Who Is Hogan Torah And How Can I Fight Him?

A battle to the death! To the death, I tell you!

All roads on Medium currently lead to Hogan Torah. I don’t know how or why — I just know they do. I feel like the characters in Cube or some other niche movie reference. Every time I scroll through Medium I end up at Hogan Torah, every time I follow a comment thread it ends up in Hogan Torah.

It’s exhilarating. If only because Hogan Torah sounds like a Lovecraftian city break.

We walked for days through the fog, losing many of our number to howling creatures unseen. On the fourth day, I noticed the child’s hand I had been holding was now only a hand, the bone and sinews extending to nothing and nowhere. Closer than a whispered breath, the child… her mother, long since forgotten slid quietly into the maw of an invisible beast whilst I, still holding the severed hand, suspected nothing. And yet still we walked, until there only a few of us remaining, until we could walk no longer, our lips cracked and dry, then… and only then did we find Hogan Torah.

On that note, if you haven’t found Hogan Torah, you should. He’s not been here all that long so I presumed he was a newbie. I presumed wrong. This is a man who has clearly been around the linguistic and humour block a few times. I don’t know what sort of training they’re running in the outside world, but I definitely didn’t get it.

His backstory involves dick pics and Quora and no small amount of chaos before he washed up on the Medium shore. Some of his pieces make me howl with laughter and that’s probably why the Medium algorithm keeps throwing them in my direction.

The Great Goddess Algorithmia knows all.

Now his articles aren’t to everyone’s taste, and they do come with a sensitivity warning, rest assured Hogan Torah doesn’t give much of a crap about your tastes. He’s got his own thing going on. He’s a subversive comic with a sublime grasp of language and an excellent turn of phrase. If you’re on Medium because you enjoy what can be done with language and like me, you’re a libertarian/liberal who doesn’t believe restrictions on humour should be a thing — he might also be for you.

It’s nice to know not all the new people who arrive here want to write about how to make millions of pounds. Some of them are mischievous raconteurs who just want to cause chaos and fuckshitup.

I can count on one hand the number of writers on this site who make me jealous when I read their work. I don’t care what people earn, I don’t care how prolific they are or where they’re published. I don’t care if they’re 18x Top Writers or had a job at the Washington Post.

I don’t get jealous about that stuff. It’s words. I only care about words and craft.

I will have to fight him (obviously I will), there can’t be two fictional characters throwing out humour and opinion in a space as small as Medium. How will this battle happen? Who knows? Will we have a war of words in each other’s comments section? Maybe. Can we have a rant off on a publicly generated topic? Will we just never acknowledge each other’s work and leave acerbic non-sequitar barbs as a piece of performance art?

I don’t know… I’m excited to find out.

We’ll come to blows eventually and I’d rather sooner than late. I’ve still got the strategic advantage in this nom-de-plume vs nom-de-plumage, this article… my so called elephant of surprise and he’s got no idea it’s coming.

See….I know even as I typed it, my wordplay is mediocre. Hogan Torah wouldn’t have done it. He’s already probably got a zippy one-liner reply about elephant ejaculate. What a bastard.

Wordcraft is how you impress a Penguin. At his hilarious best Hogan Torah makes me look like a linguistic simpleton. A timely reminder I’ve still got a lot to learn about storytelling and developing into a funnier writer than I am. There’s always something new to learn and you’re never too long in the beak to be humbled. Three years into a blogging career and I still have a long road to travel.

And, I’m reliably informed by my own first paragraph, all roads lead to Hogan Torah.