The Story Of TTAC, Part The Last

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we had become what we swore to destroy

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be Colum Wood, the simpering nonentity who is currently the Head Wannabe Lizard Of Sponsored Content or whatever at VerticalScope, the faceless and feckless company that tirelessly ground the edge off TTAC like a low-status bonobo rubbing a brand-new Randall R1 against the concrete corner of its enclosure in between vigorous efforts to get its own mouth on its crooked, pink ding-dong. Does Colum wake up and contemplate his own inadequacy? Does he possess any awareness of his complete and utter lack of talent as a writer or manager? Or does he sail through the day in a sort of genial idiocy, a blissful ignorance of the contempt in which he is held by every clued-in autowriter and enthusiast? Does he ever wake up in the dead of night, seized like a dog-shaken bone by the notion that there was one decent outlet in all of the car-rag game, and he deliberately ruined it?

For that is what he did, dear reader. Colum Wood unceremoniously shit-canned the best and strongest steward TTAC ever had, young Derek Kreindler, and replaced him with the perpetually confused, if well-intentioned, Mark Stevenson. When the… I don’t know, the spirit of the thing proved too strong for Stevenson to ruin, and even seduced him into wanting to be an ass-kicker and name-taker of sorts, Colum then lost his patience and decided to nuke TTAC from orbit by hiring someone who stood in literal and direct opposition to everything we held dear.