issue 10: tryhard is about the joy and challenge of choosing effort in a world that keeps offering the easy way out. we want pieces about inconvenience and community. about learning, showing up, and trying something again and again and again until it works. the beauty of a manual car. what do we lose when we use tools to replace processes? what can we gain when we insit on doing things anwyays? can we truly preserve old media (the deterioration of vhs tapes)? or must we adapt like the machines we are. is ther value in resisting efficienty? do any of you know about baumol’s cost disease?
send all proposals or initial drafts to ucgargoyle@gmail.com by february 15th with “issue 10 proposal for section x, contributor’s name” as the subject line. include a sample paragraph (about 200 words) with your proposal. final drafts are due wednesday, february 25th eod. pieces can be anywhere from 1 to 1000 words. production nights will run march 5th from 5–9 in the JCR.
some prompts, if you insist on trying a little harder than necessary:
uc: did you get into this school by lying and cheating in typical teen high school drama style or did you, genuinely, just try hard? do you cum in your pants when your prof acknowledges your hard work, mumbling a soft, “say it again.”? tell us about the embarrassing outfits you wore in your first year, just to try hard and make friends. hey, just pitch to us, nerd.
arts & culture: does creation require inconvenience? talk about the death/revival of physical media. what media personality are you trying hard to emulate? tell us about your journeys to the archives and libraries instead of reading Google AI overview slop. what parts of art-making or art-watching are you still doing the long way, on purpose? burn a cd, develop some film, draw up a zine, stitch something together. carry your heart on your sleeve and write chalantly about your hyperfixations!!
politics: wtf is up w the gig economy?? you can have chipotle slop bowl …. but at what cost? organizing is perhaps the least gratifying thing ever, so why try? why go postering? why go canvassing? WHY??!! will your submission regurgitate the same substack discourse/video essay fodder or will you dare to have an original thought? lmk.
opinions: is deleting instagram worth the disconnect, is the estrangement of disconnect worth the reclamation of self? what strange old habits/rituals make you up? who are you willing to slow down for? can we still make time for tea ceremonies, dating outside of apps, rolling joints instead of buying pre-rolls? is convenience making us lazy and killing taste, or just our patience? developing photos or icloud storage, meal-prep or doordash? what gets lost when playlists replace records and mixtapes, when algorithms replace intimacy?
avant garg: reporting UC as tryhard patient zero; pitchlist filled in 5 months in advance. but aside from them… we love tryhards. passionate devotion is so rare these days. give us elaborate structures and high-flown language. give us ego, inflated. give us everything you’ve been keeping in because it’s “too much.” nothing is too much here. purple prose, ten-dollar-words. be extra, be loud.
comics: Try your hardest. In the age of AI, give us what only you can make. show us the evolution of your style over time, all that hard practice. Make a Zine. Dip your hands in ink and pull something out of it. The cleaning up sucks, but what’s life without a little inconvenience?
stay greasy,
amareena saleh
communications editor
