[litmus]

My thoughts exactly. The writing has gotten stale without adding real substance--with a few exceptions obviously. But in general they've sacrificed form without adding meaningful content. They had an issue on Somalia a while back where most of the pieces could have appeared on any mainstream magazine that gets extra brownie points for the symbolic act of dedicating an issue on an under-reported topic. It's like playboy, but instead of porn they have Do's and Don'ts and video game reviews, and the writing is shittier. I think I've enjoyed some of the fiction pieces they added in the past few years more than the journalism frankly.

You can be silly and be authentic most of the time, and then once in a while when you say something about the truth, people will listen.

I love that line in Ghostbusters: ""Let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area."[1] It stupid and silly, hell its Ghostbusters, but the scene is an authentic template of many idiotic and funny explanations you witness in random casual conversation, as well as being pretty much a template for all latter day Bill Murray scenes.

McInnes' view on writing--"just write a letter to your brother but take out all the inside jokes"--has been almost completely abandoned in the magazine.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzaQjS1JstY

EDIT: typo