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I am the staffer stuck in 48 University Place. Please help.

The entrance of the newsroom
48 University Place, Home of the Daily Princetonian
Benjamin Ball / The Daily Princetonian

The following content is mostly satirical and mostly fictional. 

I went to the first ‘Prince’ Satire meeting because I lost the TigerMag invitation in my inbox. It was in a conference room on the fourth floor. I thought it was basically nondescript — maybe a bit villian-esque — but little did I know the image of that room was about to be burned onto my retinas for the rest of eternity.

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The first thing they asked us was if we were dishwasher safe. I was young. I was naive. I thought it was funny. 

Then they locked the door. And they told us to start writing. 

Mirth has become my coping mechanism. Whenever I get sad, my subconscious is now conditioned to turn it into an Onion-style headline. None of them are funny. None of them are ever funny.

One by one the others started escaping. Under the pile of ‘Prince’ hoodies we have for a bed, they dug a tunnel with their MacBooks. They left at night, in the glow of the ‘Prince’-branded neon light. All of them are now Econ majors — we have a GroupMe. 

I am physically incapable of bailing on a commitment so I just stayed. My classes were no longer important. My family was no longer important. I started writing “Self” pieces for The Prospect, about my feelings. But really, I was thinking about how to blame the administration for my problems and pitch it as a joke.

Soon there were only four of us left. I think the Managing Editors knew about the escapes, but they didn't care — as long as there were articles by Tuesday for each print edition. 

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They still have meetings every Sunday, under the cover of darkness (at 3 p.m. — they put up blinds.) During one they made me Associate Satire Editor, because I was still around. I had never said a single funny thing in one of these meetings. It didn't matter. Now I am still here, unnoticed, forgotten.

Once, I believed, as we all did, in the power of satire to enact change. No more. This is the end. Now I know that the only power of satire is to provoke more satire, more satire which nobody reads . . . 

I'm going. It was the TigerMag article that convinced me. We had to smuggle in a print copy, because their website hasn’t updated since 1997. But it was enough, now I'm going. It's over. If you're going to remember me — don't read my article on Nietzsche . . .

Daniel Viorica '25 was an Associate Satire Editor of The Daily Princetonian. He has since largely recovered.

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