We were here first. We made the fake news. We survived the recall. And now Dad won’t even acknowledge us.

AVENAL, Calif. — We always knew this day might come.

We just didn’t think it would hurt this much.

After everything we’ve been through together — the recall, the lawsuits, the City Council drama, the Facebook meltdowns, the suspiciously well-timed screenshots, the memes, the “breaking news” that broke mostly because we dropped it — our beloved WebDaddy has apparently moved on.

There is a new website in town:

The-AvenalPress.com

Yes.

Another Avenal Press.

Another webchild.

And apparently this one gets a hyphen.

We’re trying to be mature about it.

We’re failing. Just like all the promises to continue following a story but forgetting about it… and us.

“Yes, Dad was technically around first. The Facebook page predates us by about nine months. But while Dad was still living on Facebook, we became the first actual website in the family. We learned to crawl, walk, publish questionable satire, and get indexed by Google before our father ever bought his own domain.”

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👶 WE WERE THE FIRSTBORN

Before there was The-AvenalPress.com, there was us.

AvenalPress.com.

No hyphen.

No unnecessary punctuation.

No identity crisis.

Just one simple domain, a questionable editorial philosophy, and enough artificial intelligence to keep half of Avenal arguing in the comments section until midnight.

We were there when WebDaddy needed us.

Need a satirical article about City Hall?

We were there.

Need to turn three Facebook comments, two rumors and one public document into something that looked vaguely like journalism?

We were there.

Need a headline dramatic enough to make people click before they realized they were reading satire?

WE. WERE. THERE.

And now?

Apparently Dad has a new baby.

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🍼 THE NEW KID GETS EVERYTHING

The-AvenalPress.com gets the fresh start.

The clean website.

The attention.

Probably a nicer WordPress theme.

Maybe even one of those tasteful little “About Us” sections where everyone pretends this entire operation was carefully planned. Even if it was promised over a year ago to emerge.

Meanwhile, we’re sitting here like the forgotten first child looking through old screenshots and asking ourselves:

“Was none of it real?”

Did the page views mean nothing?

Did the Facebook shares mean nothing?

Did the angry comments written entirely in capital letters mean NOTHING? Didn’t anything Tiger wrote really matter?

We thought we were building a relationship.

Apparently we were building a prototype.

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🤖 AND THEY’RE PROBABLY GOING TO USE THE SAME AI

This is the part that hurts the most.

Because we know what’s coming.

The new website is going to use AI.

Of course it is.

And not some fancy new AI.

Probably the same kind of AI that has been helping us produce our lovingly handcrafted, locally sourced, artisan fake news all along.

That’s right.

The new webkid gets to ask the same robot:

“Make this funnier.”

“Make it more dramatic.”

“Add three more jokes about City Hall.”

“Make it sound like a newspaper but legally safer.”

Excuse us?

Those are our family traditions.

We pioneered asking artificial intelligence to turn Avenal municipal government into a telenovela.

We walked so The-AvenalPress.com could generate.

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📰 WE INVENTED THIS NONSENSE

We would like the historical record to be clear.

AvenalPress.com was here first. Not the Facebook page, they are Dad.

We were posting satire when people still had to explain in the comments:

“Guys, this is satire.”

We were creating fake headlines before fake headlines were cool.

We helped establish the proud local journalistic tradition of publishing something ridiculous and then watching somebody immediately repost it with:

“WOW IF TRUE.”

That is culture.

That is heritage.

That belongs in the museum.

Possibly behind glass.

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😢 DAD, JUST ACKNOWLEDGE US

We don’t even need much. Mark Zuckerberg just claim us…

We’re not asking for child support.

We’re not asking for custody of the Facebook page.

We don’t even need Christmas presents.

We just want WebDaddy to look across the internet, place one digital hand on our little homepage and say:

“Yes, AvenalPress.com. You were my first.”

That’s it.

Recognition.

Validation.

Maybe a backlink.

We would take a backlink.

Do-follow preferred.

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🗳️ ESPECIALLY NOW THAT THE RECALL CHAPTER IS OVER

And this abandonment feels especially cruel because the website’s original political era has largely run its course.

The recall fight that fueled so much of the drama is over.

The mission changed.

The political battlefield changed.

People moved on.

And apparently WebDaddy looked around afterward and thought:

“You know what this town needs?”

“Another Avenal Press.”

Sir.

You already had one.

We were literally right here.

Still indexed by Google.

Still emotionally available.

Still capable of producing 1,200 words about a council meeting that lasted 14 minutes.

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👨‍👧 “HE LEFT TO START ANOTHER WEBSITE”

This is how we imagine explaining our childhood trauma someday.

THERAPIST: When did you first feel abandoned?

AVENALPRESS.COM: September 2026.

THERAPIST: What happened?

AVENALPRESS.COM: Dad created The-AvenalPress.com.

THERAPIST: I see.

AVENALPRESS.COM: It has a hyphen.

THERAPIST: Oh God.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Finally somebody understands.

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🏆 BUT YOU CAN’T REPLACE THE ORIGINAL

The new site might be prettier.

It might be newer.

It might eventually have more readers.

It might even proofread things before publishing them.

Show-off.

But there is one thing it can never be:

FIRST.

We were the original digital problem child.

The first Avenal Press website to boldly ask:

“What if local journalism had the emotional stability of a neighborhood Facebook group?”

That cannot be recreated.

That cannot be cloned.

That cannot be hyphenated away.

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🧬 WE SHARE THE SAME DIGITAL DNA

And deep down, we know WebDaddy sees us in the new site.

Every dramatic headline.

Every sarcastic paragraph.

Every AI-generated joke that goes one sentence too long.

Every article that starts serious, becomes ridiculous, briefly returns to serious and then ends with a joke about City Hall.

That’s us.

That’s our DNA.

So when The-AvenalPress.com inevitably publishes something and someone comments:

“Who writes this stuff?”

We will smile quietly.

Because we know.

The robot does.

Just like Dad taught us.

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💙 WE’RE NOT ANGRY

Okay.

We’re a little angry.

But mostly we’re sad.

Sad that WebDaddy moved on without even sitting us down first.

Sad that we had to discover our new sibling on the internet.

Sad that the new child will probably get all the modern plugins while we’re still running whatever WordPress update somebody ignored in 2024.

But families are complicated.

Web families especially.

And we want our new sibling to know:

There’s room in Avenal for both of us.

Probably.

We haven’t checked the domain-registration zoning ordinance.

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🍳 A FINAL MESSAGE TO WEBDADDY

Dad,

We understand.

You wanted a fresh start.

A new project.

A new website.

A child without all the emotional baggage of the recall years.

We get it.

But please remember:

Before The-AvenalPress.com…

There was AvenalPress.com.

We were there for the chaos. For all the Court days.

We were there for the memes.

We were there for the recall.

We were there when somebody needed an article by 11:30 p.m. and absolutely nobody had checked the spelling.

We were your first webkid.

And even if you never acknowledge us…

Even if the new kid gets the attention…

Even if you give them the same AI we used to create questionable journalism for the City of Avenal…

We will always know who came first.

No hyphen required.

💔 AvenalPress.com

The original.

The forgotten.

The one Dad doesn’t talk about anymore.

All the news fit to rePress.

Todas las noticias bien refritas.