My name is Jeff Mach. In 2018, I was canceled, under allegations of absolutely horrifying things…which were not true. It’s been a long, strange trip. Once in a great while, I write a little about it.
I never really talk about it, but:
For those of you who knew Jeff Mach between his birth on January 27th, 1975, and his death on January 23rd, 2018, he is, I am sorry to say, dead; but I bear his name and his body and his legacy, and I take responsibility for all that he did, good and bad. But that fellow..I vaguely remember him, but he’s not even a ghost anymore.
I don’t mean that, if I was kind to you, if I was your friend, that I don’t have most of that person’s memories, that I don’t remember you or the things that have been special between us. I know some of the things that the old, dead Jeff Mach knew, but not much.
He was not killed by the haters, the monsters, the schemers, the abusers, and (let’s not forget) the perfectly sincere, sad, angry people who have never studied neuroscience, and believe the stories they tell themselves, rather than the truth of what they meant or felt. I killed him, and I’m not sorry.
“He actually was murdered,
I’d taken him apart,
But when I put him back together, I could not find his heart.”
-Lou Reed, “Trade In”
This is what happens when your reality is warped by people you loved, trusted, helped in their lives and careers, supported, gave paychecks to–people whom you helped, people who either can’t stand the knowledge that they wouldn’t be where they are except for this person their friends call a “monster”, or people who milked your company for paychecks and defrauded people in their quest for power.
Because there’s a disconnect. I have not done the things they say I’ve done. I have not changed; my actions have not changed; it’s just become really popular, really easy, really supported to say that I never helped anyone. The theory that I was an Incompetent Super-Genius Criminal with a time machine fixes everything–the people who believe that I never made any money, while also believing that I stole tons of money, while also believing that I have decades of business practice, knowing that if they scream loud enough, nobody will ask, “How did this seeming-monster break the law thousands of times over the course of twenty years without leaving a single shred of evidence?”
So. I still remember fondly places I used to go, people I used to know, things I used to be, because I have never changed. I’ve never been an abuser, a cheat, a monster, a master criminal, a superhuman menace to society. And a thousand angry people, getting likes and loves on their posts for taking the ‘brave’ (and super, super popular) position that in all the years I paid them, helped them, supported them, trusted them, worked with them… it was all some kind of unexplained but nefarious plot.
Jeff Mach was a sweet guy, not perfect, but just a human working hard and dreaming big dreams with thousands of other people.
What I am now?
Well, once I was a battering ram, a tool of other people, a weapon in someone else’s hands.
Now, I am a weapon of my own will.
Let’s do this.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.
