I want to voice my sincere appreciation for Grace’s work and dedication to editing two newsletters and dozens of weekly posts for the last few years. Grace helped start Passionfruit even before I got here. Their vision will always exist in our DNA.
Next year, we’ll have a new managing editor to introduce, someone whose journalism I’ve admired for a long time. It’s also someone I think will be a positive force in a space that still needs more transparency, equity, and accountability to be more sustainable. More on that soon.
But for now, I want to keep the appreciation train going for my co-workers, and the team behind this newsletter. Y’all had a helluva year. While we’re all going into holiday publishing mode for the next 2 weeks, I want to take a moment to appreciate some of my favorite stories and colleagues from this last year.
Steven Asarch got MrBeast’s employees to go on the record about working conditions under the world’s largest creator, making him easily one of the foremost experts on the Beast universe. However, his work on the Lillee Jean story was the most compelling YouTube copyright saga I have seen all year. Keep dumpster diving on the dark web, pal. The internet needs 100 more Stevens to investigate it.
Taylor Lorenz has been the hot-take factory we hoped for. My greatest pleasure so far has been giving her space to explore our ever expanding brain rot fascination (when she’s not trending on X for some absolutely ghoulish behavior from older, angry men). You can get more Taylor at her own publication, User Mag.
Lon Harris gave us a number of thoughtful gems on the internet creator space this year, though my personal fave has to be how he likened the gig to being a professional wrestler. Servicey and a little bit silly…that’s my jam.
John-Michael Bond–who produced his own comedy special premiering TODAY on Youtube–has been responsible for our guides in 2024. With the help of writers Jen Glantz, merrit k, Rachel Kiley, and SO many other contributors, he kept our guides churning. My favorite piece was his Christmas eulogy from last year, which I will likely read every holiday season until I die or finally go on SSRIs. He’ll be stepping into Grace’s shoes under our new managing editor, and you can expect to see him in more videos next year.
Liz Plank, one of my all-time favorite producers of internet journalism, has only filed once so far, and it was a pretty ruthless indictment of my OnlyFans addiction (just kidding…she’s talking about dudes broadly, I think). I am thoroughly excited to see and make more with her in 2025. In the meantime, you can find her amazing community at Airplane Mode.
Charlotte Colombo, who easily wins the award for most bylines on Passionfruit, has been the absolute backbone of our platform and news coverage. I can’t pick a favorite because there are too many good articles, but if I had to call out one, her piece on Wicked was superb. Don’t sleep on her weekend round ups to catch up on stories you might’ve missed during the week.
To our social team, Rusama Islam and Lour Drick, thank you for reading the comments so I don’t have to. Building social media accounts from scratch is annoying work for all of us in this game, and posting day in and day out is a real, full-time slog. I’m also going to shoehorn our editorial intern, Mae Lackey, into this group. If you found us on Reddit, it was because of Mae. I should also note that she mostly compiles these emails.
And over on Discord–which has been made private for the time being (you can request access by responding to this email if you’re so inclined, but it’ll be opening up again next year)–I’d like to shout out to Drew, Eric, Luis, Adelia, Nick, and the whole Reactorverse crew for keeping it lively and interesting in there. Keep reading Passionfruit on Saturdays for more up-and-coming creators from the PF community.
To our clients, sponsors, and partners: You keep us in business. Thank you for your continued and generous support in 2024. My apologies in advance for when the new Fragment Media Sales Team raises rates on you next year.
Lastly, did you guess I would say you, our readers? Is it that predictable? Cringe? Sorry. But what’s a year-end hat tip without acknowledging that we’re doing all this for you?
Your attention is quite literally everything to us in this attention economy. Please keep us honest, keep liking and following our various channels, and keep clicking stuff in this newsletter. Like all of you, we exist because an audience exists, and I can’t overstate how much this whole team appreciates getting to report on this space for you.
We’ll be a little light for the holidays, but we’ll be hitting the ground running come January. Until then, thanks again for another year of great internet. Let’s all plan to make more of it next year.
