They say too many cooks spoil the broth, but I disagree.
It should be obvious to anyone reading AJnet Mag that there’s not actually ten of us writing articles. It’s more like seven of us, with some more active than others.
I don’t really go great lengths to hide the fact that most of the writers are just characters. I treat it kind of like the WWE. We know those guys are acting, but we don’t care because we enjoy the performance. That’s how I want the readers of AJnet Mag to feel. I want them to get so taken in with the “kayfabe” that they can overlook the obvious reality for a few moments.
This article will be yet another behind the curtain look at what goes into writing for AJnet Mag. Particularly, who’s actually writing what.
Of course, everything written by Angry_Jerk is me and always will be (well, except for one or two times, but we won’t talk about those). Hilariously enough, Angry_Jerk started out as a character many years ago, but is now the most authentic writer on AJnet Mag. Angry_Jerk is essentially my non-professional voice, pretty much everything I’ve written as Angry_Jerk recently has been my actual opinion. Compared to the site’s early years when I was hellbent on offending everyone around me. I’ve thought about ditching the nickname, but it’s old and I love it too much. Also, Sam gave it to me when we were in high school, so yeah.
I also handle the bulk of the writing for Alex Jonestown, though Sam contributes quite a bit to ol’ Jonesy’s crazy conspiracy theories. If you look at our Projects page, you’ll see Sam has writer credits for AJnet Mag. Sam is more of the idea guy, he doesn’t really write the articles. The man in the picture is actually Marc, my good friend and the property manager of the building our office is located in.
A lot of people assume Señor Juan is me doing a racist caricature of a Mexican. It’s not, but I get why people think it is. I’ve told Juan countless times “Just let me snap a picture of us together, we can end this nonsense right now”, but Juan won’t do it. I suspect he’s embarrassed of his weight and hair loss. I do have a couple of pictures of us together from 2011 or 2012, and very often I find myself tempted to share them anyway. But friendship always wins in the end and I continue to respect Juan’s wishes. The story of our friendship is actually a nice one and both me and Juan have shared bits and pieces of it on AJnet Mag. Maybe one day I’ll share it all here.
As for where Juan’s questions come from, it’s a mixed bag. Juan does receive actual submissions, but not enough to completely carry “Dear Juan”. Some questions are written by Juan himself, while others are written by me and Sam. Stephanie even wrote one or two. Juan genuinely likes giving advice, so we hope that one day he’ll get more questions from actual readers. I think many people have a hard time getting past the “stereotypical Mexican” thing, but it’s Juan’s show so I let him run it however he wants.
Frosty is a fun one. I created the character of Frosty Mugg back in the early 2010’s. He had his own website and everything, which was a precursor to the format of the current AJnet Mag. This site, “I’m Feeling Frosty”, had “multiple writers”. Except, it was actually just me, and occasionally Juan. Pretending to be a bunch of different writers was too hard, I ditched the site after less than a year. I think it’s owned by a domain squatter these days?
Anyway, I kept Frosty in my back pocket. Eventually when I rebranded to AJnet Mag I brought him back as “Juan’s crazy alcoholic friend”. I wrote most of Frosty’s 2023 articles, including the entire Sober Saga. When Sarah got involved with writing, I shared control of Frosty with her. I gave her some simple guidelines for the character and let her work from that. Most of Frosty’s recent articles are Sarah, the last one I did was “The Sober Police”. Frosty honestly deserves his own blog post, so maybe I’ll do that one day too.
R.A.N.T.E.R. is just ChatGPT writing in the style of random people. I’ve slowed down using it since prompting it to write anything more than cookie-cutter sterile tripe has become more work than it’s worth. Plus, I greatly prefer human writers. You can’t design an algorithm that replicates the human soul. Especially when that algorithm doesn’t allow cursing.
J.R. Heston is a friend of mine, he teaches history class for a Philadelphia public high school. He has a genuine passion for the subject, and when I asked him if he wanted to write some stuff for us he was more than happy to oblige.
Troy Jackson was the only character that Sam actually wrote for. I only provided minimal suggestions for the topics. The plan was to see if we could make a fake news story go viral. Sam eventually became busy with other aspects of the company (namely, the parts that actually make us money) and lost interest in doing the character. I shelved Troy with the whole bit about him faking his credentials and originally had no plans to bring him back until Dom asked if he could take a crack at the character. Our legal advisor Jamir suggested avoiding the fake news thing, so Dom wants to take Troy in a slightly different direction. Me and Sam are completely fine with that.
Chef Jeff doesn’t actually work for us. He’s a regular reader of AJnet Mag with culinary experience who volunteered to write cooking instructables. The pictures you see in the articles are me (mind blown, right?). Jeff writes the articles and the recipes, I make the food at home and take the pictures. I touch up his writing a bit, but for the most part it’s all him. He claims he worked at Ai Fiori previously, but I don’t care enough to verify it because it’s not important.
Timmy Baker is my nephew. It’s not him writing the articles, but the articles are based on actual conversations I’ve had with him. He’s a smart kid, he’s probably going to grow up to be a scary teenager.
My sister knows I use his name and face, she was kind of miffed at first but she’s lightened up about it. Kevin (Timmy’s dad) thinks it’s hilarious and always shares the articles with the guys at his job. It’s surprisingly hard trying to write in the style of an 8 year old, so I tend to do Timmy articles sporadically and when I do I keep them short.
And finally, there’s “The Xyzabcrst Files”.
I originally came up with Xyzabcrst back when I was trying to do I’m Feeling Frosty. The premise was pretty much the same, the articles were meant to be leaked transcripts of interviews with a captured alien, with Xyzabcrst mostly complaining about the stupid things humans do. When I scrapped IFF I forgot about the idea until last year when I was going through old files looking for ideas for AJnet Mag. I’ve been into the subject of aliens and the paranormal ever since I was 5. Chick (my longtime friend and one of our writers) has a similar interest in the subject, so when I showed him what I had for Xyzabcrst he jumped on it. It’s Chick’s writing you’re reading when you read a Xyzabcrst Files article. He also recorded some audio too (Juan mentions this in one of his own articles), but we decided not to use the recordings because we thought they were too silly even by our own standards. Chick will be one of the primary writers for our upcoming Alien-UFOs website, I’m looking forward to working with him on it.
So, yeah. That’s the “magic” of AJnet Magazine’s writing team. What started out as one angry jerk trying to troll everyone has become a semi-legitimate internet publication with actual content and a regular publication schedule.
So in conclusion, if you want to blame someone for AJnet Magazine, blame these people. Because without them, the site wouldn’t have anywhere near as many articles as it does.
