By Nina Patel:
Dear Diary,
I know I haven’t written in a while, or ever, for that matter — and that this is not an actual diary but a Burger King napkin that I’m writing on with a colored pencil I found on the floor of a Septa bus — but I felt the need to catalogue this week’s events as they have forever altered my life. The events that transpired over the past few days are the most mind-boggling things to ever happen. Forget the worldwide pandemic, the death of Vine, and literally every war –– nothing has ever, and I mean ever, been more transformative to the course of history than this past week. Three days ago TikTok went down, and high schools all around the world went up in flames. Not literal flames (except in one case where a TikTok star was interrupted halfway through filming a flawless transition in a clothes reel video and reacted appropriately by setting fire to the school auditorium) but the metaphorical flames caused by our deep hatred of human interaction.
TikTok’s irresponsible and outrageous glitch lasted a full three days, during which we went through a range of emotions. At first, it was mostly anger, which led to the destruction of a few classrooms and a schoolwide assembly featuring a very disappointed principal. The assembly set off a whole new crisis as we realized that we no longer had anything to do on our phones and instead were forced to actually listen to their teachers. This realization sent us into a deep depression, and not even chicken nugget day in the cafeteria could pull us out of it.
We were forced to speak to each other at lunch like barbarians, and those of us who wished to survive in our new social habitat took up an ancient form of communication called “small talk.” This archaic language consisted mostly of agreeable comments regarding the weather and ingenuine inquiries about how everyone’s day was going. It was the most miserable day of my life. However, our livelihood was restored as, one by one, we slowly began to rediscover the beautiful world of Youtube, which recently developed an appropriately-named “shorts” feature that fulfills the needs of the “non-existent attention spans” on which boomers love to lecture us. I don’t personally see how my inability to focus on something for over a minute is an issue, but my driving instructor didn’t seem to love it when I jumped out the window of a moving car during my first lesson because I found the highway boring. It’s not my fault all trees look the same and the car in front of me wasn’t doing anything interesting! Get a better license plate people –– what is “HLN 9256” even supposed to mean? Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the worst day in the history of the multiverse.
By the time TikTok was up and running again, it had been three whole days since we last opened our “For You Page.” The content was ancient, dating all the way back to Wednesday. I’ll never forget the traumatic events that took place on those three TikTok-less days. Just kidding. I’ll probably forget by the end of the week, especially since I just spilled a shitload of ketchup all over my Supreme hoodie and I’m out of napkins.
Yours truly,
Chadington Dôüchébæg III