Jason Pargin
Article
Jason Pargin is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 20, 2022 and November 06, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as ”— Jason Pargin wrote”; “Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com , back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion”; “In Jason Pargin’s I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom”. It most often appears alongside Scott, 2017 SSC survey, A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: April 20, 2022
- Last seen: November 06, 2025
Appears In
- Highlights From The Comments On “Sadly, Porn”
- Highlights From The Comments On Polyamory
- The Bloomer’s Paradox
Related Pages
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- Scott (2 shared issues)
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- 2017 SSC survey (1 shared issues)
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- A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir (1 shared issues)
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- A.E. Waite (1 shared issues)
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- Abbott (1 shared issues)
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- Adlerian psychology (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- AL (1 shared issues)
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- Alex Power (1 shared issues)
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- Amish (1 shared issues)
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- Anomie (1 shared issues)
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- Antichrist (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
— Jason Pargin wrote
Inline links: Jason Pargin
Maybe not a very interesting comment, but I’m including here because lots of other commenters were surprised and excited to learn that Pargin (aka David Wong) still exists and has a Substack, Jason Pargin’s Newsletter.
Inline links: Jason Pargin’s Newsletter
I think the reason most people are uncomfortable with polyamory is that it subverts the dearly-held mythology of all-conquering “true love” between soulmates that pervaded western culture for a few centuries until the last decade or-so. Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com, back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion, and I think he was right.
Inline links: Cracked.com
In Jason Pargin’s I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom, a manic pixie dream girl cajoles a shut-in incel loser to drive her and her mysterious box cross-country. The further they drive, the more evidence starts to build that she is a terrorist and her box is a nuke. As our protagonist becomes increasingly desperate to turn around and return to his comfortable world of social media feeds and psych meds, she pleads with him to come out of his shell, learn to trust people offline, and have a sense of adventure. The book’s dramatic tension comes from our simultaneously rooting for his character development and worrying that it might be a ruse to manipulate him into blowing up Washington, DC.
Inline links: I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom