readers, for dicking around at work. Keep reading, keep clicking, and whatever you do, don’t put your nose to the grindstone.

Sincerely,
The Editors