Essay Daily

Avery Gregurich, Seeking: Max Headroom This essay is in our Media Club series, an ongoing series of essays on visual media. Pitch us something! More details  here . * Seeking: M...

"How is it that we’ve made it here to the age of artificial intelligence realized, and Max Headroom is not around?"

Avery Gregurich takes a close look at Max Headroom in our Media Club series: www.essaydaily.org/2026/02/aver...

Really enjoyed writing this.Thanks to @essaydaily.bsky.social and @angermonsoon.bsky.social for making a space for essays on essays!

Dec 01, 2025: Jodie Noel Vinson, Sick and Tired * Sick and Tired Jodie Noel Vinson * Like many during the pandemic lockdown, my husband Marc and I watched and re-watched shows from our cou...

And here we go: Dec 1 in the 2025 @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent calendar features Jodie Noel Vinson on The Golden Girls: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 02, 2025: Lily Herman, Run the Train * Run the Train Lily Herman * Content warning: violence, sexual abuse, genocide, infant mortality, substance use disorder. I felt the man’s...

"at the time, it felt like each expression of private violence was an intimacy. A secret garden where most people wouldn’t tread"

Day 2 in the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar is Lily Herman on T2 Trainspotting: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 03, 2025: Michael Martone, ...All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: Eight Memoirs on Wearing Words …All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: Eight Memoirs on Wearing Words Michael Martone * Magic Marker There was an empty box printed in black in...

"Tagged T-shirts have evolved into their own Linnaean taxonomy. The messages break down into specific genera or at least accents of fragmentary grammar and syntax."

The most excellent Michael Martone in the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar today: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"What you learn first: how to carry. Load the hod with bricks or blocks and carry it to the job site. Unload it and do it again, again, again."

Today in the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar it's one of my favorite essayists, Joni Tevis on a 1910 photo: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"I hate being the girl who watches boys play videogames, but I wrecked my wrists playing World of Warcraft in the aughts"

Dec 6 in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar brings you @brookewonders.bsky.social on Bloodborne and a lot more: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"From a formal point of view, we share repetition, we share paper and canvas, and we share the robot." Dec 7 in the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar: Emiland Kray on HR Giger: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

fwiw we are gonna be publishing these visual media pieces as a series into 2026, so be in touch if you want to write about Art?

Dec 09: Cathy de la Cruz, A Mess, a Museum A Mess, a Museum Cathy de la Cruz * “Well, this is my house. I don’t know what it is: a sitting room; a music room; a mess; a museum …”  —Se...

I am very mad that the world didn't tell me you could visit Serge Gainsbourg's house before today, read @cathydelacruz.bsky.social's essay on it at @essaydaily.bsky.social www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"Of course, a house, a home is an exhibition—a curated collection." Cathy de la Cruz in @essaydaily.bsky.social's Dec 9 essay: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"I am an equally untrained plantswoman—for all my botanical successes, uncountable victims have nonetheless ended up on the compost heap." Dec 10 in the @essaydaily.bsky.social calendar brings you @j-sukys.bsky.social on weeds and art and more: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"The first time I watched Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, I was twenty years old, and I felt the pin on the hand grenade in my head coming loose."

Let's go @leahmensch.bsky.social, Dec 11th in the @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent Calendar: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"Polygamy is the paradigm of the patriarchy. Polyamory is the paradigm of the people.…Women are on TV talking about their sex lives." @nikwalk.bsky.social in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar today: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 12: Nicole Walker, Wives and Lives: From Polygamy to Polyamory Wives and Lives: From Polygamy to Polyamory Nicole Walker *   * There is a moment when I enter Northern Utah when I realize I’m on a d...

As a die-hard RHOSLC fan I read @nikwalk.bsky.social ‘s piece for the @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent calendar on the city and its other TV exports — polygamy and polyamory — with great interest. www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"Watching Reservation Dogs, easily one of my favorite television shows of the past ten years, makes me think about audience"

Dec 13 @essaydaily.bsky.social features @utopiaminus.bsky.social on the great Reservation Dogs: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 14: Erin Keane, Dreamchild, or the Curse of Being Alice Dreamchild, or the Curse of Being Alice Erin Keane * * Sandwiched between The Dark Crystal, a 1982 film I couldn’t follow as a child becau...

Thanks to @essaydaily.bsky.social for letting me hop into the Advent calendar project and write about "Dreamchild," an unsettling 1985 movie about the real Alice in Wonderland, featuring Jim Henson Creature Shop puppets, that we never talk about anymore. www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Hoo boy today's @essaydaily.bsky.social advent essay by Isabelle Robinson about rewatching Scream after a school shooting hits pretty hard: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 16: Ted McLoof, The Year Seth Cohen Ruled the Earth The Year Seth Cohen Ruled the Earth Ted McLoof * * Recently, as part of the marketing for a book of coming-of-age stories I wrote , I was ...

"I remember where I was when I first saw ads for The O.C. the same way my parents remember where they were when Kennedy was shot."

Dec 16 is Ted McLoof day on @essaydaily.bsky.social:

www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"It is this scene that I want to spend time with." David Griffith on The Godfather at 50 in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar today: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"video games are, like all forms of narrative art, empathy machines." I love reading writers moved by games, and today features @charlesjensen.bsky.social on The Last of Us Part II (spoilers involved) in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar:
www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"One afternoon in the spring of 2022, my husband shooed our cat off the chair in my study, sat down, and said he had something to tell me. He had just completed an application to be on the reality show Alone." Sharon Wahl in the @essaydaily.bsky.social calendar:

www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"I don’t think we give enough credit to weirdness in games as a source of mystery and power."

New essay up on @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar today on the video game NORCO from @geographyofrobots.bsky.social and advocating for weirdness (minor spoilers): www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

"There's a scene near the end of the last episode of Midnight Mass that seems so clearly a pietà in its arrangement and prefacing..." @pcmadden3.bsky.social in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent on his traditional 12/21 date:

www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

Dec 23: Alison Deming, On Binge-Watching * On Binge-Watching Alison Deming * * If you spliced together all the footage of Ross Poldark galloping along the seaside cliffs of Cornwa...

"I don’t know why I binge watch. I grew up in the fifties."

In today's @essaydaily.bsky.social advent essay let @alisondeming.bsky.social sell you on the pleasures of binge-watching (Poldark): www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

The Essay Daily Advent Calendar The 2025 Essay Daily Advent Calendar is here! And this year we are writing about visual media (TV shows, video games, movies, visual art, ...

We have just two more essays to go in the @essaydaily.bsky.social 2025 advent calendar. If you've missed any of them (understandable; it's a busy time of year), they're all linked here: www.essaydaily.org/p/the-essay-...

over at @essaydaily.bsky.social we’re gearing up for our annual Advent Calendar (the only time of year we actually post daily); send us yer stuff if you want to join in the advent adventures!

Rethinking Pornhub’s Role in the Literary Zeitgeist by Andrew Maynard Rethinking Pornhub’s Role in the Literary Zeitgeist  * Andrew Maynard * “Is it like the old Playboy magazine; you have essays there by the m...

"When the internet told me what Justice Alito had said, my first response was What’s a Gore Vidal?"

@andrew-maynard.bsky.social on Pornhub, Gore Vidal, and other Epsteins

www.essaydaily.org/2025/10/reth...

The Deer Out Here: Matt Morris in Conversation with Hea-Ream Lee * The writer Matthew Morris was sitting at my kitchen table in Tucson, Arizona. He was in town to promote his new book of essays, The Tilli...

"the longer I write, the more interested I am in riffing and being kind of spontaneous": Matthew Morris in conversation with Hea-Ream Lee:

www.essaydaily.org/2025/09/the-...

TUCSON ESSAY ALERT