Rad Brown Dads returns

Part 1: A mini-essay on why I kept this odd little brand going all these years. (Part 2 will be audio!)

In 2013, I grew tired of the insularity of graduate school, so I started an uncle-fashion blog called Rad Brown Dads and found the first audience for my writing. Soon I had a fixation: could I make Rad Brown Dads my career?

A selection of photos that were submitted to the Rad Brown Dads tumblr. The focus was on tailored fashion, mostly.

(For a more in-depth look at how Rad Brown Dads went from in-joke to my (ugh) brand, keep tuned for part 2, an audio interview with Nyle Usmani.)

At the time, a blog on a platform like Tumblr could get book deals for a well-considered gimmick, so I harbored delusions of escape in writing fame and success. On an image-focused platform, I turned to photos of my parents and their friends in the 70s, which had become very important to me in my grief.

For each post, I wrote a little fashion commentary on a photo, a bit of cultural context, and a sprinkle of snark. I gave it a mission (“fostering self-love and introspection”), like this little blog was redeeming dads that had been embattled by the stereotypes of Model Minority, Silent But Strong, Unsexy and Uncool.

But really, it was a break from grad school essays and an excuse to interact with readers; if it changed minds, that was a nice little bonus. Soon, I started getting submissions from all over the world. The nascent desi online media ecosystem brought me on for interviews. My jaw dropped when I saw that “The Man, The Legend: Ahmed Ali Akbar” was the title of my interview with Brown Girl Magazine. And in 2019, I found out Hasan Minhaj was apparently a reader, describing a tender moment with his own dad as a “real radbrowndads.tumblr.com moment.”

After I finished my graduate degree (and published my first print essay), I decided to take a jump into digital media, which in 2014 was expanding, iterating, and most importantly, hiring. When I finally found the fellowship that got my foot in the door, my mentor told me, paraphrased, “your published writing was actually pretty boring. But it was what you did with the blog that got you an interview.”

That fellowship helped me shed my academic style, leaning on the bouncing energy of being an annoying little brother, a student of Islam, and a lover of fiction, games, and comics. Within two years, I was a journalist, a career I had never planned on being in.

Even as my work became professionalized, I kept the handle @radbrowndads on all of my social accounts. It started as this in-joke, but it ended up becoming the internet alter-ego that stuck. I wasn’t even a dad at the time; “NOT A DAD” was in my social bio for years and the Editor-in-Chief at my first media company kept asking me, “how are your kids?”

Yet, readers recognized me at airports, at weddings, on the streets of New York, and elsewhere not as Ahmed Ali Akbar, but as Rad Brown Dads.

The original blog never made me any money. It never became my career, like I dreamed. I stopped posting regularly within two years of starting it. But here and now, coming back to writing for the internet, I kept the original moniker, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore, even as I’ve grown distant from the term “brown.” Full-time writing has been immensely gratifying but tough, so it’s time to try to actually make Rad Brown Dads a career. Which begs the question, what will I write here?

Since the original blog, I’ve been a food writer, a podcast and video host, a student of American Islam and Islamic thought, a competitive fighting-game player, a cultural critic of TV and movies, an editor and more. Yet, I think of every single piece of work I’ve done to be of the same genre. A search for how communities create shared meaning. Even that little online community of Rad Brown Readers — the fact that they seemed to understand what I was doing in my grad dorm was always a miracle to me.

Over ten years, I’ve had this nagging guilt that I don’t write enough. After leaving the most traditional media of my career, my number one realization is I need a consistent, qualified editor (shoutouts to Kayla Samoy). I still struggle with deadlines, with overthinking, and with volume. But when I meet my readers and see how they engage with my work, that helps with my guilt. As of this past week (and after a few weeks of the flu), I have begun working with an editor with a deep understanding of my work. We have several reported pieces, guides, and essays in the work. The cadence of posting will evolve as time goes on, but for now, I’m hoping at least one essay or feature a month.

Stay tuned for part 2, a podcast interview for paid subscribers, exploring more of that period in 2013 when I began the blog and why I chose the name for this platform.