EJ Dickson Has No Time for Bullshit

Recently, I had the opportunity to profile Rolling Stone senior staff writer EJ Dickson (@ejdickson). An expert on internet culture, we spoke about TikTok, Disney adults and Larry David.

EJ Dickson is chronically online. It’s part of her job. Her livelihood depends on her internet connection. She’s obsessed with TikTok – and, rightfully so – it’s the ideal place to find out what’s happening in the digital sphere of human interaction. She tweets with conviction. “I’ve been ratioed a million times,” she said. “I don’t fucking care if I’m ratioed again.”

Clad in a comically oversized black coat, she looks like a Disney villain – knocking over a small vase of water as she sits down at the table. She is unfazed. How could she be bothered? Her appearance may hint at Cruella – but, beneath the surface – she is really more of a Merida.

Dickson, a senior staff writer at Rolling Stone who primarily covers internet culture, writes about everything from OnlyFans to QAnon. Her reporting has earned her appearances on shows like NPR’s “All Things Considered” and CBS’ “48 Hours.” She proudly promotes in her Instagram bio a quote from journalist and talk show host Megyn Kelly: “Ej Dickson doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” The thing is, she does know what she is talking about – and she has no problem telling you that you’re wrong. 

Her appetite for writing was inherently instinctual. Since she was in Kindergarten she has been writing stories – one of her earliest being a fictional tale about a dog who ate too much, got pregnant and gave birth to 14 puppies. She wrote “dumb little columns” when she attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, and penned theater reviews of high school productions in an attempt to emulate Ben Brantley. 

She turned to journalism when she thought that writing fiction would not be profitable enough. “I actually chose journalism because I thought it would be the most financially viable way to make money writing, which is hilarious in retrospect,” she said. Her professional career began at The Daily Dot, where she worked her way up the ladder to an editor position. After being laid off once – and then, again – Dickson started freelancing for Rolling Stone.

In 2017, she wrote a story about sexual misconduct allegations against the porn star Ron Jeremy during the height of the #MeToo movement. “It was a big piece. It changed my career in a lot of ways,” she said. “Particularly in the sense that it got me a job at Rolling Stone.” Since then, she has interviewed numerous celebrities, covered burgeoning internet trends and even received death threats from QAnon extremists who disliked her story about the anti-child trafficking film “Sound of Freedom”.

Dickson’s attitude lends itself well to her career. “She’s hardworking, she cuts to the chase, she has no time for bullshit,” said Dan Stein – a longtime friend and the bass player of their college band called The Givers of Sweet Love, in which Dickson sang lead vocals. “She’s smart, but won’t own how smart she is,” said Brittany Spanos, her friend and co-host of Rolling Stone’s “Don’t Let This Flop” podcast. “I think she’s such a brilliant person, and she kind of sees herself as an idiot, and she is absolutely not an idiot.” Her friend and fellow Rolling Stone writer Miles Klee describes her as “bracingly direct” and a “force of nature,” both in her mentality as a reporter and as a person. With her, “You have to be on your toes,” he said.

But beneath her rough exterior lies a profoundly sentimental person. “I can’t throw things away. Like, my kids have all my old stuffed animals,” she said. One of her proudest moments in her career is not a story she reported; it was when she facilitated an opportunity for her father to interview his hero – satirist and journalist Calvin Trillin – in a story about fatherhood for Men’s Health. “I’m probably prouder of that than like anything that I’ve written,” she said. 

Her father – now retired – was a tax attorney for Deloitte, but Dickson says he always wanted to be a writer. “Even when he writes emails, they’re like 10 times better than anything I could ever write, 10 times funnier than anything that like, I don’t know, Andy Borowitz could write,” she said. It was his love for writing that inspired her to become a writer.

She’s a mom to two kids – four, if you count her cat and her three-legged epileptic border collie named Ringo Daphne. A self-proclaimed “Disney adult”, she takes trips to the media conglomerate’s amusement parks as often as she can – with or without her kids. “She loves Disney World, Disneyland,” her best friend Cathy Skulnik said. “She thinks of herself as an expert.”

In the throes of writing her first book entitled “Bad Moms” (not related to the Mila Kunis movie), Dickson balances her mom duties and hectic journalism career with style and grace – unwinding with her husband at the end of each day to episodes of “The Simpsons”.

The most important things in her life are her family, her friends, the truth – and Larry David. She is the real world manifestation of Elaine from “Seinfeld” if she were a Disney princess – and she will not entertain any nonsense.