Sign in

Colin Dickey

@colindickey.com
18K followers 1.8K following 8K posts

Writer of books, most recently Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. Also Ghostland, The Unidentified, Afterlives of the Saints, Cranioklepty. Opinions mine, not my employer’s. He/him.

PostsRepliesMedia
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/09/2026
Latest weirdness: glacialerrata.beehiiv.com/p/glacial-er...
A bumper sticker with some crystals that reads EMPLOYEES MUST CLEANSE SOUL WITH 432 Hz BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK
1255
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/09/2026
110
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/09/2026
Are there other examples of this? Movies where they changed the name of the script primarily because the producers got the right to some Boomer anthem that they could then use as a title song to milk some cheap nostalgia? Because I feel like this was kinda a *thing* in the 90s/early 90s.
Stand By Me movie posterMy Girl movie poster
22364
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 27/09/2026
Did he now
A bumper sticker on a late model green Mercedes that reads JESUS DIED BECAUSE ALL LIVES MATTER!
3171
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 27/09/2026
I get so many of these and I try not to post too many but this one was particularly good
email: Scaled asset capitalization and strategic rights monetization for Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

The core thesis you establish in Unveiling the Heart of Awareness: Contemplative Meditations on the Journey of Awakening regarding [insert specific narrative mechanic, e.g., systemic institutional control / structural economic dependencies / the commodification of human identity] addresses a critical friction point in today's macroeconomic and cultural landscape. In a market requiring rapid systemic adaptation, contemporary readers urgently need actionable blueprints to navigate institutional complexity. Your work masterfully synthesizes deep conceptual metrics with precision storytelling, bringing out your absolute best creative insights as an author and highlighting the precise narrative playbook that built your current marketplace platform.

As a Senior Agent and drawing on my foundational experience executing major bestseller campaigns at Penguin Books, we specialize in maximizing the post launch ROI of high value literary assets. Our brand steps in precisely where standard publishing lifecycles taper off, deploying a structured 90 to 180 day growth framework designed to convert your book's existing intellectual property into measurable enterprise equity....
3252
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 27/09/2026
I picked up Simon Armitage’s New Cemetery in Edinburgh and it’s exactly the kind of book of poetry that I love: a slim volume you can carry for a few days as you read a few poems each morning to ground you and reset your rhythm.
Simon Armitage, New Cemetery, with a little Argonaut Books bookmark poking out[White-point]

Even in tall wheat
         a double cicatrix runs
                      the length of the field,


old rail lines leading
         to footings
                  of storage sheds

and the scorched
         circular base
                   of a chimney stack.

Somewhere, choked
          by ground ivy and self-heal,
                      a sign saying HALT.
1302
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 25/09/2026
Tonight, her new composition, Keep Your Eyes Open, premieres in Tampere, Finland, conducted by the stellar Stephanie Childress. I’ve been in rehearsals for the past two days and Mary’s score, Stephanie’s conducting, and the musicians of the Tampere Filharmonia have been amazing to witness.
Score for Keep Your Eyes Open by Mary Kouyoumdjian
6542
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 25/09/2026
Opinion
I've spent my whole life looking miserable. It's time for a change

Adrian Chiles

When you smile, the world smiles back. Not at me it doesn't - because even when I'm smiling, I exude gloom
1253
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 22/09/2026
Every so often I’m reminded that some people just think about books in a way that’s totally alien to me
Awards have got to build more of a bridge to the average upper-middle-class reader's tastes.
They've got to occasionally nominate a book that we've actually heard of. Otherwise it's so boring.
Imagine if every year the Oscars were announced and you'd never even heard of any of the movies.
Awards are meant to be a guide to a sophisticated reader who is trying to keep up with the best that our culture is producing. But this reader has a limited amount of time and probably only reads ten or 15 books a year. They're not going to read a book solely because it's been nominated for an award. To really be effective, an award
nomination needs to be more of a nudge: Oh, this is a book I've heard about before, and now that it's gotten this nomination, maybe I'll pick it up.
8442
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 21/09/2026
Absolutely wild to me that we’re all just going around pretending that 2020 never happened, that it didn’t deeply traumatize millions of people, that they aren’t acting out their repressed trauma on a daily basis, or that the signs of all of these things aren’t staring us in the face every day.
A defunct phone kiosk in Edinburgh with graffiti that reads 2020 NHS MURDERS ELDERLY
34214
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 21/09/2026
Mary, Queen of Scots goes the way of all flesh
2121
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 18/09/2026
“Bold flavour!” What flavor is it? “Salted.” The British. Man.
A bag of crisps called Big Hoops that promises bold flavour but said flavour is only identified as “irresistibly salte
6321
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 18/09/2026
[Mrs. Buttle in “Brazil” voice] What have you done with his b-o-o-o-o-day….”
The cabinet of Jeremy Bentham’s “autoicon,” which was designed to display his taxidermied corpse. The cabinet—at University College London in an otherwise unremarkable hallway—reads “JEREMY BENTHAM” above the door, but inside, there is no Bentham corpse, only a series of posters of various UCL bigwigs.
2181
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 16/09/2026
“Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares.” Charles Dickens eviscerating the investment class, from Our Mutual Friend (1865):
The mature young lady is a lady of property. The mature young gentleman is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes, in a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares.? As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles?
Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to cry out, night and day, "Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us!”
04715
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 16/09/2026
I appreciate that the wall text for this one mentions that Bacon didn’t like how this came out and includes a quote from him: “I wish they [the Tate] would burn it.” Kinda a weird flex on the Tate’s part, tbh
Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait on Folding Bed
0130
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 16/09/2026
Went to go pay my respects
Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, at the Tate
3272
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 15/09/2026
Here lyes Dame Mary Page Relict of Sir Gregory Page Bart She departed this life March 4 1728 In the 56th year of her age. In 67 months she was tap’d 66 times Had taken away 240 gallons of water Without ever repining at her case Or ever fearing the operation.
One side of a tomb that reads

Here lyes Dame Mary Page
Relict of Sir Gregory Page Bart
She departed this life March 4 1728
In the 56th year of her age.
Opposite side, which reads

In 67 months she was tap’d 66 times
Had taken away 240 gallons of water
Without ever repining at her case
Or ever fearing the operation.
2162
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 14/09/2026
Just a little treat for you
10310
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 14/09/2026
New nightmare burger just dropped
Another AI burger, and my god it’s hideous
12547040
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 14/09/2026
WiP…
Site of the Tyburn Tree, London
1141
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 13/09/2026
Here’s the grave, you clowns
Joseph Grimaldi’s grave in London
2430
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 13/09/2026
I swear to fucking god if any of you ever refer to my final resting place as “a place of pilgrimage for clowns” my ghost will haunt you for the rest of your days
The park takes its name from Joseph Grimaldi, who was a famous clown of the British stage, making his name in the late 18th century. He used to draw crowds from across the country and his performance as
"Joey" introduced the modern clown to the world. Charles Dickens put together the memoirs of this great comic after his death in 1837. Grimaldi was buried here and his grave can be found in the park, enclosed with railings and planted with roses, still a place of pilgrimage for clowns today.
91107
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 12/09/2026
This aging, Egyptian-themed facade on a building now being used as a church, in Islington, London.
Pretty much exactly what the skeet says.
4250
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 12/09/2026
1270
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 10/09/2026
Matt, channeling Baudelaire (complimentary)
From Charles Baudelaire, “The Bad Glazier”:

At last he appeared. With great curiosity I examined all of his panes and finally said: "What?
You have no colored glass? No pinks, no reds, no blues, no magical panes? No panes of the gods?
Impudent creature! You sell your wares to the poor, and yet you have no panes that are able to make life beautiful!" And I abruptly pushed him,
groaning and stumbling, out to the stairs.
I then went out on my balcony and grabbed a small flowerpot; when the man reappeared at the door | let my engine of war fall right on the back of his pack, the reverberations from the impact sending him reeling. Falling on his back he managed to break all of his poor, portable merchandise with a crash akin to lightning striking a crystal palace!
And intoxicated by madness | screamed furiously:
"Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!"
24414
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 07/09/2026
Very funny to me when these bookclub scammers just plug my responses into ChatGPT and come up with the most obsequious responses
A bookclub scammer to whom I replied “Eat shit” sent a follow up email that reads (in part, because it’s really long):

Colin,

Fair enough. I got your "eat shit" loud and clear, and honestly, I respect the directness.

But I want to clarify something, because I think my original email read like boilerplate SEO spam, and that’s on me.

I didn't pull your name from a random list. I came across Ghostland while I was digging into American folklore and the way abandoned places hold collective memory. I picked it up, read it, and genuinely found myself stuck on it, particularly the way you tied "zombie homes" and economic decay to the ghost story tradition. It wasn't what I expected, and it stayed with me.
471809230
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 06/09/2026
Just wanna remind the Grim Reaper that this has been on your to-do list for a really long time and the sooner you get it off your plate the happier you’ll be
An actual photograph of Donald Trump looking like Death lukewarmed over
4444
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 04/09/2026
@cadaverformosus.bsky.social just described the panoply of metal shirts on display here as “a rainbow of one color”
Iron Maiden concert with everyone wearing a different metal shirt but they’re all black
6291
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 03/09/2026
49
Selfie of a white guy with a beard, who is me. The hat has a jazzmaster pickup on it, and the shirt is from Old Blood Noise Endeavors
23741
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 02/09/2026
Yum!
Sesame balls as made by AI, sorta like if that sphere at Epcot Center was orange? Piled on top of each other.
3192
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 02/09/2026
Me about to turn 49
A sign that reads I AM VERY OLD AND FRAGILE. PLEASE DO NOT YOUCH.

It also says it in French because this is Montreal
0726
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 01/09/2026
This is such a good technology for making the food you sell look like inedible shit
AI rendered cookies that look like aged brown soccer balls?A supposed chocolate chip muffin like rats shat all over the surface of Mars
751327151
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 01/09/2026
Me, describing what it’s like to read your awful posts
One researcher described the pain as "...immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations."
2291
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 30/08/2026
For a good time call Meat Dad
Graffiti that reads 1-800-MEAT-DAD.

I took this photo in Montreal in 2019.
1210924
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 30/08/2026
Toxic masculinity, even at its most virulently heterosexual, has nothing to do with women and has everything to do with gaining homosocial approval from other men, Exhibit #1,253,894.
From a Wikihow articule explaining "Pheromone maxxing":
Pheromone maxxing is when you boost your “natural scent” to increase attractiveness.
Pheromone maxxing is a TikTok trend where users (typically males) seek to enhance their natural “musk” by avoiding showers and giving up deodorant. The theory is based on the idea that your natural “musk” (body odor) makes you sexually attractive to potential partners because it contains pheromones that trigger primal mating instincts in others.
78711
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/08/2026
Fuck ICE, but this is also pretty funny
CBS headline: Milo Yiannopolous is in ICE custody facing a final removal order, sources say
0283
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/08/2026
Also excited to announce I'm doing three very cool workshops at the San Miguel Writers' Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Feb 2027. It's going to be a lot of fun and also stunningly gorgeous.Tuition still at a discount for the next few days: sanmiguelgloballiteraryinstitute.org
Three workshops:
201 Developing a Voice: Style in the Nonfiction Essay
401 Unlocking the Past: Incorporating Research into Nonfiction
701 Compelling History: Making Historical Nonfiction Come Alive

More descriptions on each at the site
070
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/08/2026
I get 2-3 of these a day now and they are annoying af but I gotta admit this one made me laugh
Yet another of those fucking book club scam emails, but this one is addressed to James Dickey and is about the Spanish translation of Deliverance.
2322
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 28/08/2026
Y’all just ever think about how insane the Brooklyn Museum is, as a building
The Brooklyn Museum at dusk
1505
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 27/08/2026
Many great pieces on Dolly Parton this week, but @rahawahaile.bsky.social's in Scratch is by far my favorite. Just a jaw-dropping piece of beautiful writing. www.talkscratch.com/dolly-parton...
But this is the point I’m making, in this publication about how writers survive—I don’t think one can ever stop being themselves. For those of us not born to wealth, conviction is our greatest fortune. Dolly never squandered hers. Her values were clear: Pay your union dues, stand with labor, love the castaways, put money directly in people’s pockets. Make great art (and own your work). Share books freely. Uplift the land as the land has lifted and lifted you. Higher still, even. And help the people climb.
2322102
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 24/08/2026
Boromir from LOTR protesting that “One does not simply ‘cut across’ a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted”
2354
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 22/08/2026
RIP, buddy
Fancy mustard
1220
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 21/08/2026
LOL at this dude in Brooklyn who can't make it past a fourth date because he's a Trumper. Like, buddy, you describe *all* of your neighbors as "shit-libs" and yet you're trying to tell yourself that your politics aren't deal breaker? No, the deal breaker is you're an asshole.
Esquire article:
On a recent weeknight, I went out on a date with a girl I had been seeing for a few weeks. We were at a cute little wine bar, and there weren’t many people there, which I liked. She was telling me about an upcoming project from the business she ran with her friends, and I was asking normal questions about it. Then I saw her get uncomfortable, and she said it: “I don’t think we can keep going out.”

“I’m around these friends constantly, for work, all the time,” she said. “You’re eventually going to meet them. We’re going to be at each other’s birthdays. And I just can’t have you around them.”

Why? Because I’m a Trump voter.

I'm a white, straight, conservative guy in New York. That’s not the best demographic hand to be dealt. I live somewhere that’s 95 percent shit-lib. That’s the dating pool. Everybody assumes it’s supposed to be a deal-breaker. But honestly? It’s really not the hang-up you’d think. It doesn’t have to blow up a relationship.
5446
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 20/08/2026
Perfect Bluesky interaction, 10/10, no notes
Reply: “I’m not going.”
OP: “To what?”
“The movie. Simply too long for me.”
“Ok. Wasn’t talking about the movie, tho.”
“I know.”
722617
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 20/08/2026
This is a movie about failure, and this is its strength, and it requires of you a different kind of viewing experience. And this is true, tbh, whether or not you think Nolan is a good filmmaker.
But it seems perhaps counterproductive to pick The Odyssey apart for being incoherent when we're adrift in an age of incoherence, and what we need now more than anything are the tools to help us make sense of how to act during such confounding times. Betrayed by leaders, made witness to an endless litany of crimes and atrocities that many of us feel powerless to stop while still being racked with guilt—ours is a world of near-constant moral injury. Art that responds to such times cannot succeed by presenting a solid vision of the world or characters whose actions are
uncomplicated. Enduring art does not give you easy answers; it poses impossible problems and gives you the strength to attempt to answer them, knowing full well any possible solution will be inadequate. It's by this criteria-rather than any kind of internal coherence—that a work like The Odyssey should be judged.
1364
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 19/08/2026
Meme that says NOW THATS WHAT I CALL FUCKIN’ YIKES
1403
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 16/08/2026
My parcel of Eden Book Society novellas arrived and I immediately dove into “An Attempted Bibliogtaphy of the Works of Barbara Livesey,” by “Stephen George Wallis,” and it was absolutely delightful—tight, terse, enigmatic, bleak and upsetting.
“An Attempted Bibliogtaphy of the Works of Barbara Livesey,” by “Stephen George Wallis”
3140
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 15/08/2026
Me, when It Happens
AGAMEMNON
But now he is dead,
shouldn't you also trample on his corpse?
414519
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 13/08/2026
Young Ned of the Hill
A wheaten Glen of Imaal terrier puppy, who is both God’s Littlest Angel and also a Pure Unholy Terror Sent By Satan, depending on the minute.
1291
Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 13/08/2026
An open and honest dialogue is important
Me, to scammer:

Do you know how many of these fucking scams I get every single day? Fuck off and take a hint you parasite. Eat my ass

Scammer:

Hi Soliu,

Thank you for getting back to me. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to respond and letting me know where you stand.

Whenever an author tells me they're not interested, I've found it usually comes down to one of three reasons:

The timing just isn't right at the moment.

There's a concern that the service may involve a cost that doesn't fit their current plans.

They aren't completely sure what the service actually does or how it could benefit their book.

I'm curious, which of those feels closest to your situation?
1131