Luke O'Neil
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lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Luke O'Neil
@lukeoneil47.bsky.social
45K followers 1.3K following 16K posts
Newsletter: Welcome to Hell World www.welcometohellworld.com

Books:

We Had It Coming (Fall 2025) https://orbooks.com/catalog/we-had-it-coming/

A Creature Wanting Form (2023) www.orbooks.com/catalog/a-creature-wanting-form
Posts Replies Media Videos
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Was reading the YouTube comments on Robyn videos, as I do for normal reasons, and this guy pissed me off. All that effort just to fuck up this bad.
November 19, 2025 at 11:10 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Thank you always have always will
November 19, 2025 at 11:01 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Or this one with Roth from a few months earlier after the Deadspin exodus www.welcometohellworld.com/we-chose-not...
If I had bought Gizmodo Media personally I would have simply and very easily sold profitable ads on sites that everyone liked. It doesn’t seem like it’s that difficult. I agree it would have been very simple for you or I, famously good at business… That’s the other thing. They had all these people there who knew how to do that shit. They had been at the site forever and they knew the culture and they knew how to sell it and he systematically pushed all those people out and replaced them with identical dudes in light blue dress shirts who are used to selling ads for CNN or Yahoo! or whatever. So they’re presented with this other weirder shit with like curses in the headlines… I think they probably maybe would have struggled to sell that stuff. That’s why he should’ve kept the old people. Don’t assume everyone at the place you bought is a fucking idiot asshole who doesn’t know his job.
November 19, 2025 at 6:24 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Defector heads may appreciate this interview I did with Kelsey, Drew, McQuade and Luis five years ago before the launch of the site about what to expect from it and what it took to put it together. www.welcometohellworld.com/you-can-expe...
Obviously there are a lot of newsletters right now. Did you all look at how that has been working in terms of readers paying to support writers they like and get confidence from that that this type of model will work for you? MAGARY: Yeah obviously we'd seen the success that you've had with Substack and that others have had with Patreon and we knew there would be a market for us out there. But also... this is how it's gonna have to be for indie journalism as a whole moving forward. Just you and the readers. No one else getting in the way. PAEZ-PUMAR: We do. Media consumers are becoming more accustomed to paying creators directly, and we think that we have something that no other Sports, Etc. website can offer right now. MCKINNEY: Absolutely. Newsletters have really proven that readers want to support individual writers in their works, which is really encouraging for what we are trying to do. For so long journalism branding has been based around the idea that people pay for the name, and while that's certainly kind of true, what makes the name is the workers. Starting with a new name but the same writers is a real way to test the theory that new media ventures can be built on the platforms individual writers already have.
November 19, 2025 at 6:20 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Also:
I had a dream just now that my dead friend was alive and well. I'm sure you've had one like it. Why did you let me think that you were dead this whole time I kept asking him. Why would you do that to all of us? He didn't have a good answer.

www.welcometohellworld.com/watertown-ma...
I had a dream just now that my dead friend was alive and well. I'm sure you've had one like it. Why did you let me think that you were dead this whole time I kept asking him. Why would you do that to all of us? He didn't have a good answer. Then we both had to go work a shift at the restaurant which is another kind of nightmare. It was a lot more distressing than the dream I had the night before which was a post-podcast induced version of "Lauren Lapkus is my best friend." I'm sure you've had one like that too. I wrote about the loss earlier this year.
November 19, 2025 at 3:40 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Even before Elordi’s Creature can speak fluently, he’s articulate. He’s all prowling, unconscious sensuality, a little sexy and a lot dangerous. His movements are shy but curious, like those of an animal that hasn’t yet learned to fear people. www.welcometohellworld.com/the-love-we-...
But nobody, and no body, in del Toro’s entire canon has ever been as affecting or as tragic as the Creature’s, played to perfection by Jacob Elordi. The last time I saw Elordi, he was Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s 2023 Priscilla, (which I wrote about for Hell World here) and he brings some unexpected swagger to the Creature, too—more a rampaging toddler’s than a rock star’s, but with none of Boris Karloff’s inarticulate groaning in the same role. Even before Elordi’s Creature can speak fluently, he’s articulate. He’s all prowling, unconscious sensuality, a little sexy and a lot dangerous. His movements are shy but curious, like those of an animal that hasn’t yet learned to fear people. In an especially poignant early moment, the happy Creature plays with his chains without understanding that they exist to trap him. He’s still too full of babyish wonder at the world he’s been given. That world is nothing but a dank and unadorned dungeon, but he feels his way around it with pleasure, stroking surfaces and splashing in a stream too shallow to even submerge his feet. In his first several scenes, he’s all body, the way anyone living in chains is. But Elordi masterfully conveys the brain at work inside the striated corpse as we watch him learn to smile and feed animals. By the time it’s the Creature’s turn to tell his side of the story, we’ve been expecting it for some time, having watched him grow up.
November 19, 2025 at 3:34 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
I had no idea they have the fucking guy standing up there on stage the whole time when they do this. The goofball himself. Tire Man.
November 19, 2025 at 2:18 AM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
A headline that is very confusing in Boston. Is it wicked or not?
November 19, 2025 at 1:07 AM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Unfortunate cropping
State ass
November 18, 2025 at 1:05 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Lovely comic by @sirosenbaum.bsky.social in today's (free) @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/teeth-beach-...
two comic panels about storms and earthquakes in Portugal
November 17, 2025 at 8:16 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Excited to think about going to this then deciding against it because I'm lazy and tired.
November 17, 2025 at 6:15 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Did not realize that is Madeline Stowe in the (still very goofy) Welcome to Derry show. And she is apparently 67?? Mama mia.
November 17, 2025 at 5:59 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Can't help but think of my dear friend Salad Fingers, who I knew very well, by the way, whenever old Marjorie is in the news.
November 16, 2025 at 10:21 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
I actually want to hang out with MJ and Tim more than Tim and Zohran.
November 16, 2025 at 1:52 AM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
November 15, 2025 at 11:23 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Can check. Working with a beautiful Wormtown ale here
November 15, 2025 at 11:19 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Going to the post office soon if anyone wants a signed copy hit me up. Got a few ACWF and WTHWs left too.
November 15, 2025 at 2:15 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
I don't know much about irony or newspapers so I guess they got my ass once again.
November 14, 2025 at 11:50 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Please shut the fuck up about outside agitators unless you mean the police very few of whom even live in the cities they menace.
protest? The idea that you have to be an authorized resident of a city to go to a protest there is so fucking infuriating to me. I’m not talking about “destroying” the city but protest- ing there. Police hurt us everywhere but mostly in the big cities so it makes sense to me that that’s where we would go to demand they stop. Especially when it’s the state capitals where our governments are located. More than that though this idea has taken root everywhere that in every city there are paid crisis actors and people being “bussed in” to cause damage and that is meant to do a few things one of which is to forestall any sense of rising solidarity among the different groups protesting the use of state violence against citizens and disproportionately against people of color. The second thing is it’s an attempt to create an out group that does not fall under the jurisdiction of our leaders. If a mayor or governor says the people causing trouble aren’t his or her people it’s some other “foreign” group then anything they say or do can be dismissed as illegitimate. Those people are not my people and therefore what they are asking for is not my responsibility to fix. Thirdly it’s ah fuck I forgot the third one. Gonna be hon- est with you guys I have not exactly been practicing self-care vis a vis the old mental health and substance use over here. I’ve been lashing out at friends and being cruel and spoiling for a fight with anyone who moderately disappoints me and I’m sorry about that. Shit what was I going to say . . . In any case please shut the fuck up about outside agita- tors unless you mean the police very few of whom even live in the cities they menace.
November 14, 2025 at 10:17 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Three kings actually
November 14, 2025 at 7:41 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Yes exactly. This piece is from years ago, before we all fucking hated "AI", but you can just talk to the dead whenever you want for free. And maybe they even listen! www.welcometohellworld.com/i-finally-er...
November 14, 2025 at 5:48 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
The latest iteration of this doomed cycle is... a product that shows us what it would be like if you could pull up an avatar of a dead loved one on your phone whenever you wanted to and "talk" with them. www.welcometohellworld.com/for-all-thei...
The latest iteration of this doomed cycle is a company called 2wai – very annoyingly pronounced "two way" – from Disney Channel alum Calum Worthy and friends. A new advertisement for their alleged product shows us what it would be like if you could pull up an avatar of a dead loved one on your phone whenever you wanted to and "talk" with them. Until they jack up the subscription cost too high and you get to experience grandma dying all over again you'd have to guess. Then one day we will all be responsible for crawling into the void ourselves to repeat the cycle. It's nothing more than another attempt by our tech-brained parasites to cope with the devastating realization that for all their wealth and power they too will someday die. I am likewise frightened daily by this proposition but I have decided to write maudlin poetry about the fact like a normal person. I'm not trying to make my mortality everyone else's problem. Check out an ad for the app here in a spot called "We've created the technology from Black Mirror's 'Be Right Back' an episode about why you shouldn't create the technology from Black Mirror's 'Be Right Back.'"
November 14, 2025 at 3:35 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
I love writing one single article over and over again every month
November 13, 2025 at 9:33 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Don't get me wrong you shouldn't lie when you are reporting... but it's possible to perform the act of journalism without pretending you're a cipher who respawns every morning with a baby's brain and zero clue about how the world actually works.
www.welcometohellworld.com/youre-perfor...
Post ‪Luke O'Neil‬ ‪@lukeoneil47.bsky.social‬ · 6mo Cancel your subscription to this piece of shit newspaper for fascist curious liberals. Cancel your NYT subscription ALT 6 45 Luke O'Neil ‪@lukeoneil47.bsky.social‬ Don't get me wrong you shouldn't lie when you are reporting... but it's possible to perform the act of journalism without pretending you're a cipher who respawns every morning with a baby's brain and zero clue about how the world actually works. www.welcometohellworld.com/youre-perfor... There has never been such a thing as a completely neutral journalist but it's even more apparent today. And yet many of them still don't seem to realize it or refuse to admit it. And for what? What are they holding on to besides their professional stature? They all think that if they confess that they believe in anything they’re violating their little fraternity's oath of objectivity. That entire standard is just made up! It's not real. Journalists are like you can’t say Macbeth in the theatre and we’re all supposed to buy into their delusion. I'd rather be a decent human being than a journalist in good standing but maybe that's just me. Don't get me wrong you shouldn't lie when you are reporting – I certainly don't want to ever do that in here – but it's possible to perform the act of journalism without pretending you're a cipher who respawns every morning with a baby's brain and zero clue about how the world actually works. On the other hand the very ethics of PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM absolutely require that you lie in the first place. You have to pass along opinions that you know are wrong or hateful out of so-called objectivity but worse than that you then get to feel proud about doing so. You get fucking promoted for doing it well. So no I'm sorry there is no distinction between serious capital-J Journalism and advocacy when it comes to issues of life or death anymore. When the debate is between one group of people who simply want to live th…
November 13, 2025 at 7:51 PM
lukeoneil47.bsky.social
Do you ever think about a shooting she asked.

By which she meant do you have a little pilot light of anxiety always burning somewhere inside. A little seed of dormant foreboding. Something strapped to your back like a heavy satchel.
They safely hid a two month old under a pile of clothes. Do you ever think about a shooting she asked. By which she meant do you have a little pilot light of anxiety always burning somewhere inside. A little seed of dormant foreboding. Something strapped to your back like a heavy satchel. I think about it more often in the aftermath of a bad one he said. I feel a bit more on edge in large public gatherings or in malls or wherever. When do you ever go to the mall? The proverbial mall. You know what I mean. But they happen so frequently now the reprieves in between don't last very long.
November 13, 2025 at 4:14 PM