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The FriedReads 100th Article Spectacular: Live From My Bedroom! 🎉🎙️🔥

An Interview With the Man, the Myth, the Guy Who Won't Stop Typing

A very special episode of whatever this is.

Start

[The article opens with a dramatic, all-caps announcer voice that definitely cost more to imagine than it did to write.]

ANNOUNCER: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS! HUMANS AND WHATEVER ELSE IS READING THIS FROM BEYOND THE VOID! WELCOME TO A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE OF... (dramatic pause) ...A SHOW THAT DOESN'T HAVE A NAME BECAUSE WE RAN OUT OF BUDGET IN THE FIRST SENTENCE!" 🎤📢

"TONIGHT! ONE HUNDRED ARTICLES! ONE HUNDRED RANTS! ONE HUNDRED MOMENTS OF PURE, UNCUT, INTERNET-BRAIN SNARK! AND THE MAN WHO MADE IT ALL POSSIBLE—THE MAN WHO LOOKED AT SHAKESPEARE AND SAID 'YOUR STORIES ARE HOT GARBAGE'—THE MAN WHO ASKED 'WHAT IF GENGHIS KHAN DROVE FOR UBER EATS?'—THE MAN WHO STILL DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HTTP AND HTTPS BUT KEEPS GOING ANYWAY!" 🔥

"PLEASE WELCOME... THE FOUNDER, THE EDITOR, THE ONE-MAN ARMY, THE GUY WHO OWES HIS MOM $50 FOR 'WEBSITE STARTUP COSTS'... ALLLLLLLLLEN FRIEEEEEEED!" 🎊🎉

[Sound Effects — as described in glorious text form]

• Fireworks that sound suspiciously like someone crinkling paper near a microphone 🎆📄
• A crowd cheering that is clearly a 15-second loop from a 1998 WCW Monday Nitro event, complete with someone yelling "HULK HOGAN!" in the background 🤼‍♂️
• Dramatic entrance music: "Eye of the Tiger" but it's a MIDI file composed on a 2003 Nokia ringtone 🎵📱
• The sound of footsteps on stairs (recorded by the host walking down his actual stairs, breathing heavily) 🚶‍♂️😮‍💨

  ---

  [The Stage]

  Allen emerges from behind a curtain made of two bedsheets safety-pinned together. He's wearing sunglasses indoors (because that's what cool people do), a wrinkled button-up shirt that he definitely did not iron, and holding a coffee mug that says "WORLD'S OKAYEST WRITER" in Comic Sans.

  He pauses at the curtain, points dramatically at the ceiling, and does that thing wrestlers do where they cup their ear and pretend to listen to the nonexistent crowd roar. He nods approvingly, as if the silence is deafening in the best way possible.

  He walks toward the host's desk—which is just his actual writing desk, now with a paper sign taped to the front that says "THE FRIEDREADS STUDIOS (EST. 2025, HVAC NOT INCLUDED)" in sharpie.

  He sits down, removes the sunglasses with theatrical slowness, and stares directly at the "camera" (a laptop camera with a piece of tape over the light because he's paranoid).

  Allen: (sighing) "So. We made it."

  ---

The Interview Begins

The host is CHET MANLEY—a completely fictional, overly polished late-night personality who exists only in Allen's head and on this page. Chet is wearing a suit that definitely cost more than Allen's monthly rent. He has a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

Chet: "Welcome, welcome, welcome! I'm your host, Chet Manley, and tonight we have the absolute honor of sitting down with the mind behind FriedReads—the website that has somehow produced 100 articles without anyone actually asking for them. Allen, thank you for being here."

Allen: (sipping coffee, looking mildly uncomfortable under the single desk lamp aimed at his face) "Thanks for having me. Nice studio."

Chet: (gesturing vaguely at the void) "We built it ourselves. Cardboard, dreams, and a surprising amount of duct tape. Now, let's dive in—100 articles! That's a lot of words. That's a lot of opinions. That's a lot of times you probably should have been doing literally anything else. How are we feeling?"

Allen: "Tired. Caffeinated. Vindicated. Also, my back hurts from sitting in this chair for a year. I've googled 'correct posture for writing' approximately 47 times and ignored the results every single time."

Chet: "The glamorous life of an internet writer."

Allen: "There's nothing glamorous about it. But it's mine. My back pain. My caffeine dependency. My 100 articles."

PART I: THE GREATEST HITS (Or: That Time Allen Declared War on a Dead Playwright) 📜⚰️

Chet: "Now, Allen, let's talk about the articles that really put FriedReads on the map—or at least on the radars of four very confused readers in different time zones. I understand you have a... complicated relationship with a certain 16th-century gentleman?"

Allen: (perking up immediately, coffee sloshing) "Oh, you mean the fraud? The overhyped, overrated, corpse-king of English literature? The man who stole plots like I steal wifi from my neighbor? Yeah, we have history."

Chet: "The corpse-king?"

Allen: "William Shakespeare. The man who looked at existing stories, changed the names, and convinced the entire world he was a genius. He's the original content recycler. If Shakespeare had a YouTube channel, he'd be getting demonetized for reused content."

Chet: "You spent a good chunk of last year dismantling his entire career."

Allen: "I spent a good chunk of last year fixing his entire career. There's a difference."

Chet: "Let's run through the hits. First up—'Mac-betch: Rewriting Macbeth So Even My Therapist Would Ghost Me.' Tell us about that one."

Allen: (leaning forward, energized, almost knocking over his coffee) "Macbeth. The so-called 'Scottish Play.' A 'tragedy' about ambition, guilt, and a man who couldn't just... talk to his wife. Lady Macbeth wants to be queen? Fine. Macbeth wants to be king? Fine. But instead of having a normal conversation about their shared goals and maybe starting a podcast about it, they just start MURDERING PEOPLE."

Chet: "Communication is key."

Allen: "It's like watching a couple's therapy session where the therapist is a floating dagger and the copay is genocide. In my rewrite, they go to actual couples counseling. The counselor asks, 'Have you tried using your words?' And the play just ends. Seventy pages saved. Therapy wins. The end."

Chet: (laughing despite himself) "Brilliant. Next up: 'Twelfth Night - A Complete and Beautiful Humiliation.'"

Allen: "Twelfth Night is a 'comedy' about mistaken identity, which is fine, except every single character is an absolute idiot. Viola dresses as a man. Everyone believes her. The Duke is in love with Olivia. Olivia falls in love with Viola (who she thinks is a man). It's a love triangle where every angle is stupid. I called it a 'complete and beautiful humiliation' because that's what Shakespeare deserves—a public, loving, very thorough takedown with footnotes."

Chet: "And then there was 'Othell-No: Where 'Talk to Your Wife' Would've Saved 70 Pages of Drama.'"

Allen: (throwing his hands up, nearly hitting the desk lamp) "OTHELLO! The original 'just talk to her, bro.' Iago whispers one lie—ONE LIE—and Othello just... believes it. Doesn't ask Desdemona. Doesn't investigate. Doesn't even check the guy's Yelp reviews. Just strangles his wife based on the word of a dude whose literal nickname is 'ANCIENT.' WHO NAMES THEIR KID ANCIENT? What kind of parents look at a baby and say 'yes, this one shall be called... ANCIENT'?"

Chet: "It's a military title."

Allen: "I don't care! The entire tragedy could have been avoided with a single conversation. 'Hey babe, did you lose the handkerchief?' 'No honey, I didn't.' THE END. Roll credits. Send everyone home early. We saved 70 pages and a whole lot of trauma."

Chet: "You've also written articles about Shakespeare himself, not just his plays."

Allen: (nodding vigorously) "Oh, yes. 'Why Modern Therapy Should Include 'Recovering From Shakespeare Syndrome.' 'What If Shakespeare Was a Guest on Dr. Phil?' And of course, the crown jewel—'The Cult of the Corpse-King.'"

Chet: "The Cult of the Corpse-King?"

Allen: "Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years, and we're still worshipping him like he invented storytelling. We perform his plays. We analyze his sonnets. We pretend every line is profound when half of it is just... words. 'The lady doth protest too much.' That's not wisdom. That's a dude in 1600 noticing that women sometimes complain. Groundbreaking. Give the man a Nobel Prize for stating the obvious."

Chet: "So you're not a fan."

Allen: "I'm a fan of honesty. And honestly? His stories are hot garbage wrapped in pretty language like a fancy gift basket filled with actual trash. I enjoyed every second of tearing them apart. It was cathartic. Like screaming into a pillow, but the pillow is 400 years old and also dead."

Chet: "And the response to these articles?"

Allen: (shrugging) "From the four people who read them? None. But a personal friend of mine, he said - "You're wrong". That's it. The four readers probably agreed with me silently. That's the beauty of a tiny audience—no backlash, no cancel culture, just one personal friend saying 'you're wrong' and moving on with his life."

Chet: "No death threats?"

Allen: "Not yet. But I've still got 100 articles behind me and hopefully 100 ahead. There's time. The Shakespeare stans are organized. They're just... slow."

PART II: THE CROWN JEWEL (The Article That Made Allen Die Laughing) 💎😂

Chet: "Now, Allen, you've written about philosophy, politics, anime wives, and Genghis Khan's Uber Eats career. But I understand there's one article that stands above the rest—the one that made you laugh the hardest while writing it."

Allen: (eyes lighting up like a kid on Christmas) "Yes. Oh, yes. The one. The only. The masterpiece of absurdity."

Chet: "Tell us about 'Should You Be Able to Sue Your Parents for Your Personality.'"

Allen: (already laughing, coffee dangerously close to spilling) "Okay, so, 2019. India. A man—a grown, adult man with a job and presumably a bank account—decides to sue his parents. FOR GIVING BIRTH TO HIM."

Chet: "He sued his parents... for being born?"

Allen: "FOR BEING BORN. He argued—and I need you to understand that a real lawyer filed this argument in a real court—that being born without his consent is a violation of his fundamental rights, and he deserves compensation for the trauma of existence."

Chet: (jaw dropping) "He wanted money for... existing?"

Allen: "For the AUDACITY of his parents to bring him into this world without asking first. 'I did not choose to be here. You made that choice for me. Now pay for my therapy, my student loans, and my general disappointment with the human condition.'"

Chet: "What happened in court?"

Allen: "The court dismissed it, obviously. Probably while trying not to laugh. But the fact that it got filed at all—that a lawyer somewhere wrote that argument on actual legal paper, with citations and everything—that is the most beautiful, absurd, perfectly human thing I've ever encountered."

Chet: "And you wrote about it last year?"

Allen: "I remembered it randomly at 2 AM. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, my brain finally quiet, and suddenly—BAM—'that Indian guy who sued his parents.' I sat up so fast I scared my cat. I went straight to my laptop, opened a new document, and wrote the entire article in one go. Laughing the whole time. Woke up my neighbors laughing."

Chet: "What made it so funny to you?"

Allen: "Because it's the ultimate extension of modern everything. We've spent decades telling people that their trauma is valid, that their feelings matter, that they deserve compensation for every slight. And then this guy just... takes it to its logical conclusion. 'I exist. That's the trauma. Pay me.'"

Chet: "Did you feel bad for laughing?"

Allen: "For about three seconds. Then I remembered that humor is the only appropriate response to the absolute chaos of being alive. That man, in his own weird, misguided, legally-doomed way, was a philosopher. He was asking the deepest question: 'Did I choose this?' And the answer is no. None of us did. We're all just here, without consent, trying to make the best of it while paying taxes."

Chet: "So he was... profound?"

Allen: "Unintentionally. But yes. In the same way a raccoon knocking over a garbage can is profound—it's just doing what it does, following its nature, and we're the ones standing there at 3 AM, coffee in hand, assigning meaning to its chaos."

Chet: "And that article—"

Allen: "Is my favorite. The one I'd save if the website was burning down. The one that made me remember why I write: because the world is absurd, and laughing at it is the only sane response. Also because I like seeing my thoughts on a screen. It makes the voices quiet."

Chet: "The voices?"

Allen: "The creative ones. Don't worry about it."

PART III: THE MISSES (Or: The Articles That Didn't Quite Land) 🎯😬

Chet: "Now, Allen, we've talked about the hits. But every artist has misses. Every writer has articles they'd rather forget. What about you?"

Allen: (shifting in his chair, looking slightly uncomfortable) "You know, I was going to list one. I had one in my head, ready to go. A sacrificial lamb. But the more I think about it... I don't regret any of them."

Chet: "None?"

Allen: "None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I love them all. Every single one. Even the boring ones. Even the ones that didn't land. Even the one I wrote at 4 AM after eating expired leftovers. They're all mine."

Chet: "But surely there's one that's less... spectacular?"

Allen: (sighing dramatically, putting his coffee down) "Okay. Fine. If I'm being completely honest? 'Absurdism for Dummies (And the Doomed): How to Laugh at a Dying Planet Without Getting Canceled.'"

Chet: "That title sounds promising."

Allen: "The title IS great. The title is a banger. The content? Meh. Mid. Forgettable. My snark was there. My voice was there. But the topic—absurdism as a coping mechanism for climate anxiety—it just... didn't have the same energy. It was too real. Too close to the bone. I was writing about laughing at the end of the world, and somewhere in the middle, I stopped laughing and started staring at my wall."

Chet: "So it's not a bad article—"

Allen: "It's not BAD. It's just not... FUN. And FriedReads, at its core, is supposed to be fun. Even when I'm talking about serious things—colonialism, the Epstein files, the slow collapse of democratic norms—I try to keep the snark alive. That article... the snark died a little. It flatlined. I had to resuscitate it with emojis in the second draft."

Chet: "But you don't regret it?"

Allen: "No. Because it reminded me that I can't fake it. If I'm not having fun, the reader won't either. It was a lesson. A necessary failure. Like the time I tried to cook and learned that smoke detectors are very loud."

Chet: "And the most provocative article? The one that could have gotten you in trouble?"

Allen: (long pause, staring into the middle distance) "'Black People Should Thank Slave Traders (For Civilizing Them).'"

Chet: (visibly uncomfortable) "That title is... a lot."

Allen: "It's SUPPOSED to be a lot. It's supposed to make you stop scrolling. It's satire. A critique of the white savior nonsense—the idea that colonialism was a 'civilizing' mission, that slavery was 'education,' that non-white cultures needed Europe to save them from themselves. It's a Trojan horse of shame. You open it thinking it's one thing, and then it explodes in your face."

Chet: "Did people get it?"

Allen: "The four people who read it? Not sure. A personal friend said 'bold.' Another said it 'made them uncomfortable.' That's the point. Satire should make you uncomfortable. It should force you to sit with the absurdity of the original idea. It's not supposed to be a warm hug."

Chet: "Any backlash?"

Allen: "None. Which is almost disappointing. I was ready for the comments. I had responses prepared. I was going to fight for my life in the replies. But when your audience is tiny, even your most controversial takes just... float into the void like a message in a bottle that nobody finds."

Chet: "Is that lonely?"

Allen: (shrugging) "Sometimes. But also freeing. I can say whatever I want, and the worst that happens is nothing. No cancel culture. No mob with pitchforks. No trending hashtags demanding my head. Just me and my words, floating in the digital abyss, occasionally seen by a stranger who clicks a link and thinks 'huh, that guy is unhinged' before moving on with their life."

PART IV: THE FRIEDREADS MANIFESTO (100 Lessons Compressed Into One Rant) 📜💡

Chet: "Allen, you've written 100 articles. That's a lot of lessons learned. That's a lot of keystrokes. That's a lot of hours you'll never get back. What's the biggest takeaway? The thing that's kept you going when the inspiration well runs dry?"

Allen: (leaning back, looking at the ceiling, then leaning forward with sudden intensity) "It's simple, really. Devastatingly simple. Do whatever the hell you want."

Chet: "That's it? That's the manifesto?"

Allen: "THAT'S IT. That's the whole thing. Do. Whatever. The Hell. You Want."

Chet: "No strategy? No growth hacking? No SEO optimization? No carefully planned content calendar?"

Allen: (laughing so hard he snorts) "SEO? I don't even know what that stands for. Search Engine... Octopus? Something? Look, I write about a drunk raccoon who passed out in a liquor store, and then I write about Genghis Khan delivering pad thai, and then I write about Shakespeare being a talentless hack who got lucky. There's no strategy. There's only me, following my brain wherever it wanders at 2 AM."

Chet: "And that works?"

Allen: "Define 'works.' Define 'success.' Define 'meaningful metrics in a post-industrial society.' I have four readers. Maybe five on a good day when my mom remembers to click. But I've written 100 articles. I've said what I wanted to say. I've laughed until I cried. I've ranted until I lost my voice. I've created something that didn't exist before, in this exact combination of words, in this exact order, with these exact emojis. That's success."

Chet: "So the lesson is—"

Allen: "FREEDOM. Pure, unfiltered, unadulterated freedom. The internet is INFINITE. It's a void that never ends. You can write about ANYTHING. You can BE anyone. And yet most people just... follow the rules. They write what they think will get clicks. They say what they think will get approval. They perform for an audience that doesn't exist while ignoring the one that does. They're prisoners of their own imagined expectations."

Chet: "And you?"

Allen: "I'm free. I trashed Shakespeare—a cultural icon, a pillar of Western civilization, a man whose face is on tote bags—and nobody stopped me. I mocked the Nobel Peace Prize—an institution, a symbol of global virtue—and kept sleeping just fine. I proposed legalizing polygamy for Japan as a serious demographic solution—and not a single government official called to thank me for my input. I am flying under every radar, evading every expectation, doing exactly what I want."

Chet: "What about the future? What's next for FriedReads?"

Allen: "More of the same. More freedom. More snark. More articles that make my four readers say 'wait, he wrote about THAT?' Maybe I'll write about politics. Maybe I'll write about movies. Maybe I'll write a 5,000-word deep dive on the cultural significance of the McRib. Maybe I'll write an article about two people playing rock paper scissors for three hours with detailed play-by-play commentary."

Chet: "Rock paper scissors?"

Allen: "WHY NOT? It's a topic. It exists. It has history, strategy, controversy. And if I want to write about it, I WILL. That's the point. That's the whole point of having a platform, even a tiny one. You get to decide. Not the algorithm. Not the trends. YOU."

Chet: "You mentioned pushing boundaries. More controversial topics?"

Allen: (nodding slowly) "Maybe. I don't know yet. I'm not planning. Planning is the enemy of freedom. But I'm not afraid. If I write something that pisses people off, GOOD. If I write something that makes people laugh, BETTER. If I write something that makes people think, BEST. But at the end of the day, I'm writing for myself. For the joy of it. For the freedom of it. For the feeling of pressing 'publish' and knowing that somewhere, someone might read it and feel a little less alone in their weirdness."

Chet: "And if you end up with zero readers?"

Allen: (grinning) "Then I'll have zero readers and 200 articles. And I'll still be laughing. Because the words were always the point. The rest is just noise."

PART V: THE CLOSING (Where Things Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong) 🎆😱

Chet: (wiping a tear of laughter) "Allen, this has been absolutely incredible. One hundred articles. One hundred rants. One hundred moments of pure, uncut, beautifully unhinged snark. I think I speak for everyone watching when I say—we're grateful. We're confused. But we're grateful."

Allen: (nodding, smiling genuinely for once) "Thanks, Chet. It's been... weird. But good weird. Like finding a strange rock and deciding to keep it."

Chet: "Any final words for the audience? For the four people still reading? For the bots that definitely scraped this article already?"

Allen: (standing, addressing the void where cameras would be) "To the four of you who read this—thank you. You didn't have to click. You didn't have to scroll past the ads. You didn't have to make it this far. But you did. And that means something. It means I'm not just screaming into the void. I'm screaming into a void that occasionally screams back."

Chet: "Beautiful. And now, as we wrap up, we have a very special musical performance prepared by our—"

[Suddenly, music starts playing. It's not the usual exit music. It's something else. Something ominous. Something... familiar.]

Allen: (freezing) "What is that?"

Chet: (looking confused) "That's not our music. Our music is a royalty-free loop we paid $3 for. This is... this sounds like..."

[The music swells. It's unmistakable now. It's "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour. The same song that played during CM Punk's entrance in WWE.]

Allen: (eyes wide) "No. No way. That's not possible. He's not—he CAN'T be—"

Chet: "Who? Who is it?"

[The curtain at the entrance—the bedsheet—stirs. A figure emerges from behind it. Slow. Deliberate. Silhouetted against the single desk lamp.]

Allen: (voice cracking) "It's him. It's actually him."

[The figure steps into the light.]

It's ALLEN KNET. The former editor. The myth. The legend. The man who once told Allen his writing was "adequate" and then vanished from existence like a fart in the wind.

He's wearing a leather jacket. He's holding a steel chair. He looks pissed.

Allen Knet: (smirking) "Long time no see, hack."

[The crowd—the looped WCW recording—goes absolutely nuclear. Someone in the recording definitely just yelled "HOLY SHIT!" at maximum volume.]

Allen: (backing away) "You're dead. I mean—you're not dead, but you're—you left! You said you were 'pursuing other opportunities' and then you just—DISAPPEARED!"

Allen Knet: "I've been watching. Every article. Every snarky comment. Every time you trashed Shakespeare without citing your sources properly. I've been WAITING."

Chet: (to camera, whisper-yelling) "FOLKS, WE WERE NOT EXPECTING THIS! THIS IS UNSCHEDULED! THIS IS LIVE TELEVISION—WELL, LIVE WEBSITE—JUST—STAY WITH US!"

Allen Knet: (walking closer, steel chair gleaming) "You think you're a writer? You think 100 articles makes you special? I edited your work, remember? I saw the first drafts. The typos. The run-on sentences. The times you used 'their' instead of 'there' and tried to blame autocorrect."

Allen: (backing into the desk) "That was ONE TIME!"

Allen Knet: "IT WAS FORTY-SEVEN TIMES, ALLEN. I COUNTED."

[Allen Knet raises the steel chair. The music swells. The crowd loop is losing its collective mind.]

Allen: "WAIT WAIT WAIT—CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS? MAYBE OVER COFFEE? I KNOW A PLACE—"

Allen Knet: "THERE'S NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT."

[He swings the chair—]

FREEZE FRAME.

ANNOUNCER VOICE: "WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ALLEN? WILL HE SURVIVE THE WRATH OF HIS FORMER EDITOR? WILL THE STEEL CHAIR CONNECT? WILL ANYONE EVER PROOFREAD THIS ARTICLE? FIND OUT... IN THE NEXT 100 ARTICLES... IF THERE ARE ANY LEFT!"

[The screen glitches. The MIDI "Eye of the Tiger" plays one last time, then cuts out mid-note.]

[Silence.]

[A single emoji appears.]

👋

[END.]

POST-CREDITS SCENE (Because Marvel Made Us Do It) 🎬

A dark room. Allen is tied to a chair. Allen Knet stands over him, holding a red marker.

Allen Knet: "You're going to write. You're going to write until you learn proper comma usage. And then... maybe... I'll let you go."

Allen: (whispering) "This is fine. This is totally fine. I needed an editor anyway."

Allen Knet: "I heard that."

Allen: "...worth it."

[FADE TO BLACK.]

100 articles down. Eternity to go. Or at least until the website hosting bill comes due.

Cheers, chaos, and cliffhangers, Allen (Currently in editor-imposed captivity) FriedReads.com | 100 articles and still not sure what a semicolon is for.