Some days the requisite pitching that goes with being a freelance writer is akin to being the homeliest bachelor at the ball. Out of 20 women you ask to dance, 19 either say ‘no’ or don’t acknowledge your presence at all and the last one says “Yes! Just let me run to the bathroom for a sec” where she’s apparently vaporized by ninja robots because she’s never seen nor heard from again.

Last week, while occupied with the time-honored freelancer traditional of doing anything but paying work, marveling at the fantastic number of perfectly good failed/unanswered pitches of the previous few months, I launched a snarky, mock Twitter meme called “failed travel pitches.” It was super cathartic and hilarious.

Since it was so fun, I’m posting some of my favorite tweets below*. [The fact that several of my favorite tweets are my own is simply the result of me contributing about as many tweets as all the other participants combined. If I didn’t feature some of mine, it’d be a very short list.]

@mrdavidwhitley: Twenty things you’re allowed to take in your carry-on baggage that you can kill someone with. #failedtravelpitches

@mikebarish: Epaulettes and Epithets: How to Offend Leaders of Military Regimes #failedtravelpitches

@leifpettersen: Top 5 Practical Jokes that TSA Agents Love! #failedtravelpitches

@douglasmack: Five Dictators Who Will Let You Pose in Their Funny Hats With Them. #failedtravelpitches

@mrdavidwhitley: A single male traveller’s guide to ‘budget hotels near the train station’. #failedtravelpitches

@leifpettersen: Six Ways to Secure a Private Train Compartment Using Poop #failedtravelpitches

@melanierenzulli: World’s Best Places for Dutch Food #failedtravelpitches

@lpusastaff: Top 10 Bromantic Getaways #failedtravelpitches

@mrdavidwhitley: Cities with the sexiest homeless people. #failedtravelpitches

@leifpettersen: How to Say ‘Motherf*cker’ in 26 Languages #failedtravelpitches

@douglasmack: Top Six Off-the-Beaten-Path Places to Get Beaten. #failedtravelpitches

@leifpettersen: Six Countries Where You Can Stage a Coup d’Etat and Probably Win #failedtravelpitches

@sarahturner: Cerebral South Beach #failedtravelpitches

@mikebarish: I’m going to have journalistic integrity & write about this press trip objectively & critically. #failedtravelpitches

*Apologies if you contributed an especially clever tweet to the meme and it doesn’t appear here. Unfortunately, hashtag sort archives only go back seven days and, tragically, I started compiling this post one day too late, and thus pieced much of it together from memory.