STORY TIME. Way back when I was a spotty teen, I loved PC Zone magazine. It was nerdy but also laddish and uncouth, and readers could write in and insult one of the editors in the hopes that he'd insult them back. So, I did. - ThreadSky

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ruzkin.bsky.social • 5 days ago

STORY TIME.
Way back when I was a spotty teen, I loved PC Zone magazine. It was nerdy but also laddish and uncouth, and readers could write in and insult one of the editors in the hopes that he'd insult them back.
So, I did.

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ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

I was thirteen, and I worked for hours on an email that I hoped would make the PC Zone team weep into their morning oats. Problem: this was 1999, and I didn't have my own email address. So I sent it from my parents' email.
And, of course, my parents found it in the Outbox.

ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

I was in TROUBLE. All my parents saw was that their son was sending bullying emails to some rando called Charlie. I was grounded for a week, AND after I explained that I was actually emailing a magazine and not a classmate, I was never allowed to buy PC Zone again.

ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

Fast forward two and a half decades.

ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yesterday I was teaching a class of yr 9s and they started googling my name. "Aw sir, is this a photo of you? You looked better back then, sir! You write books, sir? Why do you write for Taylor Swift, sir?"

ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

So as soon as I had a private moment, I did my own deep dive on myself to see if there was any public data I needed to scrub from the internet.
Wait a second.
Why is my name popping up in an https://archive.org transcript of PC Zone, June 1999?

ruzkin.bsky.social•5 days ago

Turns out that, yes, PC Zone published my letter. I never saw it in print, of course, because I wasn't allowed to buy the mag anymore. It's only today I learned that my first official publication was not as Christopher Ruz, SFF author, but as Charlie Brooker's LOSER OF THE MONTH.

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