RIP Fatherly

When I was laid off from The Dissolve in April of 2015, shortly before the site itself ended, I found myself in the precarious position of being without a job for the first time in eighteen years. 

Thankfully back then I had a name. I had a reputation. I was somebody and a surprising number of folks were eager to get into the Nathan Rabin business. They had no idea just how non-lucrative it would prove to be.

At one point in 2015 I had twelve to fourteen columns, including two columns at The A.V. Club, two columns at TCM Backlot and two columns at Rotten Tomatoes. 

It was the best of both worlds. I had a solid, consistent income and was able to do what I love best—delve deep into niche subject matters that I find utterly fascinating—but I also didn’t need to constantly pitch new ideas because I had so many ongoing columns. 

I figured that as long as my columns weren’t cancelled and my freelance outlets didn’t go out of business I would be okay. I wouldn’t be great, but I’d get by. 

Cut to two years later. Literally every single column that I had been writing between 2015 and 2017 was either canceled unceremoniously or the freelance outlet ceased to exist, with the notable exception of TCM Backlot.

I am so fucking grateful to TCM Backlot and my editor Yacov Freedman because they were the last folks to stick with me after everyone else fled and because when TCM Backlot went out of business I was allowed to re-run my Fractured Mirror articles at this website and then for the Fractured Mirror book, which I am nearly done with.

Before I was laid off from The Dissolve everything had worked out for me professionally, for the most part. I was a key part of The A.V Club during its heyday. I’d gotten a hundred thousand dollar advance for a memoir when I was just thirty-one, was asked by “Weird Al” Yankovic to write his coffee table book and was even a regular on an AMC movie review panel show hosted by an Academy Award winner for two surreal seasons.

For the first year or so, The Dissolve was a dream job. Then things took a turn.  

Something strange happened to me in the ensuing years. Whereas everything had worked out for me professionally, for the most part, everything seemed to not work out for me professionally after a certain point. I have had so many ideas I was incredibly excited about and thought would be game-changers and site and career savers that absolutely died. It’s exhausting. I’ve come to doubt myself and my judgment. You need bulletproof confidence to make it as a pop culture freelance in an impossible market. I don’t have that. I have doubt. I have anxiety. I have a series of neurological conditions and a wide variety of mental illnesses. 

The A.V. Club cancelled My World of Flops, a column that I had been writing for a solid decade at that point just before I started Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. I had high hopes for Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. It got off to a good start, hit a wall early on and has never recovered. I’ve tried everything to make it more popular and lucrative. Nothing has worked. It makes me feel powerless and invisible. 

For the past few years, I have augmented my modest income from Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas by freelancing for Fatherly. It’s been a good gig. It paid well and consistently, I liked my editor and it felt good to do work for someone other than myself. 

It wasn’t the most prestigious or high profile gig but I was incredibly grateful for it and the income that it provided.

In a non-shocking turn of events I recently got an email from my editor at Fatherly saying that the website would be shutting down immediately. All of its editors were let go. 

I’d like to say that I was surprised but I was not. It’s never surprising when a pop culture site goes out of business. 

It’s an absolutely brutal market out there. It’s not any easier when it comes to crowd-sourcing, in part because you have so much competition from all of the other veteran pop culture writers who are desperately trying to stay in a rigged and dirty game. 

I will miss Fatherly but I would also like to put my shingle up and announce to God and the internet that I am open to all kinds of work, including freelance, part-time and full-time. 

The Big WhoopNathan Rabin