This website can’t be everything to everyone

An odd thing has happened as the Empire has evolved: readers are REALLY invested in the websites, which is awesome. But there IS a downside…

The first 5 years of Offbeat Bride

On January 1st, 2007, I wrote a short post announcing the launch of offbeatbride.com, the promotional website that was supposed to help me sell my silly wedding book.

I wish I could say I had it all planned; that I a strategy for how the website would grow and where the business would go, but I had no fucking clue…

Co-rumination: why you can’t let commiseration drag down your community

It wasn’t until I read a New York Times article about a psychology concept called “co-rumination” that I finally had a word to attach to spiral of negativity that can drag down online communities…

WTF is a “cultural context link”?

Since the readership of the Offbeat Empire is hugely varied and diverse, AND we do a lot of writing about corners of culture that folks may never have heard of, my editors try to do this thing that I call “cultural context linking.” In other words, the first time we mention any sort of cultural concept that we think some of our readers might be unfamiliar with, we link it to a website that can give the unfamiliar a context of just what we’re talking about.