It’s been nearly three years since I wrote about the Balloonatiks, the dogged attempt of one latex fetishist to make his living balloon superhero team into a transmedia empire. Like Sisyphus, Tony DiIoia pushed a giant balloon up a hill for decades, only to see it tumble back down over and over. The fact that it was a balloon and not, you know, a fucking boulder, makes it all the more pathetic. Why did he persist in his folly? A commenter on my piece named Keith — who was actually a participant in the Balloonatiks-industrial complex — explained.

But for an idea as flaccid and deranged as living balloons intended to put clowns out of business, the Balloonatiks have actually done pretty well for themselves since my article back in 2023. They’ve got a TVTropes page now! Nothing I have ever created has a TVTropes page. Maybe in thirty years time some autistic Gen Beta kid will develop a fixation on my hacky videogames work from the early 2010s and make a two hour YouTube video about it. More likely by that point they’ll be doing stage plays retelling episodes of Hazbin Hotel to entertain mutated wasteland dwellers in exchange for potable water.

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