Listen to our full interview here, where founding Syrup Trap members discuss the best pieces they've published, what kind of content they want to produce in the future and the comedic enigma that is Winnie Code.
If you’re a UBC student, you’re already aware of the Syrup Trap. And if you aren’t, you’ve almost definitely heard of their articles. The talented group of satirists were the ones who convinced thousands of people that J.K. Rowling had bought the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, taught you all about Crack Ford and covered the entire Peter Mansbridge clone saga.
Interestingly enough, though, it didn’t start out as a humour magazine. Founder and former UBC student Nick Zarzycki originally intended to start a “Canadian version of IvyGate,” a gossip and news site for the United States’ Ivy League schools.
“That was fun for a while, but never really gained any steam,” said Zarzycki. “But I kept the name, and then right around spring of 2013, I was reading a blog post in The New Yorker about college humour magazines in the United States, and I saw the logo for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern … so I was like ‘oh, wouldn’t it be cool if UBC had a humour magazine that was similar to that one? I really like that logo.’ So I made the logo, and I was like ‘okay, what would the website look like?’ And I made the website. And I was like ‘okay, why don’t I just write the first post?’ And I wrote the first post. Then I started talking to funny friends that I knew.”
And it was all uphill from there. One of the newly minted site’s earliest posts garnered a couple hundred Facebook shares.
“I was like ‘hey, why don’t we do this more?’”
So they did.
Now, the Trappers are widening their scope. They haven’t abandoned their west coast roots (just Tuesday afternoon they published an account of a 41 bus that probably crashed). But Zarzycki and his crew feel that they’ve honed their skills enough to make a go of becoming Canada’s Onion.
“Since we’ve left campus, we’ve started to realize that Canada is one large UBC, know what I mean?” said Zarzycki. “There’s a central government that is very distant from most of its constituents … the only way you make a career and make friends is by joining a club of some sort … and, just like UBC two years ago, I think Canada needs a humour magazine.”
To do that, they’ve enlisted the help of Patreon, the popular crowdfunding website on which users -- or patrons -- can donate a small amount of money each month to fund projects they believe in. Currently, their page sits at $474/month, almost halfway to their first goal of $1,000, which they’ll use simply to keep themselves afloat. At $4,000, they promise to pay their contributors and double the number of articles they publish and once they hit six grand, the Syrup Trap will become a “real humour magazine,” complete with an office space.
“This entire thing is currently completely running on enthusiasm and passion," said Zarzycki. "But [from] working on past projects, I know that projects that are sustained purely by enthusiasm never last.
“I’m really excited by the idea of building not just a blog, but a magazine.”
“Time costs money whether or not you think it costs you money, you know?” said Paul Bucci, another founding member of the Syrup Trap. “For us, money feeds creativity because it feeds us.”
The goal of the Patreon campaign is not just to survive, but to progress. The final goal promises “weekly features,” including videos and cartoons, areas in which the group has dabbled in the past (such as with former AMS joke candidate and Block Party interviewer Winnie Code), but for which they’ve never set a dedicated schedule.
“Fake news is fun, but we see ourselves more as a prank factory,” said Bucci. “We’re not exactly here to write fake news, we’re here to play a lot of pranks.”
“I really like this idea of a publication that doesn’t have one form, that does many things, that tries different things all the time and that plays tricks on people in many different ways.”
Hopefully, we’ll get to see it.
If you’re interested in contributing to the Syrup Trap, they’re always open to new ideas. The best way to get something published, according to Zarzycki, is to send a list of pitches (not a completed article) to write@syruptrap.ca, and if the editors like what they see, they’ll work with you to turn one or more into a story. But don’t send them anything about construction at UBC. You’re better than that.