This was the final post on my original horror blog micro-shock.com I wanted to post it for posterity since I've since started writing again. Also, I toss a lot of shade, and that's always fun to read about.
I’ll cut right to the point and be out with it, and then take a moment to be sentimental. Due to a number of different factors, Micro-Shock.com will be going down indefinately effective February, 2016.We’ll still maintain our presence on Facebook, as well as on YouTube and Blip.tv, however the primary domain will go dark on February 12 after eight years of operations, and we are currently looking at options as to where to archive our past articles, but as far as new content goes, there are no definite plans under the Micro-Shock banner.There are a number of reasons why the site is going down. It’s partially shifting priorities for myself and the other writing staff (which currently consists of my long time Micro-Shock cohort Rhonda Baughman), the lack of time to put out new views, and honestly, money. Micro-Shock was certainly not a enterprise that generated income and maintaining it over the years has always come out of my own pocket. Some regular readers know that I live in Canada, and as of this writing the Canadian dollar is at record lows. My webhost is situated in the United States and the cost involved is always in US dollars. So you do the math. It just doesn’t make sense to continue maintaining a website that, honestly, isn’t as well visited as it used to be anymore. Especially at steep US prices.There’s that and time. I just don’t have a lot of free time anymore to devote to this website. So instead of keeping it up and going it’s time to say goodbye and close up shop.With the other more successful horror blogs: Bloody Disgusting, iHorror, Halloween Love, Dead Central, and countless others — there’s no lack of content. There are a lot of other talented people out there that are blogging it better now than even Micro-Shock was doing in its prime. Also, those other talented people aside, I feel that the current horror blogging landscape is somewhat redundant, there are a lot of fan sites out there, the content tends to be redundant anyway.Eight years ago Chris Seaver (of Low Budget Pictures/Warlock Home Video fame) came to me with the idea of starting Micro-Shock. It was his baby to start with. He had grand ideas of doing a blog about horror movies and 80s pop-culture. It was me, him and Michael O’May in those early days. Eventually Chris moved on to focus on his movies, and O’May went his own way as well. I was left to carry on the torch, Rhonda had shown up in those early days and she was a huge motivating force in getting the site out there and people clicking.This was in late 2007 early 2008. I was a different person back then. Just 26 years old, Micro-Shock came at a time when I was suffering from a rather messy break-up with a girl I thought I loved. Heindsight being what it is, she was a horribly toxic person who emotionally abused me through our entire relationship. Regardless of that, the end result was that left me heart broken and Micro-Shock was something to focus my attention onto to try and get over all the hurt. It was a long process. It was also the days before WordPress and doing blogs in basic HTML was still a thing (but also on its way out). Google had just recently bought YouTube and online videos were still in its infancy. I did all the design, copying and pasting articles to fit the format. Doing the majority of the videos. Filming, editing, uploading. I had a lot of free time back then and it was not out of the ordinary that I’d be pumping out five or more articles a week and a plethora of videos.Eventually, Rhonda and I started getting out there, my budget was limited but we hit Cinema Wasteland a number of times and got all sorts of interviews. I was a liberty to travel to events and talk to people, connect with the indie horror scene and meet a lot of great people.There were some trials and tribulations. Again, regular readers probably have noted my rather disastrous film project I got involved in back in 2010. I ended up working the wrong person. Ultimately, the guy was a fraud, and I learned a really expensive lesson in choosing the wrong person to work with. Working with this piece of shit was the biggest mistake I ever made, the guy took a personal issue and turned it into something that halted production. He threatened to sue me, and then allowed the production to fall apart and if the footage still exists somewhere it’s still collecting dust on a hard drive somewhere in his house. Which is just as well, it was our project, but he claimed ownership of it. He can have it, I think it was a shitty idea anyway. Anyway, to the point that little misstep almost financially ruined me. I had to file for bankruptcy and the whole nine yards just to get out of the financial trouble.Still the website endured, and it was something I focused on while I was pulling myself out of the financial mess I got myself into. It was still well visited. People liked it. The life wrecking fraud faded into obscurity and has never accomplished anything of value that I can ascertain. Which I believe is what happens to anyone who talks big ideas but has no substance to it.But the convening years were rough, curtailed in a lot of ways I had to struggle to keep the site going. I think back in 2011 there was a period where the site almost went down because I simply couldn’t afford it. I think it was Christmas money from my grandparents that saved the site that year. I briefly had a chance to recover the footage of my film not long after that. The idiot I worked with gave up on editing a music video for a local band that was taking him over 3 years (!!!) to finish. The lead singer contacted me and said that my footage was among the raw footage they got for their music video. When I asked her to give me the footage, she chickened out because she was afraid of being sued. Which I have to say, is a really shitty thing for her to do. Why even tell me? What a cunt. Not long after that one of the cast members of my ill fated film project also died not long thereafter, quashing any chances of it ever getting recovered and finished.I guess one minor victor in that whole debacle was a few years ago, I was able to re-purpose some of the only footage I had of the project, a fake movie trailer for a zombie western called “Boss Zombie” and had it screened at a local fake trailer festival. Incidentally enough, none of the shitty cast members that we used were even interested in showing up to see at least some of their work. Which was insulting, particularly since our dead friend was featured in the short and I made it into a tribute to him. Not a single friend of his showed up. Instead I sat in the old theater and watched it with four of my closest friends who had nothing to do with the project. Which is just as well. The silver lining was that “Boss Zombie” was my biggest contribution to the project and the only thing that had substance (what little there was) in the whole project. It was mine God damn it. I took it back. And no matter how small an audience, it got screened in a theater and seen by people. So, there’s a victory in that whole debacle after all.. All be it a bitter one.Anyway… I think it was about that time that the paradigm started shifting for me. Not long before all of these trials and tribulations I got into doing stand-up comedy, and over time that’s what I began focusing my time on. I was writing less articles, had less time to create videos. Between working two jobs, doing stand-up and volunteering at various convnetions in my area, I just didn’t have the time to maintain the site like I used to. But still we soldiered on.Still the amount of time where the site went six months without any new content were increasing, and I was becoming less and less concerned about it.I’d get a few flutters of inspiration at times, mostly from working conventions. It gave me the opportunity to meet and work with some of the icons of the horror genre. George Romero, Tom Savini, Robert Englund, Doug Bradley, Kane Hodder… So I tried to stick it out. But to be honest with you, the horror genre just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. Was it the fans? Sitting at tables dealing with people coming to see their idols made me a little jaded I guess. The kinds of people coming to the table, saying the same shit and asking the same stupid questions every day. People spending a ton of money for tickets and autographs and a moment to meet the person and have them answer a question you could have easily found by using Google. It discouraged me as a writer to be honest with you. Here was an audience that could hate on anything at the turn of a dime and I noted the majority of my articles were usually about movies that everyone hated that I had some perverse joy in watching. It wasn’t so much the fact that they didn’t like something, it was the fact that they were parroting everything else others were saying. You tried to get an opposing opinion and the level of discourse was childish at best. I understand that these people are not representative of the community as a whole, but God damn, there were a lot of them. Enough that the desire to write anything thought provoking or different just lost its taste. I certainly didn’t want to be the blogger that regurgitated what every other site was spitting out. I was never one for repeating unsubstantiated rumor or speculation (like a lot of the blogs out there do). I get that it generates traffic, clicks, people will want to see if you have anything different to say, or any new tidbits about whatever is generating a buzz. I just felt it was hacky. I didn’t want to be that guy who waxes on the possibility of another Friday the 13th related project that was mentioned once and never heard of again.I think the final shoe dropped for me was when I was asked to be on an up and coming YouTube series that featured discussions on horror movies. The creator of said series asked me to appear as a guest. We had met at a Comiccon the day after I had my drink spiked by a crazy Frenchman (long story). We connected over our mutual love of the film Cannibal Holocaust and things went from there. This girl is wicked talented, but unfortunately her web series suffered from because of the regular co-hosts she had on the show. These two were biggest pieces of shit I’ve had the displeasure to work with. One is a burned out performer who spends most of his time chasing the fleeting fame he once had and the other was Mr. “I used to be a big name’s” eternal yes man who runs also happens to run a laughably bad horror blog that is the most uninspiring piece of detritus on the internet. The creator was always the shining light of any episode, but those other two were a festering black hole sucking all the joy and energy out of everything… If they could remembered their lines or talking points, or not flub their lines. Sadly, the creator’s project went the same way as mine, as the apish “yes man” has left the footage to collect dust on his hard drive as well. I guess I’m not the only person who had to deal with this.In the end, I had enough and I need to take a break from it all.Does this mean I am completely done with horror?No.Am I going to keep blogging? Maybe, but certainly not about one specific subject.Presently I have some ideas on the burner and if they pan out, fantastic. But until then, it’s time to say goodbye.I wanted to take a moment to thank the following people:My Micro-Shock co-creator, Chris Seaver, a very talented man. I’d also like to thank Michael O’May, Andrew Shearer, Daniel Hassig, Davide Della Nina, the mysterious Dr. M, Eric Larsen, Gwendolyn Kiste, Isabelle Da Morte, Jonathan Moody, and Bill Thomas. Thank you all for your contributions, dedication and hard work, as well as your inspiration and motivations.Also thank you to the many very talented film makers and horror buffs who have allowed us to interview them or review their work. Thank you to Bill Zebub, Mike Hartman, Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team, Thomas Berdinski, and a million others. Thanks to the people at Troma, Wild Eye Releasing, Tempe Home Entertainment, Breaking Glass Pictures, SRS Cinema, Massacre Video, and all the independently run film productions out there that have made films that we watched. Both the good and the bad.And most importantly, thank you to all the Micro-Shock fans out there. All three of you.Never stop screaming.