“It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but it’s kind of like a trip to Disneyland. You get so excited about a ride on the Matterhorn, and then when it’s over, you realize you wasted all that time in line for a minute and a half upside down and the chance to throw up.”

–Murphy Brown

Today marks the end of a longstanding decline in creative enthusiasm for this platform. In the beginning, numerous lessons were learned, the foremost being that quality endeavors demand time—time borrowed from family life, career, and hobbies. Frequently, the “brightest” ideas would strike in the dead of night, under the illusion that our partners wouldn’t notice, only to face the consequences the following day by spacing out in conversations with those who really matter. Regardless of opinions about The Chum, it represented an enormous investment of effort. Initially, this was of little concern. `A backlog of unvoiced creativity finally found a vent. The output has been voluminous, albeit often nonsensical and amusing only to ourselves. The platform served as a gymnasium for our strategic musings, a workshop for honing our writing abilities, and a classroom for understanding a formidable new medium about which we were clueless.

However, the situation eventually turned serious.

Esteemed readers started paying attention, we inadvertently angered several corporations, and we received our first cease and desist letter. The increase in visitor numbers was addicting, yet it introduced a pressure to “perform” that influenced our behavior.

Therefore, this marks the end. We are disabling the author’s login and halting all fresh content.

I can’t possibly thank my wife and daughter enough for watching me wrestle with finding content every night. Long live The Chum Nation! We cultivated a genuine community with many actively participating. Your humor, feedback, and support truly enriched this journey.