The Chop
You’ve been watching Daily Mail Snapchat stories on the toilet for nearly a year now, and you’ve convinced yourself that, because enough celebrities are pulling off bangs, you can, too.
One night—high from having delivered an amazing virtual toast at a Zoom wedding, and furious at the fact that a wedding is no longer a viable place to meet eligible friends of friends’ new spouses’ friends (and doubly furious that you sound like a character from a Jane Austen novel)—you are finally, like, “YOLO!”
Depression
Because you are not Dakota Johnson, your bangs look horrible. Now you’re staring down the barrel of six months to a year of weird barrettes and, I guess, headbands. You decide that the responsible thing to do is to hide your hideous mistake from the world until your forehead hairs rejoin the ranks of your back-of-head hairs.
Shakespeare Wrote Ten Plays in Quarantine, I Think?
Now that you’re spending a lot more time alone and refuse to turn on your camera for Zoom calls, something inside you has shaken loose—and it demands to be heard. You write the next Great American Novel in eight months, and it sparks a bidding war among four top publishers. One agent actually passed on your manuscript, and, when her boss found out, she was fired and blacklisted.
Your Novel Has Solved All Social Problems
Incredibly, everyone who reads your book recognizes something of themselves in the characters and is forced to think critically about their own role in perpetuating a culture of racism, misogyny, and inequality. The novel is also hilarious, accessible, and timely, while somehow still remaining timeless, intellectually groundbreaking, and emotionally devastating. Society is fixed, because people have finally learned to respect one another as human beings. Good job!
These Things
UGH, WHAT EVEN ARE THESE THINGS?!
