Freelance satire writer disappointed to learn exposure doesn't pay rent

Tây Hồ, Hanoi – The lack of smelly news from The Durian of late has left Hanoi’s expats confused and saddened by the lack of pure unadulterated guff to read during their daily hangover shits, but today The Durian can exclusively reveal the ugly truth.

Our reporter managed to track down one of the free satire newspaper’s original creators on the streets of Tây Hồ, where he now sleeps.

While gulping down one cà phê sữa đá after another on the pavement, typing frantically on a Soviet era laptop, a balding man with a raggedy beard and a washed out Apax polo shirt gave our reporter a glimpse into the dark realities of the fake news industry.

“They fucking don’t pay me man! I can’t keep going any longer, I’ve jacked it in,” lamented Rex Durant, "I tried to pay my rent in exposure and now the rats of Hanoi have stolen my shoes."

“They promised me untold riches, nubile women at my beck and call and enough cocaine to revive Tutankhamun, so I quit my $50 an hour job teaching English to squirrels. But all I got was a bag of prawn crackers, one measly handjob and a serious caffeine addiction,” Durant moaned.

“We really worry about him” said Huyền Nguyễn, the waitress at Durant’s café of choice.

“He comes here every day and tries to hit on me by telling me he’s Hanoi’s top satirist and that The Guardian want to hire him. But I’m no fucking idiot, even The Guardian wouldn’t hire someone who smells like him,” she said.

In between frantic drags on Thang Long cigarettes, Durant blasted The Durian’s obvious lack of regard for the human wellbeing of its writers, or as he claimed they are referred to in the publication’s weighty training manual, “word-monkeys.”

“If you want quality, you pay for the best, right? Like teaching English here, I have no qualification, but as a native speaker, I’m already qualified by birth, and therefore I’m the best at it. I deserve money in exchange of investing my precious time.

“If they want more writers, they can’t expect people to work for free, no one would do that here in Tây Hồ, life is so expensive and stressful enough without having to waste my time and energy volunteering. And without any money, how can I find new ideas? The usual bad teachers/overpriced Phở/crazy bus driver stories will always work and people will always laugh. If they want me to create any original content and work on a deeper journalism level, they need to slap some big đồngs in my hand first,” he said.

Durant also revealed a darker side of The Durian’s operations; one he said the writers only speak about in hushed tones in dark corners of the city.

“No one has ever actually met the editor in chief, but whoever he is, he’s making a fortune, thanks to the corporations who hire us to skewer their rivals. Some say he’s not even a teacher, and he has a huge flat in Times City where he bathes in the blood of the new ‘recruits’ he has his assistants bring to him. It’s how he keeps his skin blemish free here.”

It seems obvious that in the near future that The Durian will try to palliate the lack of writers and original stories by saying they are a small independent newspaper and will desperately advertise on a public post on Facebook that they are looking for new volunteers.

According to our sources, they will shamelessly try to lure more starving writers in, offering them all the fame and fortune that comes with anonymously posting bollocks on the internet.

Some will be ensnared, if only to give their lives the pretence of more meaning in an already poisonous expat community, but those wishing to commit their time and efforts in exchange for little more than online ridicule should immediately submit content to durianoi!@theduriannews.com apparently...