By Asher Hancock:
As social media has become more popular, so has the cruel practice of exposing people's skeletons online. On a recent brisk evening in Kansas, a devious woman was engaged in said cruel practice, an act which resulted in unimaginable consequences. The woman, Rhonda Slater, is a microinfluencer with a large following on Twitter due to her aggressive feminist content. She recently began a petition to ban ‘manspreading’ because according to her, “it is a gateway to mansplaining just like marijuana is a gateway to cocaine.”
On the particular evening in question she went on a Tinder date with a seemingly normal postal worker named Cliff Rockway. They went to get pizza in Topeka on a Friday night and both dressed casually, but not too casually. Both were enjoying the meal when Rockway excused himself to go to the bathroom. Slater took the opportunity to reach across the table and look at his phone, expecting it to be locked but pleasantly surprised to find out that it wasn’t. That surprise turned to dismay when she thought about it further and realized that only a crazy person leaves their phone unlocked. However, this revelation did not stop her and she was glad to have an opportunity to snoop for any private sexist comments she could expose on her Twitter. She opened the Notes app, and began scrolling through but soon realized there was something seriously wrong with Cliff Rockway.
The first note she opened was titled, “Guitar Lessons”. The contents of this note seemed fairly innocent but upon further inspection, the note revealed itself to be a detailed guide of how to defend yourself against Gremlins. While she could get past the strange nature of the guide, Slater was truly perplexed by how that had anything to do with guitar lessons. She decided not to dwell on it, continued scrolling and opened another note called “Poem about Women”. This title sounded like exactly what she was looking for but what she found was quite unexpected. It read like this:
What is a woman?
Please someone tell me
Where is the woman?
For I am just a humble cow
Women are everywhere
Is that sexy bear real?
Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of this poem is at the point where he very well could have rhymed “where” with “bear”, but chose not to. Surprisingly enough, she thought this poem was somewhat inspiring and that it challenged gender norms in a provocative way. Turns out, it was just the ramblings of a psychotic man. She may have realized the severity of this man's mental illness when she clicked on a note titled “Plan for Global Destruction”, but she could not decipher what the contents meant as it was entirely written in the High Valyrian, the fictional language of Game of Thrones. George R. R. Martin himself was recruited to translate the note and it contained a detailed plan to secretly double the recommended dose of Advil worldwide to help with “population control”. Unless Cliff knows something we don’t, taking twice the amount of Advil as normally recommended may at worst cause mild stomach problems, which does not seem to aid global destruction.
At this point Slater was concerned by the fact that Rockway had been in the bathroom for over fifteen minutes, an act that was awfully rude, especially for a first date. She clicked on one last note, knowing he might come back any second. The note, titled “5 tips for a first date”, while being the most coherent in terms of basic understanding of the English language, was by far the most disconcerting. The list went as follows:
Ask her what her ideal food is before the meal. If the restaurant doesn’t have the food, call and threaten to “get funky on the focaccia bread” if they don’t add it to the menu for the date.
If they still don’t make it, go into the women’s bathroom in the middle of the date, wrap yourself in all the toilet paper, wait until they close, and slow dance with the night janitor.
Call your date and tell her the truth about what happened, and why you never came back to the table because women appreciate honesty.
If they do make the meal, make casual conversation, maybe squeeze in the dessert, and have her home before 12 so you can be home in time to watch reruns of The Flintstones... unless she wants to come back and watch with you (winky face)
If she does come back to your place, put your onesie on to help set the mood and offer her some pepto bismol as a refreshing beverage. Maybe spray some sunscreen in the air, because that smell never fails to turn a woman on.
After reading this, Slater proceeded to swiftly take pictures of the notes, pay the bill, and run out of the restaurant due to fear that someone may realize that she was on a date with the weird mummy guy in the women’s bathroom.
While the story of the date is shocking enough, the aftermath has perhaps been even more astounding. She posted the pictures of the notes on her Twitter account along with the story of the date. They immediately went viral and gained the attention of various psychiatric professionals. The resounding medical diagnosis from the professionals was that Cliff Rockway is in fact a schizophrenic. The virality of this diagnosis caught the attention of the police who determined that a psychiatric evaluation was needed to assess if he was a threat to society. The results apparently confirmed the internet diagnosis and that it was even more severe than perceived. He was forcibly admitted to a mental hospital to prevent him from hurting himself and others. He will be there indefinitely and the world will be attentively watching for the next couple weeks until another entertaining story comes along.
It is the opinion of this columnist that the woman in question, Rhonda Slater, is not the social justice warrior as portrayed on her social media, but really a devious criminal who ruined the life of an (admittedly psychotic) man just to boost her self-esteem. Regardless of him being a serious threat to society, she had no right to expose that information about him. If we are being honest with ourselves, most of us are going to be taking advantage of those dating tips on our next date.