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jenny g. zhang

@jennygzhang.bsky.social
1.9K followers 129 following 66 posts

writer, editor at [redacted], previously @gawker @eater. i am not jenny zhang jennygzhang.substack.com jennygzhang.com

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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
crazy how america is adopting the worst measures of what we always decry in countries like china (censorship, attacks on political freedom), with literally none of the good things (public safety, no gun violence, renewable energy, mass poverty reduction efforts). flop era is real
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Del Winters @del.winters.rodeo · 21/08/2025
“Surprise: Chinese people aren’t a monolith, and they aren’t all driven by a red-tinted bloodlust for national dominance.” great piece @jennygzhang.bsky.social
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
the chinese blockbuster ne zha 2, the english dub of which opens in theaters today, is an interesting case study in how western media still regards anything chinese with suspicion. wrote about this phenomenon, and the movie itself, for @slate.com slate.com/culture/2025...
slate.com
A24’s Latest Has Already Made More Money Than Any Star Wars Movie. I Bet You’ve Never Heard Of It.
It isn’t even here yet, and it’s already misunderstood.
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Louise Matsakis @lmatsakis.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
one of the best film reviews I've read in a while, I miss when more places published work like this. “It may shock some Americans to learn that many Chinese people, on many days, don’t even have the thought of America cross their minds,” @jennygzhang.bsky.social writes slate.com/culture/2025...
slate.com
A24’s Latest Has Already Made More Money Than Any Star Wars Movie. I Bet You’ve Never Heard Of It.
It isn’t even here yet, and it’s already misunderstood.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
has your big brain ever considered the possibility that a publication worsening in quality is the direct result of shitty owners cutting that publication's resources in half and decimating headcount, freelancer budgets, and all the myriad things that go into creating something "reliably good"
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
sort of at peace knowing that my sydney sweeney piece has ticked off both libs declaring that a denim brand is a nazi and small business owners named dale who insist i'm jealous of sydney and racist toward white people. that's how you know you've hit the perfect equilibrium
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
wrote about the sydney sweeney inflection point and how celebrity can cheapen and tarnish slate.com/life/2025/07...
slate.com
Sydney Sweeney Has Caused an Uproar. It Was Always Going to Come to This.
It was inevitable.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
wrote about really ruined love island usa this year: the specter of "america," which haunted nearly every decision and dynamic inside that villa slate.com/culture/2025...
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
the state of reality TV and fervent fandom slate.com/culture/2025...
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
wrote about the biggest news cycle of this day and age... love island usa and the sheer ugly wreckage of what is happening with reality tv and the internet slate.com/culture/2025...
slate.com
The Controversy Over This Summer’s Hottest Show Just Keeps Getting Uglier
A reality show kicked off a contestant over a racial slur. What’s happened since hasn’t been pretty.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
getting a million writer pitches now that are all basically "i asked AI to ___." i'm telling you this for your own good: ENOUGH
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Van Jackson @vanjackson.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Our grand Andor mini-series is finally complete! Shoutout to @jennygzhang.bsky.social, @pauladlerstein.bsky.social, @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social, @davidklion.bsky.social, and Matt Duss for helping us explore every political nook and cranny of the Andor universe www.bangbangpod.com/p/the-comple...
bangbangpod.com
The Complete Andor Mini-Series
Our grand Andor mini-series is finally complete!
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
reason no. 983 to abolish comedians: this email blast promoting a podcast and standup show from some guy who indiscriminately added every single person whose contact info wasn't properly bcc'd on a writers guild event notification
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
the girls are fightinggg
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
someone should invent a way for it to be vacation every day
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
what it's like on the factory line, by Franklin Schneider, genuinely (probably) one of the best writers to ever do it slate.com/life/2025/05...
slate.com
Trump Is Selling One Job as America’s Future. I Did It—and It’s Absolutely Miserable.
Bringing back the punishing factory floor to make America great again is like giving yourself severe acne to recapture your youth.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
speaking of diaspora lit, reviewed a book about fruit / asian identity for @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
washingtonpost.com
Review | This book strips away the orange peel to ask what fruit means
In “Foreign Fruit,” Katie Goh looks into the history and personal significance of oranges.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
excited to be one of the few remaining humans with a functioning brain and critical thinking skills in 20 years nymag.com/intelligence...
nymag.com
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.
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Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 01/05/2025
Wow sounds awesome! Definitely gotta check that out, especially since they are apparently firing everybody who made Polygon good www.theverge.com/news/659575/...
"Perfectly aligned with Valnet's long-term growth strategy, Polygon will now integrate Valnet's Gaming Portfolio, which includes industry- leading publications such as Game Rant, TheGamer, Fextralife, OpenCritic, DualShockers, and HardcoreGamer," the company said in a press release. "This addition follows Valnet's recent acquisition of FextraLife earlier this year, further strengthening its position in the gaming media landscape. With Valnet's proven operational excellence, Polygon is poised to reach new editorial heights through focused
investment and innovation."
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
went on bang-bang pod to talk about andor (again!)
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Jeremy Gordon @jeremygordon.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
I had a long chat with Jenny about SEE FRIENDSHIP and the process of writing it while working in journalism — sorry to quote myself but here's a bit I will emphasize over and over:
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
should i write a book? should you? should anyone? i asked Real Novelist @jeremygordon.bsky.social, who said that, realistically, the world doesn’t need any more novels, but there are still reasons to do so if you so choose jennygzhang.substack.com/p/should-i-w...
jennygzhang.substack.com
Should I write a book? Should you?
A candid interview with author Jeremy Gordon about what writing a novel did to and for him.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
recalling the time i was trying to publish a book excerpt from an author, and their literary agency was proving difficult to work with, so i gave up and said let's cut our losses, sorry we couldn't make it happen this time, and the agent replied berating/threatening me and cc'd my company's CEO
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
SOMEONE JUST DO IT! DO IT ALREADY!!!!
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Henry Grabar @henrygrabar.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
"There’s a ghost casting a pall from beginning to end: the death of American magazines as a source of power, taste, and money."
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
in a banner week for "jenny doing stuff in the public eye" i reviewed graydon carter's new memoir, which is ultimately an elegy in want of an examination slate.com/culture/2025... @slate.com
slate.com
Thanks, Wealthy Magazine Editors, for Telling Us How Good You Once Had It
Bottomless budgets. Important journalism. In-office brow care. Graydon Carter wants to make sure you know how great magazines used to be.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
wrote about how hayao miyazaki would hate you fucking losers slate.com/life/2025/03...
slate.com
Hayao Miyazaki Would Hate You Losers
The famed animator is the last person who would approve of your little Ghibli-fied waste of pixels.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
if you find my email address—from, say, a pitch guide meant to make it accessible for writers to pitch me stories—and use it to sign me up for your substack, rest assured i am unsubscribing, marking as spam, and setting up a filter so that any email you send goes straight to trash forevermore
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
someone please do this but for costco's double chocolate muffins
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Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
in which @jennygzhang.bsky.social goes deep on Severance and makes an argument for going vegan
slate.com
The Moral Paradox at the Heart of Severance Is Strange, Tense, and Uncomfortable
Is it unethical for the innies to exist? Or is it unethical for them not to?
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
wrote about severance, factory farming parallels, and PHILOSOPHY!!! slate.com/culture/2025...
slate.com
The Moral Paradox at the Heart of Severance Is Strange, Tense, and Uncomfortable
Is it unethical for the innies to exist? Or is it unethical for them not to?
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
new way to check if you're a "somebody" writer or not just dropped
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Ryan Broderick @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
At some point in the last decade, Article World, the universe of corporate journalism and punditry that used to hold up American democracy, was defeated by Post World, random internet content our officials see on their feeds. Nothing has worked ever since. www.garbageday.email/p/when-was-t...
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
you heard it here first
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
wrote about the genre of day-in-my-life videos, the growing aesthetic and spiritual appreciation for the quotidian 9-to-5, and the tightrope of performing relatability for an audience jennygzhang.substack.com/p/9-to-5-pre...
jennygzhang.substack.com
The 9-to-5 pretenders
a.k.a. social media's relatability trap.
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Nitish Pahwa @nitishpahwa.com · 11/03/2025
yesterday was a tough day for us. please send all love, support, and job opportunities to @methsaxon.bsky.social, @hashtagkatie.bsky.social, and @natalieshut.bsky.social, all of whom deserved so much better than this.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
for my monthly newsletter, i wrote about the diverging valuations of writing, the creep of an anti-effort sentiment disguised as noble resistance to capitalism, and one weird trick to doing that thing you always said you were going to do jennygzhang.substack.com/p/writers-bl...
jennygzhang.substack.com
The truth about writer's block
Since when did discipline and work become evidence of "assembly-line capitalist thinking"?
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
should i buy this and become the worst person you know
Product page for J.Crew x The New Yorker's $168 Limited-edition The New Yorker X J.Crew brushed wool crewneck sweater.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
when i post the exact same joke on twitter and bluesky, that's not me double-dipping. i'm conducting empirical research
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
some of you may wonder how a human being could genuinely fall in love with an AI chatbot. watch a single episode of Love Is Blind and you will understand completely
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
going emo mode listening to death cab for cutie after missing out on tickets for their upcoming tour because 29,000 people were ahead of me in the queue - that's called embracing the millennial experience
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
it feels like more and more people are using ratings/streams/box office numbers/etc. as an obvious signifier of artistic merit or shield against exacting critical assessment... not great imo
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
she didn't deserve this
Kabosu, the shiba inu who became known as "doge."
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Jaya Saxena @jayasaxena.com · 05/02/2025
"America has a long history of celebrating immigrant food without valuing immigrants themselves. The value of any person should not be reliant on producing things the dominant class deems delicious enough to embrace." www.eater.com/24359357/und...
eater.com
For Undocumented Restaurant Workers, Everything Is in Question
President Trump’s threats against undocumented immigrants put America’s entire food chain at risk.
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jenny g. zhang @jennygzhang.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
pigeons can sense if you're pure of heart. if a pigeon poops on you that's a sign of your moral repugnance
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