Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday
Here's the November 25 edition of the Certified Forgotten newsletter.
Spooky friends,
If you’re like me, now is probably the time of year when you become super-conscious of where you’re spending your money. And while Small Business Saturday might be a marketing campaign created by American Express — true story — it’s still as good a time as any to seek out ways to support the small businesses you love.
With that in mind, here’s three ways to support Certified Forgotten year-round.
Did you know that the Patreon is the only place on Certified Forgotten where you can find original essays from us? We never envisioned the website as a vanity project, which is why we only publish essays by non-us writers. Then again, not exploiting ourselves for free labor does come with some tradeoffs. As white collar schmucks who work outside of the film industry, we can ensure a financial baseline for the site. But our ability to grow our editorial calendar is entirely dependent on the success of our Patreon. Donating anywhere from $1 to $20 a month will help us add more slots for dynamic niche essays like this and unlock exclusive bonus content.
Recommend Us (Online and Off)
Months after the transition to X, publications like ours are still struggling to navigate the hole left in the media landscape by Twitter. But social media isn’t the only way to share our site — though you should definitely, definitely do that, too. If you run a blog, host a podcast, or publish a Substack, every mention of or link to our site goes a long way to introducing new users to Certified Forgotten. And if you’re a Reddit user and want to share the occasional article to communities like r/horror, there’s literally no better way to send traffic to the site.
Review Our Podcast
When your podcast is dedicated to movies most people have never seen, organic growth is, ah, a little tricky. That’s why reviews are so important. Our chances to convert casual traffic into repeat listeners are kind of limited, so anything we can do to nail that first impression — including five-star reviews on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts — can have a major impact. If you’ve ever listened to an episode and enjoyed what you heard, today is a great day to leave a review.
New Podcast Episode
A Horrible Way To Die
With Special Guest Tyler MacIntyre
If you’ve listened to the podcast before, then you know I’m something of a horror comedy agnostic. I’m not saying there aren’t good ones out there, I’m just saying I’ve seen very little proof of their existence. One big exception to that rule is filmmaker (and friend to the site) Tyler MacIntyre. Both Tragedy Girls and It’s a Wonderful Knife take a relationship-based approach to humor that allows the scary parts and the funny parts to equally shine. It was great to have Tyler back on the show to talk about Christmas horror, mumblegore, and what he learned about filmmaking from colleagues at Lifetime.
Published This Week
Breaking Free From Trauma in We Are What We Are by Molly Henery
As a big Jim Mickle guy — I love Cold in July and his work on the Hap & Leonard series — I feel like I’m still waiting for that breakthrough project that solidifies his status as genre’s Jeff Nichols. Until then, I’ll just make due with his horror films. I’ve written before that Molly is the only writer at Certified Forgotten who has a blank check to write about films from any filmmaker and any period in horror history, and essays like this are an example of why we give her that trust. She’s good at this, y’all.