Yesterday I told the story of this site's tagline -- previously Now Works on Phones! and now Uncle Thad's Propaganda Bubble.
Then it occurred to me that it's been awhile since I told the story of the text that appears right above it -- the story of why this site is called corporate-sellout.com.
The year was, as best I can recall, 2001. It was my first year in college. I was chatting online with an old friend from high school, who was attending a different school and was in her second year. She told me that, after spending her first year undeclared, she'd finally decided on a major: English.
I was taken aback by this: what kind of a job can you get with an English major? As far as I was concerned, the purpose of a degree was to get a good job and make good money. I told my friend, with the certainty of an 18-year-old college freshman, that she was making a mistake. That I love writing too, but I'd made a pragmatic choice instead and chosen a degree in computer science -- which would surely lead to a six-figure income someday.
She responded, "It sounds to me like I'm studying to be an artist and you're studying to be a corporate sellout."
I remembered that conversation a few years later, when it came time to finally give this website its own domain name.
And I remembered it in 2013, when I was working as a temp on the web design team at GoDaddy, and I ran into my old friend in the breakroom. She was a supervisor in another department.
English degree, compsci degree -- we'd both wound up working in the same office.
And she was senior to me.