This satire article is a collaboration between Slightly Fuzzed and Monster Riff. Welcome to Slightly Riffed: The Fakest News In Stoner Rock!
The Music & Entertainment world was shocked two weeks ago when media giant Condé Nast announced Pitchfork, the universe’s absolutely greatest and least pretentious music publication of all time, would merge with men’s magazine GQ.
The decision to merge the publications and lay off long-time Pitchfork staff left industry insiders heartbroken and confused. Why would anyone ever harm the most educated and sophisticated of music publications?
Slightly Riffed investigators have uncovered the truth: Condé Nast is merging Pitchfork with a lesser publication as punishment to the music site.
The crime? Inactivity. Over a two-week period in November 2023, the editorial team failed to publish a single article.
Reportedly, the hiatus occurred after a junior editor brought a vinyl copy of Sleep’s Dopesmoker into the office to share with the rest of the staff. As the band launched into the opening riff, someone allegedly passed around a bong. Fifteen minutes later, someone else said, “Have you guys ever heard of Uber Eats?”
By the end of the one-hour opus, Pitchfork staff made 17 different Uber Eats requests and placed 12 different orders with the neighborhood’s local marijuana dispensary.
“Al Cisneros said to drop out of life with bong in hand,” one former editorial member told Slightly Riffed under the assurance of remaining anonymous. “And to be perfectly honest, it seemed like a great idea at the time.”
Our investigation shows this behavior continued for two full weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
“It was amazing,” another former reporter told us. “For two full weeks, we didn’t need to worry about Indie stomp-and-clap Rock. We just were, man. It was just us and the Weedians and the haze and the occasional munchies. It completely changed the way we lived our lives.”
The biggest change to the Pitchfork life, it seems, was to the editorial department’s prized bookshelf. Most notably: The department’s beloved copy of The Historical Thesaurus of English—the largest thesaurus in the world—was pulled apart one page at a time and turned into joints that the department then passed back and forth.
“That book was everything to our department,” another editor wrote to Slightly Riffed in an email. “We used it at least three times for every single album review since 2008. We don’t even have the words to explain how bad we feel about it… It was just so out of character.”
By the time the managers at Condé Nast realized what was going on, Pitchfork had racked up more than $10,000 on the corporate card paying for fast food and weed.
For now, The Most Trusted Voice In Music is still operating independently, but Pitchfork’s days are numbered. We just hope there will be somewhere for people to discover new and interesting music. We’ll report back if we find anything.
This article is satire.
