Thank you for visiting my portfolio website. The samples here run the gamut from travel journalism, to a political editorial, to the two most significant examples of paid, web content writing that I've been involved with. I also have included a direct link to my original, one-hour dramatic teleplay. I was educated in journalism, film production and screenwriting, and worked as a content and creative strategist and writer for 8 years in NYC advertising agencies. This portfolio is non-comprehensive. If you've been directed here, I hope you find something compelling, and please feel free to reach out any time at the information below!

brandonvescovo@gmail.com
(646) 924-9715

The following entries come from a personal travel blog that I was keeping up with several years ago. I highlight them here because they exemplify the narrative voice and tone that I specialize in for all the rest of my work. 

https://www.communitybrands.co...

https://www.truthaboutweight.c...

Despite months of predictions and code-cracking by adherents of the Trump-supporting conspiracy theory QAnon, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president of the United States at noon on Wednesday, January 20th, as our constitution stipulates.

Shortly beforehand, Donald Trump flew away to Florida on Air Force One. On his way out, he made a stirring four-word exit speech - “we’ll be back somehow” - to an adoring crowd of several tens of supporters, and that was that. After standard procedures, the long-promised unmasking of Q, leading to a declaration of martial law and the live television executions of most prominent Democrats and other elitist, pedophilic Satan worshipers, did not happen.

So. What now? Has everybody who spent the last few years fantasizing about Trump being installed as president for life, under a shower of "swamp" creature blood, been shaken back to reality? Did they see the peaceful transfer of power take place and think “hey, maybe I’ve been a gullible, dangerous loon, and I should reconnect with the family and friends I’ve been isolating?”

Surely, they have. Right?

…Right?

To be totally fair, a few believers actually **did** take the red pill and rejoin the rest of us in the real world. A quick trip to the subreddit “r/leopardsatemyface” -- which is dedicated to people who vote for the “Leopards will eat your face” party, and then are SHOCKED when the leopards turn out to eat their faces -- reveals a number of schadenfreude-fueled discussions of screencaps showing QAnonists losing their minds on Telegram, WhatsApp, Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, AskJeeves…whatever sites haven’t banned them yet.

Other QAnonists, meanwhile, are now twisting themselves into pretzels by declaring that Joe Biden must be a part of the master plan as well, because - I am not making this up - he walked down a hallway flanked by 17 American flags during inauguration, and ‘Q’ is the 17th letter of the alphabet.

For the most part, though, it seems that even devoted QAnonists are struggling to read the tea leaves on this latest development. In fact, it was Ron Watkins, a thought leader in the conspiracy so prominent that many suspect he is himself ‘Q,’ who gave the theory its most notable sendoff:

“We gave it our all, now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able,” he said in a message board post. “We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility to respect the Constitution. As we enter into the next administration, please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.”

....So, “the real QAnon is the friends we made along the way?”

Politics is tribal, more so now than ever before. What little comity still existed between the parties, or between friends, family and neighbors of different political persuasions, has been irreversibly broken by the past administration. It is also true that people who get swept up in conspiracy theories and cults, like QAnon, are often lonely, insecure and confused. They find the meaning that their lives are lacking in communities of likeminded strangers that are similarly suffering. 

No matter how absurd QAnon looks to the vast majority of rational adults, for most supporters it isn’t actually about belief in the truth. Deep down, it’s about the security of groupthink, the identity that’s afforded them by shared fears and hatreds, and the intoxicating comfort of a revenge fantasy against the people that don't think like them. In this case, it's the Clintons and the rest of the Democrats, and all those snooty Hollywood celebrities and monied coastal liberals.

Yet this only explains the psychology of QAnon – the morals are a trickier beast. It’s harder to come to grips with the moral bankruptcy of finding hope in the idea of a violent strongman taking over control of the government and executing people you don’t understand. No matter who QAnonists might be to their families and friends, no matter what they might aspire to be, or how often they attend church, what jobs they hold, etc...there is one fact about them that is irrefutable:

In the end, they are disappointed and disillusioned because their fevered daydreams of political violence and retribution did not come true. They feel cheated, betrayed, because they didn’t get to see extrajudicial executions, and rivers of liberal blood.

They are despondent, and left without any hope for the future, over the fact that our republic was just able to complete a peaceful transfer of power like it has for nearly a quarter of a millennium, even in the midst of literal civil war. Adam Serwer, a staff writer with The Atlantic, said in a memorable opinion piece in 2018 that “the cruelty is the point” regarding Trump's strongest supporters. QAnonists will, no doubt, remember the friends they made along the way. 

Maybe, for at least the next four years, the rest of the people, upon whose necks the Trump administration knelt, will get to relish in THEIR friendships, THEIR lives, THEIR hopes and dreams, without the happy memories of QAnonists coming back around for too many nostalgia trips.