I first wore the AirPods to the Stop and Shop. It was an incredible, other-worldly experience. I listened to the soothing voice of Neil deGrasse Tyson while picking through the broccoli. I learned about quasars while waiting in line for the deli. Things got weird, though, when I got to […]
My AirPods Make Terrifying Sounds Read More »
“I do not want to live without my cheese slicer.” “The cats are wearing shoes.” “The vegetables do not like vegetarians.” Sometimes, Duolingo, my smartphone language app, comes up with strange sentences. It always made me laugh. But, lately, there’s been a weird glitch with the app. I’ve been refreshing
One of my least favorite parts about being a middle school history teacher is the bullshit “Living History” assignments we give at the end of every school year. Kids are supposed to sit with their grandparents and video tape, voice record, or transcribe their oldest memories for posterity (and for
The Living History Project Read More »
I’ve never posted like this before. But I suppose I’ve never needed to. If you’ve read the title, you know what to expect, and you can move on if you’d like to avoid the topic. I’ll understand. Grief is a funny thing. Professor Farina taught me that in the first
My Son Committed Suicide, and My Wife Blames Me Read More »
“What the hell is her problem?” I thought to myself as I sat in my cubicle. Angela, one of my co-workers, was staring at me. More accurately, she was gawping at me. At my face. I wanted to scream at her, flip my desk over and demand what the fuck
Why Do People Keep Staring at My Face? Read More »
My name is Jim. I’ve been in and out of construction contracts for the last seventeen years. Between those contracts, I do what I can to make a few extra bucks, since you never really know when the next contract will show up and unemployment pays you just enough to
I Drive for Cerber Read More »
Roger glanced around the desert once more. Nothing but the cloudless sky and the sand scattering in the wind, with a few cacti dotted around the landscape. With nothing else to do, he checked his magazine, already knowing how many bullets he had. Full. Adjusting his helmet, Roger sighed and
I had just finished another level of my favorite game app when the usual ad popped up. I know the companies that design these games need to make money somehow, but the frequent ads get annoying really fast. The only good thing about most of them is how short they
Don’t Install the Hangman App Read More »
There’s no interesting backstory here; I didn’t buy this thing from some, like, creepy garage sale. I didn’t get it as a gift from some estranged relative that doubled as a cultist or anything. The TV was bought at the mall, for fuck’s sake. It was sitting on a shelf,
There’s Something Seriously Messed Up With My New TV Read More »
Have you ever seen a photo reCAPTCHA? Instead of a checkbox, it’s a low-quality photo split into 16 square sections. It’ll say something like: “SELECT ALL SQUARES WITH STREET SIGNS,” and you have to click every square that contains a street sign. At 11 PM on Sunday night, I got one while
The reCAPTCHA Was Wrong Read More »
The last few weeks have been a nightmare. A terrible, terrible nightmare. I’m still pinching myself every now and then, hoping to wake up. Sadly, it only leads to the skin of my arms being extremely red. I guess I’ll just start by introducing myself. I’m a father of two,
I’ll Never Listen to ASMR Again Read More »
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I’ve been an internet user for twenty years now. That’s older than some of my co-workers. It’s over half my life. And still the internet feels like “the new thing.” I used to take it for granted, like we all do. But
The Hidden Webpage Read More »
My cousin Patrick was murdered a few months ago. Yeah, Patrick was weird and self-absorbed, but at the end of the day, he was only twenty-four. I didn’t know much about what happened other than what his friend Jamal told me. Jamal had even posted on Reddit about it. The
When Catfishing Goes Bad Read More »
People are suing about everything these days. I remember hearing about that direct marketing company Monat getting a class action lawsuit against them because their beauty products were making hair fall out instead of making it look nicer. Kind of a problem when your product does the opposite of what’s
We Watch You Sleep Read More »
When the popular social media platform, Facebook, first became available to the general public in 2006, its original intent was to connect people all around the world—this world. Its unsurpassable success only fueled the company’s need to innovate and come up with new features and revenue streams. Facebook had to
I had always loved horror movies. In my younger days, I may not have realized it, but I was a glutton for the terror that the films would instill in me. I subconsciously loved how they kept me up at night, small fearful eyes scanning my bedroom shadows for whatever
My name is Chloe. I am a twenty-two-year-old college student from Minneapolis, and I am addicted to the internet. I keep a YouTube channel that I update every month with parodies of popular TV shows and the occasional video in which I address my viewers directly. Lately, however, something truly
I Plan to Delete My YouTube Channel Read More »
Chapter 1 It is the year 2037. Yeah, okay. I know it’s a cheesy way to start a story, but I just feel that it’s worth mentioning. Especially since it happened 25 years ago. I can’t help but think if I could have saved Jimmy. After all, it was my
So That’s What Happened Read More »
In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time. This game was called “Polybius”. The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits
In some television markets, people get two different versions of the same channel. This is usually caused by affiliates being nearby–for example, while living in New Jersey receiving the ABC affiliate from both New York City and Philadelphia, or living in Southern California and getting both the Los Angeles and
A Different Television Channel Read More »
