Tyler Hellard at the Calgary Public Library (photo by tk)

About me.

Hi. I’m Tyler. I’m usually a professional copywriter, but sometimes I write other things, too. Once I wrote a novel that (incredibly!) became a Canadian best seller (impossibly!) eight years after it came out.

About Pop Loser.

Pop Loser is a blog (and, for awhile, newsletter) I’ve written on and off since 2007. It’s changed a lot over the years and I’ve burned it all to the ground five or six times. The most recent iteration is a bit esoteric, with a little writing and a lot of links, and includes “mixtapes.” When each volume finishes, posts are collected on an omnibus page: Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Most previous versions of Pop Loser are archived in the following places: Newsletters #1–78 (unavailable), #79–97 and #98–113 (2014–2018). Original blog (2007–2014) and Tumblr clone (2010–2014). From 2019 to 2024, I probably had better things to do.

Tech stuff.

As of July 2026, this website is powered by Hugo using a modified version of Monochrome and hosted on GitHub. The type is set primarily in Monda with icons, including the many skulls, come from Font Awesome. Basic stats are collected with GoatCounter (most options turned off — I’m only getting basic page views and some limited referral data). All content is written and edited in markdown with IA Writer. Here are your RSS options: 🚒 Firehose (blog posts, other writing, mixtapes, photos, etc.) / 📰 Pop Loser (just the blog posts) / 🎧 Pod Loser (a podcast feed for just the mixtapes).

Elsewhere.

I went scorched earth on social media a few years ago, but have crept back onto Mastodon (though I accidentally nuked all my follows and followers in a bout of Fediverse transfer stupidity in June 2026) and Bluesky. Most posts to this site also filter out to those sites and sometimes I even scroll those feeds and “engage” with people. Sometimes.