Good day friend,
We here at Sentenced are hard at work. And we mean it.
This time there will be no silly guest columnists, no weird text manipulations, no strange lies. This is serious. Sentenced is preparing to enter a new era, and we need to explain it to you as clearly as possible.
The Gist of Things
We are working on multiple projects which is partially why the newsletter is so dry this week. We just don’t have the energy to be funny. We are so busy in fact that this newsletter is being written an hour before we have to send it out. Apologies if it’s shit.
In short: our goal is to become the largest literary magazine in the world, ultimately changing it for the better. This is a delusional goal, but it is technically possible so we will try.
Below are some of the things we will do in the coming months to get closer to being extremely influential.
The Interview Scheme
Sentenced is taking on a massive project which will likely take up the next six months of our lives. We call it The Interview Scheme. The scheme is to interview the most famous person in the world.
We plan to achieve this by first interviewing a non-famous person. This person will set up an interview with a person more famous than them. This continues until the sixth interview with the most famous person in the world.
Each interview impacts every interview that comes after. For example, the first person in the chain of the interviewees will help interview the second person in the chain, the second will help interview the third, and so on. There will also be images, videos, and text which will move through the chain. A lot of these elements we will not be disclosing until the interviews begin to maintain some intrigue.
Instead of only interviewing one person in the beginning, we will be interviewing 6 to 30 people and pruning off people at every step if they cannot secure an interview with someone sufficiently more famous than them. This is to prevent dead-ends and to increase our chances of actually interviewing the most famous person. If your interview results in pruning, do not fret, as your interview will still be included in the final product, it will just not be as emphasized as an interview that leads us to our final interview.
If you are interested in participating please email interview@sentencedlit.org with your full name (we also accept pseudonyms, gamertags, and first names), any of your social media handles or websites (if you want), a picture of yourself (or a picture that represents you), and any relevant information like pronouns or fun facts. The deadline for signing up for this is April 28th.
After the 28th of April we will set up recorded interviews over Google Meet sometime in the month of May for every interested party. The interviews will be released when this is all finished in video and text format, in full and condensed formats.
We have as much interest in the first interview as we do the last. At the core, this is an experiment about fame, social networks, and the act of interviewing itself. It will be fun and weird and interesting and we hope you will join us on the journey.
The Funniest Sentence
We have distributed hundreds of sticky notes to our members containing a QR code which leads to a secret page on our website where you can submit the funniest sentence ever written. The prize for this is $50. That’s it really. Not too exciting, but maybe something will come of it. If you are in NYC or LA, keep your eyes peeled.
The Party Meeting
We are planning our next live show! The purpose of it is to clarify our political stance and recruit people into our ranks. It will be held online so anyone can join. Expect more news about this to come out soon. We think it will be really fun and hope to see you all there.
The Commentary
We have not released our live show PERIOD live yet. We know some of you have been waiting. Well, it will never be released as it was filmed. Honestly, the magic in the theater that night does not translate to video. This is why we are going to make a comprehensive commentary track featuring every single person on the show, some audience members, and random people we find. It will likely be cacophonous and unwatchable, but we think it will be funny and a good way to get everyone back together again.
The Book
We are writing a book for charity. The details of this will be revealed at some point. We are still looking for writers to help us with it. Hopefully we can poach some at our next live show.
The Future
We have more planned. A Jeff the Killer fan zine, obtaining nonprofit status, paying our staff and contributors, multiple high concept stunts that might involve breaking the law, and other stuff that we’re hiding for now.
At the end of the day, though, we are ostensibly a team of four. This stuff might take a while. If you’d like to help us with any of it reach out to us, we are always looking for collaborators.
Sentenced Forever!
Oh also, we have new stuff on our website. Check it out! It isn’t by John Darnielle like we said. We were lying as per usual.
Thank you all for reading, we didn’t proofread this one
See you in a week,
Jad, Sarah, Bill, and Remi (Sentenced Editors)
sentencedlit.org
