These 11 Reasons Why A Lit Major resigned from Buzzfeed Will Blow Your Mind

Dear Editor,

I am writing to you to tell you that I will be resigning from my current position as Head of Listicle Curation. At the time I took the job I needed the work, and a Masters in English Literature can only take you so far in the current economic climate. I find that staying with you will only reduce me to a husk of my former self. I feel that I am now too old and no longer a good fit for your company. Please find below the reasons for filing this resignation:

1. I pretended to know who Kim Kardashian was when I first assumed this post. Just as Odysseus assumed the garb of a beggar, able to fool even his wife, I assumed that of a pop culture savant, talking in abbreviations, hiding my ignorance. I strung that bow with ease. But now the time has come for me to reveal my true countenance and state that I no longer wish to write about that baffling woman and her family. If I am forced to I will have to find a list of 19 buildings I need to jump off.
2. Just as Orpheus could not retrieve his wife from the underworld, none of us will be able to bring back the 90s no matter how many quizzes we take. I have come to accept this, others will need to follow suit, lest we share his fate of being torn apart, him the intoxicated Maenads, us our nostalgic raving
3. I began to spend nights contemplating how many GIFs are too many. My fate, akin to Ixion, cursed for all eternity to spin on a wheel, the endless loop of the GIF.
4. I refuse to mislead people into believing that a chocolate and cheese questionnaire will reveal their next boyfriend. I am not Tiresias, I cannot prophesy about a subject matter so enshrouded in mystery, no matter how many forms of confectionary and dairy products we employ in our quest to know our romantic fates.
5. I feel I can longer use animal memes to help people from succumbing to ennui, they are but a temporary palliative. The task of finding new and more engaging cats deepens this my Sisyphean condition. There is no end to doggos, puppers or smol kittehs. I cannot in good conscience present these to a voracious public, looking for their own form of reprieve, as a good alternative to reading.
6. I was the Midas of posts, turning every still from a movie or animated film into internet gold. I watched beloved films like DDLJ and K3G over and over again just to find the right still for my meme creation. But like Midas I began to turn away the ones closest to me. I too long to put my ever clicking fingers into the Pactolus.
7. I loved to watch viral video after viral video, until I had watched too many and I could feel all my vitality sapped, I became enervated. My Ithaca was a world without them. I began to sit in front of screens, pretending my mirth was real. I did not mean to be disingenuous when I pretended to love that one hundred and oneth viral video of a woman putting on make-up.
8. Unlike the Lotos Eaters I can no longer give way to somnolence, staying disconnected to the rest of the world, pretending everything is peachy, making videos of how to make rainbow cocktails while the world is burning.
9. I refuse to be consigned to something like Tantalus’s afterlife, hoping to get a chance to write something of real worth and drink from the pool of responsible journalism, the pool which still moves away from me any time I reach for it from where I stand now, reaching for it with hot takes and clickbait.
10. Apart from being swallowed whole by the Scylla and Charybdis of viral memes and viral videos, there is another peril that I might have to contend with, that being the fear that I will run out of fashions, cultures, objects and foods to compare Disney princesses to. I do not wish to be present when that comes to pass.
11. I am the prisoner in the cave, the memes and GIFs, they are the shadows that have started to become my reality, I have begun to shun the light and truth. I need to leave this cave, my mind might resist at first as I have begun to grow accustomed to this place, but once I have seen people, not behind the reflection of the listicles and memes, but see them as themselves, will I cease to be a prisoner.

In conclusion I wish to add that I do not regret all my time here. It has been a learning experience, but now, I grow weary.

Please accept my resignation and thank you.