A short and sweet goodbye to HelloGiggles, and a bonus Paul Rudd picture for your trouble

Maybe my crowning internet achievement was that one time I convinced the entire internet that Season 6 of American Horror Story would be subtitled “The Mist.”

Maybe it was that one time I was interviewing the directors of the 1994 animated classic The Lion King and I asked “so could we ever get a backstory focused on Scar?” and instead the directors launched into this long, rambling explanation as to why Scar and Mufasa aren’t even technically brothers, and this revelation destroyed a lot of childhoods. Today Show picked up this story, and I’m still laughing about it.

Or maybe it was the 200+ Gilmore Girls stories I wrote between January 2016 and November 2016, during a period of time where the internet wasn’t such a Bad Place and all I had to do was say “Rory and Lorelai” and I got thousands of views. For a while I was politely Catfishing dudes on Tinder with Gilmore Girls quotes and it oddly worked. The internet was much different back in early 2016.

I’ve written a lot of weird and crazy things for HelloGiggles dot com. Sometimes, I can’t believe I got away with what I was writing — and this story about parrots, which is actually referenced a lot, is a clear example. But, I knew what the internet wanted to read, and I knew what the internet wanted to share, and I sure as hell knew how to get the internet’s blood boiling with a simple headline.

My favorite times were covering Game of Thrones and American Horror Story. I’m particularly proud of the fact that just about everything I wrote about Game of Thrones turned to gold (I’m rather fond of this story just asking “where the fuck is Gendry?”) and I can’t believe I got everyone to read literally three almost near identical stories (one, two, and three) about Evan Peters during AHS Season 6. I should not be proud of myself, but I am.

I’m also proud of the fact that I built the entire entertainment vertical from the ground up. Before me, there was no dedicated HelloGiggles dot com entertainment vertical. Back in the day it was just me spamming every single Disney email I could find, begging someone to let me into an early screening of Beauty and the Beast (don’t worry, someone let me see it early). From there, things got better. Things got exciting. Sometimes things got crazy, but for a long time I had my fearless assistant editor Molly (hi Molly) with me, so things were always manageable. And I did some really crazy, fun things! I still can’t believe I got to go to the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp and [embargoed] and [also embargoed]. I interviewed Mariah Carey about Christmas (really). At one point Netflix froze me in something akin to carbonite (for real).

And while it’s cool to talk about all the stuff I did while working for the site, I have to mention how I even came to work for HelloGiggles dot com in the first place, because it’s one of those fun, inspirational stories. I, like literally everyone else on the planet, wanted to write, so I started writing. I sent a pitch off to HelloGiggles dot com mocking The Bachelor, and the editor at the time liked it. She offered me money to write for the site. I started off writing one-ish story a week for HelloGiggles dot com about just whatever I could. That one-ish story turned into three-ish stories a week. That three-ish stories a week turned into three stories a day. Three-ish stories a day quickly became anywhere from seven to 10 stories a day, and suddenly I was writing full time and I didn’t even realize it. When HelloGiggles dot com started staffing up their Los Angeles office, I got on a plane to meet with the then Editor in Chief who hired me on the spot. I moved across the country and started working as a Staff Writer a month later. Then I became Senior Writer. And finally, Entertainment Editor.

My first story for the site was published on July 14th, 2014. Four years and one month later,* I’ve written 4,129 stories. This is  number 4,130. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading everything I’ve written just as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, and I hope some my stories them made you laugh. Sorry if any of them ever made you angry enough to send me an email mansplaining time to me. 

So thank you for the clicks, and goodbye for now. See you guys around the internet and don’t forget — we’ll always have Paul Rudd.

*This story was published on August 15th, 2018 but I changed the date on it to back-pub because I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to do a “goodbye post” but my HelloGiggles dot com MO all along was doing stuff I wasn’t supposed to do and every time it worked out pretty well, so