Crom

Inventory

~37 pieces — 34 magazine articles + 3 blog posts. Span 2001–2008. Distribution: 2001 (3) · 2002 (9) · 2003 (2) · 2004 (8) · 2005 (9) · 2006 (4) · 2008 (1). Almost entirely a magazine writer; barely touches the blog. Mostly long-form articles with a secondary tail in game/tech/music reviews and absurdist "interviews."

Voice

Aggressive intelligence wrapped in vernacular fury. Antihierarchical. Attacks corporate mediocrity with the energy of someone punching a wall while quoting philosophy. Signature moves: escalating numbered lists, low-culture metaphors, sudden turns from bombast into genuine social critique, deadpan self-aware asides ("I may look stupid"). Black humor delivered with no softening — jokes about homelessness, death, failure that aren't quite jokes. Tone shifts subtly from moral outrage (2001–02) toward playful performance (mid-decade) without ever shedding the underlying despair.

Topic mix

Social rage / systems critique ~30% · game + entertainment reviews ~25% · tech critique + product design ~20% · absurdist performance pieces ~15% · personal/introspective ~10%.

Evolution

• 2001–02 — Apocalyptic young voice. Manifesto-rage; launch-era PS2 reviews swamped by cultural despair. Real-stakes urgency.
• 2003–04 — Persona crystallizes. Discovers the performance mode: literary showdowns, baroque conspiracies, essays that pivot between jest and knife-twist. The voice gets weirder, wittier.
• 2005 — Peak. Most prolific year. Tender testimonial to R4NT itself; absurdist villain interviews; sharper systems criticism.
• 2006 — Attenuation. Two magazine pieces. Cooler tone. Publishes a retraction on the Wii — admits he was wrong, unthinkable for 2002-Crom.
• 2008 — Coda. One piece. A folk album review that opens with violence and ends in wonder. Introspection outpaces rage.

Standout pieces

1. Everything was Great… till we brought the Wrath of God down on ourselves — Prophetic screed on cultural collapse; the founding manifesto.
2. The 6 ½ Reasons I Woke Up Drunk in Perkins — Masterwork: personal essay disguised as true-crime narration. Workplace humiliation → abandonment → Perkins pancakes.
3. Douglas Adams vs Crom: A Literary Showdown — Play-by-play literary boxing match in technical terms (Dadaism, dysphemism). He reads everything and can weaponize vocabulary.
4. Crom vs EA Games: The Battle for Fun — Treatise on the death of joy under corporate consolidation; game review as Trojan horse.
5. First R4NT — Rare sincere testimonial: "We are Avatars and Gods." What R4NT meant to him.
6. Possible Conspiracies Against Me — Autobiography via conspiracy. Real humiliations plotted against imagined ones. Quintessential Crom.
7. Bad Dreams — Surreal nightmare about marionettes killing his grandfather. Darkest, most literary, no punchline.
8. Poison Devil Mac — Love letter to Apple's beauty paired with hatred of its usability; personal desire meets systemic critique.

Throughlines

Tech-as-mirror-of-self — every product review is a self-portrait (Apple's closed systems = locked-down creativity; EA's cynicism = his own despair). Homelessness as recurring metaphor — not crisis but a philosophical escape hatch from consumption. Interview-as-monologue — his villain interviews (Serpentor, Mumm-Ra) are essentially one-man shows where the subject is a puppet.

Fun details

• No filler ever. Even MapQuest directions become an essay on systems failure. Every byline earns its place.
• The late softening. By 2006–08 the voice mellows. He admits he was wrong about the Wii, praises folk music, talks about dispelling nightmares. The howl learns to breathe.
• Magazine-only. Almost everyone else migrates to the blog; Crom stays in long-form. The slow build into rage needs the long form, and he keeps it.
• Ends on a folk record. The final 2008 piece opens with broadsword waving and ends in wonder. A perfect last note.

The arc

R4NT's most internally combustible writer. Brought a literary register the other contributors didn't reach for — willing to be ugly, dark, ridiculous, sincere, often in the same paragraph. Without his nine-year-long howl, R4NT would read as a much politer publication.