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Eric Senseman Mentioned Me In An Article On CITIUS MAG And My Life Instantly Got Better

By Stephen Kersh

August 27, 2018

A few days ago, I got this email from Eric that said, “Hi Stephen: You might recall my reference to Dakota Jones in the first footnote of my recent article, “Citius Mag Followed Me On Instagram And My Life Instantly Got Better“. Well, Dakota emailed me a rejoinder. I thought it might be of interest to you and CITIUS MAG. You might find it worthy of publishing. You might not. (Dakota isn’t a very good writer.)

I think Dakota is a very good writer and runner so I’ve decided to publish this against Eric’s wishes.


On August 8, the runner and self-proclaimed unpretentious philosopher Eric Senseman mentioned me by name in an article in CITIUS MAG and my life became better overnight, in many tangible ways. The article is basically a pretentious barrage of big words and fancy references to heavy books you haven’t read, but in the midst of all this self-aggrandizement he made the apparent mistake of citing something I once wrote about him and in the process he referred to me as an “esteemed satirist and running critic.” And although I’m not entirely sure what that means, it set in motion a series of events that have markedly improved my life with very little effort on my part.

Now, I’m not pretentious at all. Unlike Mr. Senseman, who referred to himself by referring to what I said about him by saying that he didn’t get his Ph.D. in philosophy but did stay “just long enough to sound smarter than you without being pretentious”, I don’t have a college degree. I was in college for a while, but I quickly realized that I was both smarter and more mature than everyone else there. There was nothing for me to gain by waiting around for everyone else to catch up, so I set out on my own path and have since gained massive public acclaim for being, apparently, a “satirist and running critic.” But this isn’t supposed to be about me, per se. This is about how my life got better the second Eric Senseman’s self-promotional braggadocio backfired in my favor. The secret was that he published his article in CITIUS MAG, which made all the difference.

If you’re wondering how I could say all this with any kind of objectivity, let me clear a few things up for you. First, I’ve never heard of CITIUS MAG in my life, so I definitely didn’t fall prey to any kind of echo-chamber self-perpetuating logical fallacies. Second, I don’t know what any of those words mean, so I couldn’t be guilty of framing the argument with an uneven editorial slant. Third, I’ve known Eric Senseman since before CITIUS MAG followed him on Instagram and his life turned from a dirtbag, running bum lifestyle into mansions, hydraulic Caddies, and the endless drug-fueled party it is now, so I understand the real him.

His article was about how CITIUS MAG improved his life by following him on Instagram. Of course, he should know that social media is a farcical misrepresentation of skewed self-images, but apparently they don’t teach that until the second half of Ph.D. philosophy school, which, as you’ll recall, he didn’t attend. I guess David Hume’s “seminal work, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” – in Senseman’s words – didn’t cover the shallow and erosive pretext of reality generated by our society’s social media preoccupation. But that’s okay. If Mr. Senseman chooses to sacrifice authentic experience in favor of microboosts of adrenaline generated by the latest pictures, that’s his prerogative. Indeed, he admits as much in the title of his article: “CITIUS MAG Followed Me On Instagram And My Life Instantly Got Better”.

Among the many ways he says his life improved as a result of CITIUS MAG following him on Instagram is that his girlfriend decided to ignore her long-held belief that marriage is a “farcical fabrication built on empty promises, and it has no basis in reality, and it’s a stupid, manmade institution filled with baseless principles” and so on, and she married him. Well, it turned out that this was only based on CITIUS MAG following him on Instagram. Unfortunately for Mr. Senseman, the second his girlfriend-turned-fiancée read the article talking about all this and noticed the mention of yours truly as some kind of respected observer of the human condition, she realized that Eric Senseman himself has always been a farcical fabrication built on empty promises whose existence has no basis in reality and he’s a stupid, manmade, um, institution of something or other. The point being that she realized she hadn’t always hated marriage, she just hated Eric Senseman. So she came to me and was like, “hey, I hear you’re a satirist.” And I was like, “babe, I’m a running critic too” and she was like, “what does that mean” and I was like, “it’s a big deal” and she was like, “marry me” and I was like, “what about Eric” and she was like, “he’s probably looking at his phone while taking a dump” and I was like, “I thought he got rid of that job” and she was like, “I thought a lot of things about him too but he never came through and I was never happy with him” and I was like, “here’s a ring.”

So now I’m married as a direct result of Eric Senseman mentioning me in an article in CITIUS MAG. And that’s not all that happened. Once I got married, I sent out a tweet letting everyone know this whole story in 140 characters or less, and of course I mentioned CITIUS MAG, and they didn’t do shit about it. They were like, “You’ve never heard of us, so we’ve never heard of you.” So I talked to my new wife and she went after Senseman in the courts because he had just taken 100% ownership of his company in a dubious way and it turned out he had totally disregarded the law when accepting millions of dollars from his boss and buying everything he saw in a Snoop Dogg music video. It was awesome. He totally went to jail and we got all the money, and then I formed a corporation and hired a lawyer or two and then I just straight-up bought CITIUS MAG. And once I was in charge of the magazine I also had total editorial control. Now I’ve written this groundbreaking article about how my life has improved at Eric Senseman’s expense and it’s going into the latest issue of the magazine. And then I’m going to sell CITIUS MAG back to whoever I bought it from. It has been an incredibly long, tedious, and expensive process. But it’s worth it. My life is so much better now.

So if you’re interested in having your life improve tangibly almost overnight, then all you need to do is get someone who thinks you’re friends to mention you kindly in a published article and then ruthlessly steer the situation in your favor, burning bridges, and cutting ties all the way if you have to. The only way to find true success in the running world is by stepping on the crumpled remains of your blasted enemies, and my riches-to-more-riches story is a great example of that. Because as we all know, there’s only a finite amount of happiness in the world and if you want your share you have to take it from other people. And CITIUS MAG is great.

Stephen Kersh

Former collegiate runner for University of Portland and Georgetown, currently a professional runner weighing sponsorship offers from no one. Enjoys using the internet to message Scott Olberding and Paul Snyder about bad story ideas. Does not assume he will work at Citius much longer due to the bad story ideas. He once gave a TED Talk titled "Twitter: How We Are All Just Shouting into a Vacuum" to his best friend and his girlfriend on the beaches of Connecticut.