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Jason Pargin
Jason Keith Pargin (/ˈpɑːrdʒɪn/; born January 10, 1975) is an American novelist, humorist, and internet personality. Writing for many years under the pen name David Wong, he founded the humor site Pointless Waste of Time and later served as executive editor of Cracked.com. He is the author of the comic horror series John Dies at the End (2007–2022) and the Zoey Ashe series (2015–2023), as well as the standalone novel I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom (2024). John Dies at the End was adapted as a feature film in 2012. Pargin retired the David Wong pseudonym in 2020, and since 2022 has produced short-form videos on TikTok and other platforms, which he has credited with sustaining his writing career. In 2023, he became a co-host of the comedy podcast Bigfeets.
Jason Keith Pargin was born in Lawrenceville, Illinois, on January 10, 1975. He and fellow Internet writer John Cheese (real name Mack Leighty) attended high school together and met during an art class they shared. Pargin then attended the Southern Illinois University (SIU) radio-television program, graduating in 1997. While at SIU, he was part of a student-run TV show on Alt.news 26:46 called Consumer Advocate. A number of episodes were produced.
When Pargin started writing online, he took on the pseudonym of David Wong to keep his real and online lives separate. Since much of his writing involved situations similar to his real life, he did not want co-workers and his employers to think that his rants about fictional characters were inspired by real people. The origin of the name was a character from one of his first short stories:
It's not a very interesting story, 'David Wong' was the villain in a story I had written way back in the day, so when I was signing up for my first online accounts in 1998 I started using it. Then when hate mail started coming in with a bunch of racist anti-Chinese insults, I realized I had either gone badly wrong or badly right.
After his book and movie deal, his real name became common knowledge, but Pargin accepted it, saying, "It's not like I'm under the Witness Protection program or anything. I was just trying to keep things simple in my personal life."
In late 2020, Pargin announced that he was retiring the pseudonym, with future editions of his works being published under his real name instead.
In 1999, Pargin started the humor site Pointless Waste of Time (PWOT), which would eventually be absorbed into Cracked.com. While working as a copy editor at a law firm, Pargin would spend his days copy editing insurance claims and nights posting humor articles on PWOT. Every Halloween on the site he wrote a new chapter of an online story that he published as a webserial. An estimated 70,000 people read the free online versions before they were removed in September 2008. Pargin used the feedback from people reading each episode of the webserial to tweak what would eventually become the book, John Dies at the End.
Demand Media hired Pargin to be the head editor for their revamped online magazine, Cracked.com, although Demand was not aware of Pargin's book deal. As part of the deal, he merged PWOT into the Cracked forums. Pargin has described a disconnection between the old Cracked print magazine and the humor site Cracked.com due to multiple relaunches and almost entirely new staff. As a child, he read Cracked magazine's biggest competitor, Mad magazine.
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Jason Pargin
Jason Keith Pargin (/ˈpɑːrdʒɪn/; born January 10, 1975) is an American novelist, humorist, and internet personality. Writing for many years under the pen name David Wong, he founded the humor site Pointless Waste of Time and later served as executive editor of Cracked.com. He is the author of the comic horror series John Dies at the End (2007–2022) and the Zoey Ashe series (2015–2023), as well as the standalone novel I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom (2024). John Dies at the End was adapted as a feature film in 2012. Pargin retired the David Wong pseudonym in 2020, and since 2022 has produced short-form videos on TikTok and other platforms, which he has credited with sustaining his writing career. In 2023, he became a co-host of the comedy podcast Bigfeets.
Jason Keith Pargin was born in Lawrenceville, Illinois, on January 10, 1975. He and fellow Internet writer John Cheese (real name Mack Leighty) attended high school together and met during an art class they shared. Pargin then attended the Southern Illinois University (SIU) radio-television program, graduating in 1997. While at SIU, he was part of a student-run TV show on Alt.news 26:46 called Consumer Advocate. A number of episodes were produced.
When Pargin started writing online, he took on the pseudonym of David Wong to keep his real and online lives separate. Since much of his writing involved situations similar to his real life, he did not want co-workers and his employers to think that his rants about fictional characters were inspired by real people. The origin of the name was a character from one of his first short stories:
It's not a very interesting story, 'David Wong' was the villain in a story I had written way back in the day, so when I was signing up for my first online accounts in 1998 I started using it. Then when hate mail started coming in with a bunch of racist anti-Chinese insults, I realized I had either gone badly wrong or badly right.
After his book and movie deal, his real name became common knowledge, but Pargin accepted it, saying, "It's not like I'm under the Witness Protection program or anything. I was just trying to keep things simple in my personal life."
In late 2020, Pargin announced that he was retiring the pseudonym, with future editions of his works being published under his real name instead.
In 1999, Pargin started the humor site Pointless Waste of Time (PWOT), which would eventually be absorbed into Cracked.com. While working as a copy editor at a law firm, Pargin would spend his days copy editing insurance claims and nights posting humor articles on PWOT. Every Halloween on the site he wrote a new chapter of an online story that he published as a webserial. An estimated 70,000 people read the free online versions before they were removed in September 2008. Pargin used the feedback from people reading each episode of the webserial to tweak what would eventually become the book, John Dies at the End.
Demand Media hired Pargin to be the head editor for their revamped online magazine, Cracked.com, although Demand was not aware of Pargin's book deal. As part of the deal, he merged PWOT into the Cracked forums. Pargin has described a disconnection between the old Cracked print magazine and the humor site Cracked.com due to multiple relaunches and almost entirely new staff. As a child, he read Cracked magazine's biggest competitor, Mad magazine.