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Vindictive Wordsmith - Just Being Funny

Wanted: travel and style magazine writer. Please write about the Black Natural Hair Movement in the US and Africa (1000 words), African student exchange programs (1000 words), the African film industry with emphasis on Nollywood (1000 words), Congolese culture (500 words), Caribbean travel tips (1000 words), Caribbean travel trends (1000 words), a luxury hotel review (500 words), and an African hotel review (500 words). We will pay you $100. TOTAL!

Oh sweet, sweet internet money. My fingers are ready and willing to be worked to the bone for your highly generous and hopefully freshly forged $100 bill. Yes, I will ignore all my RSI injuries. I will ignore my strained eyes and back pain. I will write these words for you. I will write all nine articles for you in perfect English. This is why I earned a Masters degree. My dream was to land a gig paying (pulls out calculator) $0.01 per word. Forgive me; I’m a writer, so my math is wrong. I need to deduct a percentage somewhere for the tax man.

Naturally, after I presented them with a more respectful number, they ghosted me. 

Every week I'm approached by some dingleberry wanting me to write for free or for slave wages. One day I woke up on the vindictive side of the bed and decided to take my frustration out on internet scammers.

“Hey I is the writer for you! Yes I write this article in perfectly English!” 

Within an hour they replied with requests for me to complete an unpaid writing test. Writers are not used cars salesmen. Once you “test drive” our words, there's nothing stopping you from publishing them behind our back.

My friends and I had already dreamed up how to rickroll scammers. Copy some text from the internet into a Word document, then in the middle insert “ha, you slimy exploiter. I stole this from the internet. Now you’ve wasted your time reading like I wasted my time reading your crappy job post.” 

When it came time to grabbing text and embedding my clever line, I found myself actually writing the unpaid sample. What is wrong with me? Naturally, after I presented them with my rates, they ghosted. 

Why didn’t I just scam the scammers? This was supposed to be vindication against all the people who scammed me out of hours of free labor! I’m talking about you sheisty theater internship lady. This was my time to take back the power – to undo the hurt. Instead, I wasted my time writing a real article about acne. Congratulations, you played yourself!

Comedy = Tragedy + Time. Read this later; you’ll be all LMAO and #Dead.

Shout out to all the businesses that actually pay writers.  


What would you do? Tweet me using #JBFxOnicia


Created on St. Maarten. Based in Chicago. Onicia Muller (@OniciaMuller) writes, says funny things, and enjoys hanging with creative minds. Originally published in The Daily Herald's Weekender, Just Being Funny is a weekly reflection where Onicia laughs at life


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