The Tangential

Don't be boring. Don't suck.

  • Best/Realest Tweets of the Week, 3/24-3/30/13

    Best/Realest Tweets of the Week, 3/24-3/30/13

    Hangovers, am I right? Who woulda thunk that abusing a depressant in pursuit of happiness would make you feel so crappy? — Natalie Shure (@natalieshure) March 27, 2013   The reason I hate LinkedIn is super-closely tied to my belief that they invented the worst unholiday ever: the Work Anniversary. — Kate Petersen (@KateLPetersen) March…

  • No One Ruins a Party Like a Steampunk Ruins a Party

    No One Ruins a Party Like a Steampunk Ruins a Party

    I’ve been where you are. Enjoying the night. Letting the smoothness of the jam band on stage sink into you. The bouncing bass. The silver-tight guitar hits. The competent drumming. You’re doing what you can to forget about the week. When all of a sudden some motherfucking steampunks show up. Steampunks are essentially dressing up…

  • Diseases I Made Up for the Minor Maladies I Suffer

    Diseases I Made Up for the Minor Maladies I Suffer

    Crankle – When the back of your ankles sting from sitting hard on the edge of the coffee table while you’re couched and watching Netflix. Known cure: Pillow under the feet, or lay down on the couch and accidentally fall asleep. Narcoltoe – When only your left pinky toe falls asleep while driving for more…

  • Why Is This Lovingly Made DIY Literary Magazine So Boring?

    Why Is This Lovingly Made DIY Literary Magazine So Boring?

    I was recently sent a copy of a literary magazine; it’s published by a nonprofit organization, so it’s not technically do-it-yourself, but it has a classic DIY feel to it: the pages are photocopied and stapled, and there’s a tiny little book of poetry rubber-banded inside. The cover is fastened with velcro. It’s absolutely adorable…and…

  • “Millennials Are Poor Schlubs Living On Breast Milk (Still?),” Says Underpaid Boomer Columnist Who Doesn’t Like Twitter

    “Millennials Are Poor Schlubs Living On Breast Milk (Still?),” Says Underpaid Boomer Columnist Who Doesn’t Like Twitter

    I have read all the articles and I have these requests: • Stop talking about how my generation is pathetic because some of us live at home after college. The economy crashed because generations before us were greedy and irresponsible with money, not because we spent too much time as teenagers watching Internet porn. (Also, some…

  • “G.I. Joe: Retaliation”: As American as the U.S.A.

    “G.I. Joe: Retaliation”: As American as the U.S.A.

    The most impressive thing about Jon Chu’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation is how badly it manages to suck. The bar is low for an action movie based on a line of silly military toys, and even still, Chu and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick fail to clear it. The G.I. Joe brand was inaugurated in…

A short history of The Tangential

The Tangential is a pop culture and creative writing blog launched in 2011 by three writers living in Minneapolis: Becky Lang (now Radecki), Jay Gabler, and Katie Sisneros. That was a golden age of irreverent confessional blogging, and over the first couple years we built a national following. Notably, we gained over 120,000 followers on Tumblr, where we were often associated with the provocative, extremely online writers in the movement known as alt lit. We created spinoff blogs including The Sport Hole, The Party Whip, The Tangential Ruins Minneapolis, and Tan Genitals. We hosted Minneapolis events and published three books.

We were having so much fun, in fact, that we never got around to monetizing. Oops! Well, we did have a little income from the books and events, and we became an Amazon affiliate. (This is your official disclosure that we subsidize our hosting costs via revenue from partner links.) Eventually, though, the editors and contributors who fueled the site’s early years largely moved on to other projects.

Today, The Tangential is run by Jay, who continues to publish criticism and other writing as well as to maintain the site’s catalog of posts — if only for, as we’ve always said, “the good of society.”

Site ©2026 The Tangential LLC. Post content copyright is held by individual authors.