Beautiful future
The year is 2031 and you are a recent college graduate. You are 85k in debt and pay $2,700 a month to sleep on a futon in some guy’s garage.
All Android and iOS devices come pre-loaded with an undeleteable app called Tattlr, which can be used to report any instances in which others make you feel unsafe or display unpatriotic sentiments. A person whose Tattlr score falls too low will find themself unable to board an airplane, travel out of state, access job applications, or make cashless payments. The only way to raise your score is to report the misdeeds of others.
You start a job as a biology teacher at your local Pearson-PepsiCo Learning and Equity Center. It’s an easy gig, consisting of little more than taking attendance playing and pausing AI-generated videos about how genetics is a myth and science simply does not know why certain dog breeds share behavioral traits.
You’re technically supposed to screen the videos to ensure they won’t cause any hurt or spread any misinformation, but it’s been years since all electronic media was purged of offensive terms such as “lame,” “evolution,” and “women.” A few weeks pass and you start slagging off a bit.
That’s a mistake. One of the videos contains the phrase sexual dimorphism. You don’t even notice it, but the utterance is enough to cause a student who self-identifies as a seahorse (xe/seahorseself) to storm out of class. Xe swallows four ibuprofen in an attempt to commit suicide and you are fired immediately.
Seahorseself’s parents sue you in Speech Court. The AI judge renders a guilty verdict and you fall an additional 50k in debt, which means your Tattlr score is now too low for you to attempt post a video asking for GoFundMe donations–a shame, since GoFundMe is now the nation’s only remaining health insurer.
A man named Kennesaw Mountain Landis VI reads of your story on PatriotNews.biz. He takes pity and offers you a job at his Jeep dealership. The place has bad vibes–you worry about the Tattlr effects of finding employment at a place whose workforce is nearly 30% white–but you have no other options.
A week in, things seem to be going fine. But then a customer who thinks all disease is caused by not eating enough red meat sees you using hand sanitizer. He posts a video of the incident and you are fired immediately. Your Tattlr score is now in the negative teens which means you’re not even allowed access to food banks.
With no other options, you turn to sex work. And, ahh crap, you shouldn’t have said you “turned to” sex work since sex work is as good and valid as any other form of work. Your Tattlr score is now -27 and your parents can’t mention your name.
Anyhow, the sex work–you were a little worried at first, remembering something a professor said about how syphilis is now fatal again since antibiotics stopped working in 2026. But you checked the WikiHow page for Sex Work (which, weirdly, is hosted by Tattlr) and are assured that the STI’s are actually a myth, a construct of white western society, a homophobic lie, and also germ theory ain’t never truly been proven. Man… maybe that guy at the Jeep dealership had a point?
Three weeks and 45 dicks later, you finally have a little walkin’ around money. But, woah, your throat feels like you swallowed a burning match. You can’t access a doctor, but you can pay $185 to use an app that allows you to talk to a woman who is named Doctoria.
After clicking a box promising that you have never and will never criticize Israel, Doctoria informs you that STI’s are some made up SWERF bullshit and you are most likely suffering from hyper-morgellon’s (HMG). She eyeballs your Tattlr score and tells you that while it’s not her job to educate you further, if you pay an additional $500 she’ll add an exemption to your file that will allow you access to an HMG support network. You comply.
You quickly learn that you do, indeed, have HMG. There’s literally no other explanation: your throat is filled with arthropods. They took root in your respiratory system due to a combination of 6g radiation and racial fragility. Your only hope is a combination of prayer, tarot, ivermectin, and paying 50% of your gross GoFundMe proceeds to have a person of color scream at you.
You do everything you can but the pain keeps getting worse. You can’t hold down food and have had a fever for nearly two weeks. With your last few dollars and vestiges of strength, you post a final message begging for an explanation. A reply comes: you deserve this. The reply gets 75k likes and you are known forever as The Ratio Guy.